UFP Industries, Inc.
Q4 2013 Earnings Call Transcript

Published: 13 Feb 2014

[Operator:]

Good day, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Fourth Quarter 2013 Universal Forest Products Earnings Conference Call. My name is Dave, I'll be your operator for today. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, the call is being recorded for replay purposes. I'd now like to turn the call over to Lynn Afendoulis, Director of Corporate Communications. Please proceed, ma'am.

[Lynn Afendoulis:]

Thank you, and welcome to the Universal Forest Products Fourth Quarter 2013 Conference Call. Hosting the call today are CEO, Matt Missad; and CFO, Mike Cole. Matt and Mike will offer prepared remarks, then we'll open up the call for questions. This conference call is available simultaneously and in its entirety to all interested investors and news media through a webcast at www.ufpi.com. A replay will also be available at that website. Before I turn the call over to Matt Missad, let me remind you that yesterday's press release and today's presentations made by our executives include forward-looking statements as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from our expectations and projections. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, those factors identified in the press release and in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Matt Missad.

[Matthew J. Missad:]

Thank you, Lynn. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to our fourth quarter 2013 earnings conference call. I'll start by saying, "Wow! What a great quarter." Although it's my privilege everyday to work with the great people of UFP, this day is especially gratifying. The team posted awesome results for the fourth quarter, which not only surprised the Street but exceeded our internal expectations as well. We knew this performance was possible and many things aligned to create the great results. One of those things was our ability to generate weekly profits well into December, which is unusual given our historical seasonality. I'll start by walking through the 4 keys to our business

[Michael R. Cole:]

Thanks, Matt. Before I review the financials, I should briefly address the impact of the lumber market this quarter. Year-over-year lumber prices were up about 11.5% on average. The higher level of lumber prices impacted not only our sales levels but our working capital, cash flow and ratios like margins. Starting with our income statement for the quarter. Our overall sales increased 12% due to a 7% increase in prices and a 5% increase in unit sales. By market, our sales to the retail market increased 7%, which is primarily comprised of an increase in the selling prices. Within this market, sales to our big box customers increased 4%, while sales to other retail customers increased 9% as we continue to focus on gaining share with independent retailers. Within construction, our sales of manufactured housing increased 10% due to an increase in units while selling prices remain flat. Our unit increase was primarily tied to a 15% increase in industry production of HUD-code homes while modular homes production increased slightly. Our sales to the residential construction market only increased by 10% this quarter due to a decline in revenues of our turnkey framing business, which offset a 35% increase in sales out of our plants that manufacture engineered wood components. Unit sales out of our component plants increased approximately 18%. By comparison, national housing starts for the quarter increased approximately 12% year-over-year. We're also pleased to report that our plants that primarily serve this market had a substantial increase in operating profit again this quarter. Finally, our sales to the industrial market increased 14% comprised of a 4% increase in pricing and a 10% increase in unit sales, which is the strongest gain in organic unit sales we've seen this year as our new customer count continues to increase and orders from existing customers improve. Moving down the income statement. Our fourth quarter gross profit percentage of sales increased by 280 basis points and our gross profit dollars increased 46%, comparing favorably with our 5% increase in unit sales. The increase on our profitability and profit per unit was due to a handful of factors including effective inventory positioning, which allowed us to lower our material costs as a percentage of sales; being very selective in the business that we take, particularly related to sales to the residential construction market; and strong unit sales and the operating leverage we have on labor and overhead costs. Selling, general and the administrative expenses increased by $5.2 million or 12%. The increase was primarily due to an increase in wages, accrued bonuses and sales incentives tied to profitability. Excluding accrued bonuses and sales incentives, SG&A was up about $1.4 million or only 3% this quarter. Overall, we're very pleased to report these factors drove $14.7 million increase on our operating profit this quarter, while our net earnings increased by almost $10 million. Moving onto our cash flow statement. Our cash flow from operating activities in 2013 increased by $59 million and is comprised of net earnings of $46 million and $40 million of noncash expenses, offset by a $32 million increase in working capital since last December. Our investment in working capital has increased primarily due to higher sales volumes and a higher lumber market both of which required a greater investment in receivables and inventory. Investing activities include the capital expenditures of about $40 million, including expansionary CapEx of more than $11 million associated primarily with investments in new products and expanding our capacity to serve industrial customers. Investing activities also included an $11.5 million of payments for previously announced acquisitions. Finally, we used the remaining cash flow and available cash to pay off the balance on our revolving credit facility and to pay dividends. The revolving credit facility has $255 million in availability after considering letters of credit. With respect to our balance sheet, our total net debt decreased to $85 million compared to $88 million a year ago. We're very pleased with the condition of our balance sheet and feel have incremental debt capacity of over $120 million based on our capital structure in EBIT -- EBITDA, which we -- can be used to support future growth objectives. That's all I have on the financials, Matt.

[Matthew J. Missad:]

Thanks very much, Mike. We'd now like to open it up for any questions that you might have.

[Operator:]

[Operator Instructions] Please standby for your first question, which comes from the line of Jay McCanless at Sterne Agee.

[James McCanless:]

So first question, weather report. What impact have you seen thus far in the first quarter? And how should we be thinking about our models?

[Matthew J. Missad:]

Well, Jay, I'm trying to learn my lesson by not being a weather forecaster. Obviously, it's fairly easy for everyone to see what's going on out there and what we believe is, certainly, it's going to slow some of the activity for the quarter but we believe we'll be able to make it up through the course of the year.

[James McCanless:]

Okay. Secondly, diesel prices. We've seen diesel be down year-over-year for most of the quarter. What impact does that have on yours financials and especially as it relates to your gross margin?

[Matthew J. Missad:]

I think there's probably a couple of complicating factors. There's not as real simple answer to that because of how we do our transportation, some of it is FOB at customer locations, some of it's delivered pricing. So there's going to be a little bit of a different impact. Obviously, from a costing standpoint, overall the fuel cost helps us. But the percentage that actually falls to the bottom line, I couldn't really give you a good answer on that, Jay.

[James McCanless:]

Okay. And then I did want to ask on SG&A. Matt, I think that's -- in our model, that was really the only wrinkle in the quarter was SG&A as a percentage of sales was a little bit higher than we expected. Are you expecting a little bit higher SG&A rate in '14 than what you saw in '13? If you could talk about that, please.

[Matthew J. Missad:]

I think probably the bigger driver there, as Mike said, was incentive compensation. And so we would expected that to be somewhat normal. I -- we did have a larger investment in research and development, product development, product management, in those categories. We expect that to continue, but we expect it to be a smaller percentage of our sales going forward.

[James McCanless:]

Okay. And then the last question I have. There's a couple of companies out this morning talking about OSB pricing being down almost 20% per year on their realized pricing. What impact do lower prices in the OSB in the structural market have on Universal's results?

[Matthew J. Missad:]

I think, again, most of what we're talking about in OSB is going to be pass-through type pricing at some point. So it might have temporary shifts, up or down, depending on price changes, price fluctuations. But by and large, it's not going to have a big impact on overall dollars. It might have a margin impact at a lower price point for OSB, the actual margin percentage might be higher given fixed adders and certain product lines.

[James McCanless:]

Okay. But it -- is it safe to say that it should have less of an impact than in the framing market, in the lumber composite that you guys talked about in the press release?

[Matthew J. Missad:]

Yes. It will certainly have less of an impact there and it will have a much less of an impact with us than it would for the primary producers.

[Operator:]

The next question is from Robert Kelly at Sidoti.

[Robert J. Kelly:]

If you would, could you just repeat what you said about the big box units and the other -- I'm sorry, maybe not units, the sales and the other customers in the retail market? I think you said big box up 4% and the other was up 9%, is that correct?

[Michael R. Cole:]

Correct.

[Robert J. Kelly:]

And is that inclusive of selling price increases?

[Michael R. Cole:]

Yes, that's not in units. That was total sales dollars.

[Robert J. Kelly:]

Okay. So I mean, remodel was pretty strong in 3Q, it decelerated somewhat in 4Q. What's the outlook for volumes for 2014? I mean, I know you talked about kind of steady demand as your outlook, but you've heard more optimistic comments from some of your peers. What are your customers telling you for 2014 retail?

[Matthew J. Missad:]

I think our customers, generally, are optimistic about it. Again, we take our conservative lens and look at it that way. So we prepare for a conservative approach. If it's better than that, we're going to definitely do much better. So we think it will be relatively steady with 2013. Obviously, a little slower start here in the first quarter, but we expect that to pick up.

[Robert J. Kelly:]

Okay. As far as the residential business, if you would -- if you could isolate the components business. You've done a lot of work in residential to get the margins right and then kind of shrink your footprint. Could you give us some sort of idea of where you are, particularly in the components profitability, compared to where you were in 2005, 2006? Really just want to get a sense of how much more volume you need to kind of realize what you're doing during a good market.

[Matthew J. Missad:]

Well, it's a delicate tightrope you're asking us to walk there since we don't give margins by market segment, let alone by product line. But I think, overall, if we were to look at it, what we're seeing is we get much better capacity utilization in our facilities. There still is excess capacity in many markets, but what we're finding is the realizable capacity, we're utilizing a great deal of it right now, which is really helping on the operating leverage side and obviously putting more on the bottom line.

[Robert J. Kelly:]

Sure. And then has price -- the price discipline shored up in those markets as well?

[Matthew J. Missad:]

Yes, I think what it's enabled us to do is to be selective in the type of business that we're willing to take. And we've said before that we don't want to work for practic,e, and I think our team is doing a great job of not doing that.

[Robert J. Kelly:]

Okay. A question on the goal for 5 years out, $250 million in new products. Is that an organic assumption? Or do you count on M&A or future M&A in that goal?

[Matthew J. Missad:]

We will count all new products kind of regardless of how they come to us.S some of it might be purchasing, late-stage technology that's ready to be marketed; others may include internally developed items as well, so it's an all encompassing goal for us.

[Robert J. Kelly:]

Okay, great. And then just on the gross margin line I know it's -- lumber is what it is and it's tough to forecast the future. But I mean, in theory, if lumber is steady for a 12-month period, I mean the math is pretty much -- your gross profit is going to grow in step or maybe slightly better than your volume growth. I mean that's kind of what you've told us in the past. Is there any added benefit to increasing utilization at this point, which would drive that operating leverage up? And again, I'm asking if you could just kind of assumed that lumber is not making any adverse or positive effects on the margin line.

[Matthew J. Missad:]

Maybe you can help me with the utilization. Are you talking about facility utilization or some other utilization?

[Robert J. Kelly:]

Capacity utilization.

[Matthew J. Missad:]

Yes. I think, in large part, there's certain of our markets we're near capacity, particularly in the construction side. There's still has a lot of capacity utilization that's available for us in other markets. So I think you're right, there is some room there. As we bump up against the $3 billion sales number, I think we're going to start hitting more peak capacity by [ph] numbers, so we'll have to expand capacity at that point.

[Robert J. Kelly:]

Okay. And then to do that, do you do it -- do you to tap your unborrowed credit lines? Or can you facilitate that kind of spend through just operating cash flow?

[Matthew J. Missad:]

We think we'll generate enough operating cash flow to cover that expansion need.

[Operator:]

There are no further questions for you now, gentlemen, so I'd now like to turn the call back to Matt Missad for closing remarks.

[Matthew J. Missad:]

Well, once again, thank you for listening this morning and for your interest in our company. I'm sure that all of us in the north, as well as many of you in the south, anxiously await warmer weather and less snow and ice. But until that happens, we'll keep a sunny disposition and exert our energies towards improving your company. Thanks again, and have a great day.

[Operator:]

Thank you for your participation in today's conference. This concludes the presentation. You may now disconnect. Have a great day.