Good day, and welcome to the Griffon Corporation Fiscal Second Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. [Operator Instructions] Please note, this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Brian Harris, CFO. Please go ahead..

Thank you, operator. Good morning. It’s my pleasure to welcome everybody to Griffon Corporation’s second quarter fiscal 2024 earnings call. Joining me for this morning’s call is Ron Kramer, Griffon’s Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. Our press release was issued earlier this morning and is available on our website at www.griffon.com.

Today’s call is being recorded and replay instructions are included in our earnings release. Our comments will include forward-looking statements about Griffon’s performance. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that can change as the world changes. Please see the cautionary statements in today’s press release and in our SEC filings.

Finally, some of today’s remarks will adjusting for items that affect comparability between periods. These items are explained in our non-GAAP reconciliations included in our press release. With that, I’ll turn the call over to Ron..

Good morning, everyone and thank you for joining us. First half of fiscal 2024 is off to a great start and has exceeded our expectations. Second quarter was highlighted by continued solid operating performance from Home and Building Products and improved profitability at Consumer and Professional products.

For the quarter, Home and Building Products revenue and EBITDA came in better than expected as the typical Q2 seasonal residential volume dip simply did not materialize.

For our Consumer and Professional Products segment, second quarter revenue decreased 11% primarily due to decreased volume, driven by reduced customer demand in North America and the UK, partially offset by increased volume in Australia.

EBITDA improved 2% to $20 million in the quarter with the EBITDA margin improving year-over-year, primarily as a result of decreased North American production costs. I’m very pleased to tell you that our previously announced initiative to expand CPP’s Global Sourcing strategy remains on schedule and within budget.

We continue to expect the initiative to be complete by the end of calendar 2024. Since May, 2023, when we announced the initiative, we have ceased operations at all four affected US manufacturing facilities and four wood mills. These actions have reduced our manufacturing footprint by over 1.2 million square feet.

As we’ve emphasized before, the global sourcing expansion at AMES is a key element of our strategy to improve the margins of CPP. Turning to our capital allocation. During the second quarter, we repurchased 1.8 million shares totaling $117 million or an average of $65.09 per share.

As of March 31, $120 million remains under the repurchase authorization. Since April 2023, and through March of this year, we’ve repurchased 7.6 million shares at an average price of $44.56 for a total of $338 million.

These repurchases have reduced Griffon’s outstanding shares by 13.3% relative to the total shares outstanding at the end of the second quarter of fiscal 2023.

Also yesterday, the Griffon Board authorized a regular quarterly dividend of $0.15 per share payable on June 20 to shareholders of record on May 29, marking the 51 consecutive quarterly dividend to shareholders. Our dividend has grown at an annualized compounded rate of 18% since we initiated dividends in 2012. Turning to our guidance for the year.

Based on our first half robust performance and expectation for the remainder of the year, we’re raising our full year guidance. We now expect revenue of $2.65 billion, an increase from previous guidance of $2.6 billion and we are increasing our segment adjusted EBITDA by $30 million to $555 million.

In summary, the increased fiscal 2024 guidance and capital allocation actions reflect Griffon’s Board and management’s confidence in our strategic plan and outlook as well as our commitment to enhancing long-term value to our shareholders. I’ll turn it over to Brian for a little more financial detail..

Thank you, Ron. Second quarter revenue of $673 million decreased by 5% and adjusted EBITDA before unallocated amounts of $149 million decreased by 2%, both in comparison to prior year quarter. EBITDA margin before unallocated was 19.9%, an increase of 60 basis points.

Gross profit on a GAAP basis for the quarter was $271 million compared to $194 million in the prior year quarter. Excluding items that affect comparability from the current and prior periods, gross profit was $272 million in the current quarter compared to $269 million in the prior year.

Normalized gross margin increased year-over-year by 250 basis points to 40.4%. Second quarter GAAP selling, general and administrative expenses were $157 million compared to $160 million in the prior year.

Excluding adjusting items for both periods, SG&A expenses were $153 million or 22.8% of revenue compared to the prior year of $150 million or 21.1% of revenue. Second quarter GAAP net income was $64 million or $1.28 per share compared to a loss of $62 million in the prior year quarter or $1.17 per share.

Excluding all items that affect comparability from both periods, current quarter adjusted net income was $68 million or $1.35 per share compared to the prior year of $67 million or $1.22 per share. Corporate and unallocated expenses, excluding depreciation in the quarter were $14.8 million, consistent with the prior year.

Net capital expenditures were $18.5 million in the second quarter compared to $7.1 million in the prior year quarter. Depreciation and amortization totaled $15.1 million for the second quarter compared to $17.3 million in the prior year.

Regarding our segment performance, Home and Building Products revenue declined 1% due to unfavorable product mix partially offset by improved volume, reflecting increased residential orders in the current year which more than offset prior year backlog benefit.

HBP adjusted EBITDA of $129 million decreased 2% from the prior year, driven by the reduced revenue and increased labor and distribution costs partially offset by reduced material costs.

Consumer and Professional Products revenue of $281 million decreased 11% from the prior year quarter, primarily due to decreased volume, driven by reduced consumer demand in North America and the UK, partially offset by increased volume in Australia.

For the current quarter, CPP adjusted EBITDA of $20 million increased 2% from the prior year quarter, primarily due to improved North American production costs and decreased discretionary spending, partially offset by the unfavorable impact of the deceased revenue.

Regarding our balance sheet and liquidity, as of March 31, 2024, we had net debt of $1.46 billion and net debt-to-EBITDA leverage of 2.8 times calculated based on our debt covenant. Regarding our fiscal 2024 guidance, our overall strong performance in the first half exceeded our expectations.

As a result, we are raising guidance for revenue and segment EBITDA. We now expect $2.65 billion of revenue and $565 million of segment adjusted EBITDA, which excludes unallocated costs and certain other charges at comparable.

Further, we now expect corporate costs of $59 million, increasing versus prior year guidance of $54 million due to increased employee stock ownership plan expenses, driven by present stock price appreciation.

Other guidance remains unchanged for 2024, including amortization of $22 million, depreciation and $41 million, interest expense of $103 million, a normalized tax rate of 28% and free cash flow to exceed net income. Now I’ll turn the call back over to Ron..

Thanks, Brian. We had an excellent first half, driven by strong operating performance and better-than-expected residential door volume at HBP, establishing a solid foundation for the second half. As expected, CPP had lower volumes, but is making steady progress with its global sourcing initiative.

We’re seeing some of the early benefits of this strategy as evidenced by CPP’s improving margin.Given the performance of both of our segments, we are confident about raising our guidance for the full year.

We will continue to use our strong operating performance and free cash flow to drive the capital allocation strategy that delivers long-term value for our shareholders. Before we turn to questions, I want to acknowledge the effort and commitment, the employees and management teams of our businesses around the world continue to demonstrate.

It’s because of their dedication and effort that Griffon continues to see strong operating performance. Operator, we’ll take questions..

Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] The first question is from the line of Tim Wojs with Baird. Please go ahead..

Hey, everybody. Good morning. Nice job on the results..

Thanks Tim..

Maybe just to start, in the HBP business, I know you have kind of talked about 30% plus EBITDA margins for the year, you’re tracking kind of nicely above that kind of year-to-date.

I guess any changes there in kind of how you’re thinking about the business? And maybe what’s kind of implied in the back half of the year from a guidance perspective?.

No, we don’t see any change. And the biggest takeaway is the seasonality of the second quarter and the expected residential volume decline that didn’t happen.

And so we’re quite optimistic about what we see going on for the balance of the year and the continued margin improvement story that we’ve got in the HBP side that’s maintaining and CPP which is improving..

Yeah. I would just further clarify that we expect the back half of the year to be 30% or better..

30% or better. Okay, good. And then I guess just in the CPP business, I mean, you got back to actually -- I mean, I think EBITDA grew year-over-year in the quarter. I know there’s always choppiness with kind of a transition.

But do you feel like you’ve made kind of step function improvements now in that business and we can continue to see improvement kind of sequentially from here? Or do you kind of see it staying at that level the back half of the year and then maybe taking another jump in 2025?.

Sure. So if we’re looking at Q2 to Q3, we would expect the margin to improve sequentially. But the business does have seasonality. So we’ll see likely a dip in the fourth quarter, which is normally a low quarter for us. But yeah, we are seeing improvement in margin that will be sustainable and continue to grow into 2025 from the actions we’ve taken.

And once the inventory that we’re selling that was manufactured -- once we work through that, then the margins will improve significantly..

Thank you. The next question is from the line of Trey Grooms with Stephens. Please go ahead..

Good morning, Ron and Brian, nice work in the quarter..

Thank you..

So just touching on kind of the demand drivers here, kind of circling back to that on HBP. So residential, still seeing some strong volume versus maybe some weaker demand in commercial.

Can you talk about kind of from where we sit today, how you’re thinking about those two end markets kind of as we look through the balance of the year?.

Sure. We expect residential to continue to be strong and volumes to be better than the prior year. On commercial side, we are seeing some moderation, though that business is lumpy. And I will point out that though commercial volume was down from the prior year quarter, the prior year quarter was a particularly strong quarter for commercial.

That market is moderating somewhat, but we still see pretty strong volume there..

Okay. And then on CPP, inventory in the channel had been running high. Any thoughts to where that could kind of shake out, I guess. And I think previously, we had kind of been expecting that it could take another selling season to kind of flush that out.

So I guess how is that looking today? And do you still think that we could see the channel inventory kind of normalize this year?.

We do expect the inventory to normalize in the channel. We’re sort of in the early days here. Spring is just started to spring. So we need to get through the next two quarters of selling, which is the high season for that type of product..

Thank you. The next question is from the line of Bob Labick with CJS Securities. Please go ahead..

Good morning and congratulations on another strong quarter..

Thanks Bob..

Thank you, Bob..

Yeah. I wanted to start you touched on it a little bit, but the gross margins were either record or near record or pretty darn close but very impressive.

And just -- I know you don’t break them out by segment maybe give us a sense of, how they’re trending in each segment, how sustainable this based on the revenue level but the 40% level is? And then I guess how they’ll shift going forward as the global sourcing comes to a conclusion as well?.

Sure. We do expect those margins to be sustainable and actually growing particularly into 2025 as the CPP action is taking hold. And we’re seeing the pricing in HBP maintaining. And therefore we expect margins to hold there as well..

Okay. That’s great. And then as it relates to the global sourcing I know you said you’re kind of on track and in budget and all that.

Maybe just what are like the next big steps? Are you done qualifying all the suppliers? Do you have enough capacity now to fully take over? Or kind of what are the next big steps that -- and hurdles for you between now and the end of this year to complete the process..

Yeah. Let’s go back and remember that part of our confidence in doing this a year ago as market conditions changed. We have an existing global sourcing capability that we’re leveraging off of. This is not us going out looking to find suppliers – we already have suppliers. We’re a global business.

Our Australia business is already sourcing hundreds of millions of dollars of product out of China and Vietnam, so this is about transitioning the U.S. capacity to our existing supply chain relationships.

That is -- was always our strategy, a year later I’m very proud that we’ve been able to execute it flawlessly And as for the opportunity in front of us, this is a 15% EBITDA margin business one or two years from now. When it gets there it will continue to be a U.S., Australia, Canada, U.K. business.

And we did this with the expectation that this was a long-term strategy to fix a problem around the core U.S. manufacturing business that we have..

Yeah. I would just add to that that our distribution is ready. Containers are starting to come in Q3. And as far as the process, we’re moving into real estate sale mode selling the assets that no longer are needed for CPP..

Thank you. The next question is from the line of Sam Darkatsh with Raymond James. Please go ahead..

Good morning, Ron and good morning Brian.

How are you?.

Good morning, Sam..

Doing well..

Terrific quarter..

Thank you..

A couple of questions if I could sneak two in, first the guidance and I know you’ve typically craft your guidance very conservatively but the guidance seems to imply HBP margin degradation sequentially, despite the fact that I know you’re coming into a little bit more of your selling season seasonally.

What sorts of things would have to occur for there to be margin degradation from where you’re seeing margins now? And then I’ve got a follow-up question too, if I could..

Sure. So we’re still anticipating the 30% plus margin in the back half of the year. And we’re not seeing any pricing pressure what could occur is mix. And also we had some steel costs that will be -- we know will be coming through in the third quarter in particular that will hurt margin a little bit sequentially..

Got you. So that actually segues, my next question perfectly. So I think there was -- at least there was an announced price increase in the Residential Garage Door industry in March from one of your competitors and it apparently didn’t stick or at least didn’t stick yet.

Knowing that the steel prices are a little bit of a pressure Brian and that volumes residentially are now turning positive what -- why didn’t that price increase get matched? Or why doesn’t the market bear that right now?.

We focus on our structure of costs and what we feel is good value to our customers. I can’t really comment on why someone else’s price increase didn’t stick. We see a good market. We will continue to monitor costs and take actions if necessary..

Thank you. The next question is from the line of Julio Romero with Sidoti & Company. Please go ahead..

Thanks. Good morning, Ron and Brian.

On CPP, can we maybe talk about the inventory levels by geography across your UK and US customers compared to three months ago, how are those levels doing right now? And do you think the spring summer selling season kind of helps flush out the remaining inventory levels there? Or is it more of a longer time frame in your view for inventory to normalize?.

Yes. So inventory positions at our customers are improving though there is still some work to do. We do expect that to normalize by the end of our fiscal year as we get through the Q3 spring selling season and into Q4, particularly on the fan side since a lot sells in Q4 and our internal inventories should decrease.

So the US inventory that applies to the US when those UK inventory still is a bit high. That may take longer. Their economy has been a more difficult spot, but there -- that part of our business is not so large, it’s not affecting us too much. And Canada and Australia are fine..

Okay. That’s very helpful. And then for my follow-up just staying on CPP.

Curious how you guys are doing in regards to your distribution centers on the East and West Coasts? Are they still kind of maintaining those high service levels as you’re getting further along in your global sourcing strategy?.

Absolutely. Yes, no change in our service levels. We’re able to provide our customers everything we need..

Thank you. Our next question is from the line of Justin Bergner with Gabelli Funds. Please go ahead..

Good morning, Ron. Good morning, Brian, good quarter. First question is just on the residential HBP volumes.

What are the underlying drivers that you think are behind the more positive demand there? And is there any kind of offset from commercial being weaker than expected or is that just softening as you expected a couple of quarters ago?.

On the residential side, we have continued to come out with great products that people are taking to very well. We had the best service, the best lead times, the best dealer network, the best production. I might have skipped one or two. I don’t know best quality. That’s showing in the marketplace.

Overall an investment in a residential garage store is a good investment. There was a recent survey done by Zonda or recent reports on by Zonda that shows that the ROI on putting a new garage -- a new garage store is about 200%..

Okay.

And any change to your capital allocation priorities? Are you going to continue to repurchase shares? You’re going to look at bolt-on M&A?.

I’d say that we’re in a very luxurious position that our businesses are performing well. Our cash flow gives us optionality. Our stock remains a compelling value. And while it’s clearly outperformed any index over any period of time in any peer group competitor, it’s still undervalued and we have and we will continue to take advantage of that.

Separately, the M&A outlook for us is a robust pipeline of things that we think are value-enhancing and possibly additive, particularly on the HBP side, but the predictability of what we’re going to be able to do and when we’re going to be able to do is always the uncertainty of looking at M&A. As far as capital, we can buy back stock and do M&A.

We said that our leverage of 3.5 times is an outer limit of anything that we would ever consider doing on the M&A side. But we’re down to an investment-grade credit that is going to continue to improve as we generate free cash flow, especially if we don’t do M&A and find things that we can add to what we already have.

So the ability for us to manage both stock buybacks and M&A is part of what we think the next year is going to look like..

Thank you. This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Ron Kramer for closing remarks..

We had a great quarter. We’re going to be hard at work to finish the next and make it a great year. So look forward to speaking to you all in August..

Thank you. This conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today’s presentation. You may now disconnect..