Installed Building Products Inc (IBP) 2014 Q3 法說會逐字稿

Greetings and welcome to the Installed Building Products third-quarter 2014 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. (Operator Instructions). As a reminder, this conference is being recorded.

It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Jason Niswonger, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Good morning. We would like to thank you for joining us today for Installed Building Products' third-quarter 2014 earnings conference call. Earlier today we issued a press release on our financial results for the quarter, which can be found in the investor relations section on our website at www.InstalledBuildingProducts.com.

On today's call, management prepared remarks and answers to your questions contain certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws. These forward-looking statements include statements concerning demand for our services, expansion of our business, improvements in the US housing market and our end markets, our ability to strengthen our market position, our ability to pursue value-enhancing acquisitions and expectations regarding our sales and growth in 2014.

Forward-looking statement may generally be identified by the use of words such as anticipate, believe, estimate, expect, forecast, intend, plan, and will, or in each case their negative or other variations or comparable terminology. These forward-looking statements include all matters that are not historical facts. By their nature, forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties because they relate to events and depend on circumstances that may or may not occur in the future. As a result, actual events may differ materially from those expressed in or suggested by the forward-looking statements. Any forward looking statement made by management on this call speaks only as of the date hereof.

A full discussion of the Company's operations and financial conditions including factors that may affect our business and future prospects is contained in documents it has filed with the SEC and will be contained in subsequent periodic filings made with the SEC. New risks and uncertainties come up from time to time and it is impossible for the Company to predict these events or how they may affect it. The Company has no obligation and does not intend to update any forward-looking statements after the date hereof except as required by federal securities laws.

In addition, management uses certain non-GAAP performance measures on this call. You can find a reconciliation of such measures to their nearest GAAP equivalent in the Company's earnings release, which is available on our website.

This morning's conference call is hosted by Jeff Edwards, our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and Michael Miller, the Company's Chief Financial Officer. Now I will turn the call over to Jeff.

Thanks, Jason, and thank you, everyone, for joining us today to review our results for the third quarter of 2014. I would like to begin with a summary of our operating highlights followed by an update on our markets. I will then ask Michael Miller to follow with some additional details on our quarterly results and capital position and finally after our prepared remarks, we will open up the call for questions.

During the third quarter, we continued to strengthen our Company's position as the second-largest installer of insulation products to the new residential construction market throughout the United States. We accomplished this by producing another quarter of impressive revenue and profitability growth while also taking steps to further enhance our balance sheet and capital position to support the ongoing expansion of our business into new and existing markets.

Since June, we acquired two high-quality insulation installers, bringing our total acquired revenue to approximately $30 million in 2014 and strengthening our presence in several key growth markets. Our primary approach to growing our same-branch sales focuses on delivering an exceptional level of customer service in each of our markets. We continue to strengthen the market opportunity for all of our local branch operations through an extensive level of expertise in all aspects of the installation process including the direct purchase of materials from national manufacturers, the timely supply of materials to job sites, and the quality installation of the products for our customers.

Our rigorous customer focus and strategically positioned footprint combined with the overall positive trends in new residential construction drove our sales up 21% to $140.5 million compared to the prior year quarter. Adjusted EBITDA grew by 70% to $14.6 million and adjusted net income improved to $6.3 million as a result of continued execution of our growth strategy and our disciplined approach to managing costs.

Additionally, our excellent supplier relationships and vertically integrated distribution and service capabilities support a favorable pricing environment in our markets for us to effectively manage material inflation.

We are very proud of our third-quarter results, which continues our track record of solid performance. Since 2011, we have grown our sales at a compound annual growth rate of nearly 30% and our adjusted EBITDA at roughly 90% compounded annual growth rate.

During the third quarter, housing completions continued to improve compared to the prior-year period. Our same-branch sales grew approximately 18% during the quarter. In our primary single-family end market, same-branch sales improved approximately 17% compared to an increase in US single-family housing completions of approximately 9% in the third quarter. Our same-branch sales increased in excess of the pace of the national housing recovery, reflecting our dedication to exceptional service throughout our branches and the successful investments we have made to scale our business and optimize our operations. To that end, we continue to actively pursue opportunities to grow our business in strategic markets across the nation.

As previously announced, in August we acquired Marv's Insulation, which marked our entry into the Boise, Idaho market through a leading local operator with over 25 years of experience. With our presence established, we are now positioned to further expand our operations in this market with both local and national builders. On Monday, we announced the acquisition of Installed Building Solutions, a highly couple of entry installer of insulation, which enhanced our market opportunity in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and North Dakota. With trailing 12-month revenues of approximately $17.4 million as of September, this acquisition meets our strategic growth objectives with its strong market share and excellent customer relationships.

We have a well-crafted approach to acquisitions with our proven and successful process for sourcing accretive transactions, which enables us to capitalize on attractive growth opportunities to further expand our reach. Our industry is highly fragmented, allowing us to identify regional insulation installers in attractive markets where we can enhance value through our organizational structure, national platform, and operational expertise, while retaining local brands, talent, and customer relationships.

In summary, we are encouraged by our strong momentum year to date and we expect our revenue growth to continue to outpace single-family residential construction activity moving into the end of 2014.

We believe the fundamental drivers in place for a sustainable long-term housing recovery and we have the right strategy in place to capture a rising share of this construction activity. We are making steady progress towards our longer-term target of regaining our midteens EBITDA margin and we remain focused on controlling costs and leveraging our platform to enhance our profitability.

I will now turn the call over to Michael to provide more details on our third-quarter results.

Thank you, Jeff, and good morning, everyone. In the third quarter of 2014, we continue to grow our revenue on a solid pace while remaining disciplined with our cost to expand our margins. We also strengthened our capital position with a new $100 million credit facility. Through the third quarter, our revenue increased 21.1% and improved 17.7% on a same-branch basis, which was attributable to an increase in volume in all of our end markets with some additional benefits from the mix of jobs and a higher average price per job.

Our same brand single-family sales growth of 16.9% exceeded the 9.3% increase in single-family US housing completions during the third quarter, reflecting outperformance by our strong local markets.

We continued to leverage our growing sales to improve our profitability in the third quarter. We reported EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA of $14.6 million, representing a 69.6% increase from $8.6 million in the prior year quarter. We recorded no EBITDA adjustments in the current quarter or the prior year quarter so our adjusted EBITDA and EBITDA figures were the same for each respective period.

As a percent of net revenue, our adjusted EBITDA improved to 10.4% or a 300 basis point increase from 7.4% in the prior year quarter. We are pleased with the successful steps we have taken to increase operating efficiency and significantly expand our adjusted EBITDA margin, which serves as our most useful profit metric to measure our operating performance.

We increased our gross margin to 28.2% or 240 basis points higher than the 25.8% in the prior year quarter. Our gross margin before depreciation expense expanded to 30.3%, improving 260 basis points from 27.7% in the prior year quarter, primarily due to increased productivity at our branch location and favorable price mix gains offsetting some raw material inflation. We believe gross margin excluding depreciation more accurately reflects the progress we are making in our core operations.

Selling and administrative expenses as a percent of net revenue decreased 20 basis points to 20% from 20.2% in the prior year. Our core SG&A improvement on higher sales more than offset additional costs associated with being a publicly traded company. We expect our reported SG&A expense as a percent of net revenue to continue to improve over time as we further scale our operations and benefit from increased sales as our end markets continue to improve.

Adjusted net income from continuing operations for the third quarter was $6.3 million or $0.20 per diluted share compared to $3.1 million or $0.14 per diluted share in the prior year quarter. Adjusted net income in the third quarter 2014 included the write off of capitalized loan costs related to the replacement of our prior credit facility. On a GAAP basis, net earnings were $0.19 per diluted share compared to $0.06 per diluted share in the prior year quarter.

Now moving on to our balance sheet and liquidity, as previously announced in July we entered into a new five-year $100 million senior secured credit facility consisting of a $75 million revolving line of credit and a $25 million term loan which replaced the Company's prior $50 million revolving credit facility. We are pleased with the terms of this facility which provides us with an attractive source of capital to continue accomplishing our growth initiative.

Year to date in 2014, we have generated $14.7 million of cash flow from operations, an increase of $12.1 million from the prior year period. We have used this cash flow to fund our acquisitions, reinvest in our business, and strengthen our balance sheet. Year-to-date our depreciation of $8.7 million approximated 2.3% of net revenue. Going forward, we would expect our annualized depreciation to trend around this level as a percentage of net revenue.

Capital expenditures of $2.6 million represented 0.7% of net revenue and new capital lease obligations of $13.6 million were 3.6% of net revenue. At the end of the third quarter, we had total cash of $24.7 million and our $75 million line of credit had no outstanding borrowings.

With our strong capital position and asset-light business model, we have significant financial flexibility to continue investing in our business and capitalize on the attractive growth opportunities in front of us.

I will now turn the call back to Jeff for closing remarks.

Thanks, Michael. The progress we are making to improve our business across all of our key markets is encouraging as we look to 2015 and beyond. We have a strong network of market-leading branch locations on a well-established national platform and we have a growing pipeline of attractive acquisition opportunities to further leverage that platform. Additionally we hold a critical position in the housing industry, which enables us to focus on customer service and execute our profitable growth strategy.

Finally and importantly, our management team is highly aligned with shareholders. As a result of these factors, we feel we are well-positioned for long-term success as we continue to grow our business and improve our position as a leading installer of insulation throughout the US. We look forward to updating you on our progress in 2015 and the years to come.

Operator, we would now like to turn the call over for questions.

(Operator Instructions). David Goldberg, UBS.

Congratulations on a good quarter. Can you guys talk a little bit about --? You mentioned that you are still seeing a relatively favorable pricing environment and that comes sort of despite what we are seeing in terms of lower-than-expected growth in completions and housing starts. Can you talk a little bit about those dynamics and the trends you are seeing there?

Sure, Susan. Good morning. It's Michael. Thanks. We were pretty pleased with the quarterly results. What I would say is a couple things. Within the quarter, one of the things that happened again that we were pretty pleased with is that we saw very solid growth in all of our end markets, so 20 plus growth in single-family, multifamily, commercial, and repair and remodel. That mix, that favorable mix of that business and that growth in that business has really helped us to continue to sculpt the business in the right way that allowed us to improve margins and improve operating efficiencies.

Susan, this is Jeff. I would add to that that it's still about performing really at the local level and getting the job done and those that have the resources and capabilities to perform exactly the way the builders want us to are the ones really getting the work and are able to therefore, like we have said all long, it is a bit of a product that needs to get done quickly in order to move the house through the process. It is small sale and it's all about execution.

So as long as we are doing that we really have tended to be the contractor of choice a lot of times, absolutely. We are doing an excellent job of executing, doing well, and performing at the local levels from a service perspective.

Okay, great. In terms of the acquisitions that you have done, these have been in sort of smaller markets or maybe markets where you don't think of there being as much growth in terms of housing starts and not as much of a focus for some of the larger builders.

Can you talk a little bit about how we should think about the benefit that you get from these deals in terms of a topline perspective as opposed to maybe the profitability and how that could compare to some of the other markets that maybe tend to be a little bit larger or more of a focus for some?

We are seeing good growth in all of our markets and we would expect that the acquisitions over time would be growing at a similar rate to all of our businesses. There are definitely going to be geographic differences from time to time, generally speaking they will trend to consistency with our overall business from a topline perspective.

The markets -- Minneapolis, which is a primary market of Installed Building Solutions, that is a big housing -- very good housing market. While it may not be in the smile that some people refer to, we see great opportunity with that acquisition.

This is Jeff again -- but we are not in any way deemphasizing any of the cities that might be more considered kind of more headline. It's just the way the chips have fallen thus far in terms of the acquisitions that we've actually closed versus those we might still be working on.

What is the profitability like in terms of some of the smaller ones maybe relative to some larger market? Can you give us any sense of that?

It's really very market-specific but generally speaking we would expect say for example an acquisition like Installed Building Solutions to come into that midteens EBITDA margin that we consistently talk about the overall business getting back to.

Okay, that's helpful. Thank you.

Nishu Sood, Deutsche Bank.

Thank you. I wanted to ask also about pricing. There's been some announcements here from some of the major manufacturers, 12% to 18%, midteen price increases effective for early 2015. I wanted to get your thoughts on the potential flow through of those going forward given the housing environment the way it is and how that might benefit you folks from a sales and margin leverage perspective?

This is Michael. That is absolutely true. The manufacturers announced in October for a price increase to be effective in January. One of the nice things about our business quite frankly is that we have such great lead time in terms of knowing when price increases -- when they are announced and when they actually take effect. So it allows us to create a dialogue with our customers around potential price increases, which is a positive thing, and history has shown that we have had an ability to pass on those price increases as appropriate to our customer base.

So we believe that we are going to -- we will be able to continue to as and if the margin price increases be able to work with our customers to make sure that we maintain or increase our profitability on a go forward basis. But clearly that is about us continuing to execute and perform very well service-wise at the local level.

Are those price increases that were announced relative to what you would've expected given the market environment and conditions for the manufacturers? Are those stronger than you expected, in line, what is your take in that regard?

This is Jeff Edwards. I think that we can basically categorically say that they were generally in line with what we would have expected.

Got it, great. And on the acquisition front, you folks have been very clear and consistent about your strategy. You have discussed potentially adding $30 million to $40 million in revenues from acquisitions per year. You are coming in right around that range. Some of the dynamics and considering your acquisitions in a growth environment, the small businesses need working capital, which is more difficult for a small business than a large business obviously such as yourselves. So obviously housing coming in a little bit slower than expected dampens -- obviously dampens that need. But then on the other hand, it might change some people's longer-term outlook as well since the housing recovery seems to be going slower.

So sorry for the long question but I guess what I'm getting at is here -- as you look at your pipeline, how are the evolving conditions in the housing market affecting your pipeline? Are you more optimistic? And when you think about that $30 million to $40 million, could you ramp it up some from there or do the conditions maybe we could come in a little bit less than that going forward?

This is Jeff Edwards. There's a few places earlier where we mentioned being proud of our performance and I wouldn't yet say that we are there by any means on the acquisition front. We are proud on the operating side but we know that we need to step it up and we are stepping it up I think on the acquisition front.

And I don't know that kind of the macro housing environment has really changed our ability to pursue or land these acquisitions so much, but I think one thing that has kind of been borne out is the slower -- the longer length of this recovery really has made us feel even better about making those acquisitions now and earlier in the recovery based on how long we are going to be able to continue to work those acquisitions, which will become -- come into the fold and then develop those over the years in this continued improving housing market. So we feel great about that.

Got it. Great. Last one if I could, your incremental EBITDA margin took a step up in the third quarter a nice step up to the low 20s and that is through the going public process. We talked about the potential of the business to deliver low to mid 20s incremental EBITDA margins. What is your sense on that? Can we expect that going forward? Are the conditions now in place to deliver that solid incremental EBITDA margin? Could it accelerate even further as this housing recovery continues? How should we think about that?

This is Michael. We feel very confident about our ability to do that 20% to 25% incremental EBITDA margin growth. It will be different quarter to quarter, but in the year it should average in that 20% to 25% range and we don't see any reason as to why that shouldn't continue.

Okay, great. Thanks a lot.

Thank you. In the interests of time, we asked that you please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. John Kasprzak, BB&T Capital Markets.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Can you -- you mentioned price, Mike, in your comments was a contributor to your increase in sales. Can you tell us what the impact of pricing was in the quarter?

We definitely saw price appreciation during the quarter, Jack, and it is because of the way that our products, our services are. Every job is unique so when we see job price appreciation, which we saw job price appreciation of about 5%, that's not necessarily all price. Part of that is mix as well.

One thing that was very positive in the quarter and it also continued and is now continuing through into the fourth quarter, is we are continuing to see or we are seeing an accelerated rate of sales from our local and regional builders and obviously they tend to have -- they have a tendency to build a slightly higher per square footage house than some of the larger national builders might build.

So as a consequence, our average job price will increase with that increase or recovery if you will in the local and regional builders. So we have been very encouraged by that trend and we think it will continue to help us push forward our sales growth above the market.

That's very helpful, thanks. And I assume you mentioned -- you talked about the insulation price increases that are well telegraphed in advance for your purposes or for you guys. I assume your pricing decisions are -- given the local nature of your business -- just very job-specific or job-by-job in the field. Is that kind of the way it goes or --?

This is Jeff, Jack. For a very large portion of our business, that is exactly the way it happens.

Pricing is set at a regional level but then obviously every single job is different and is priced separately based upon the parameters that they are provided at a regional and obviously levels from us as well.

Okay, great. Thanks a lot.

Keith Hughes, SunTrust.

Sorry, my question is on kind of labor availability. I know it has been pretty tight in most of the building trades here the last couple of years and probably it's a little bit to your benefit given your size and scale. Can you give any kind of view on labor availability in the year and what it could potentially look like in 2015? It may vary by region so any detail on that you could give would be great.

Yes, we are fortunate in that we have had -- we've grown the business over 20% this year and we have been able to staff up and handle that demand at the local level and we believe that that is a byproduct of our ability to attract and retain some of the best installers in the market and that's based upon our local reputation within those markets.

While clearly there are some traits within the new home construction process that are experiencing labor constraints, fortunately as a company overall we have not experienced that. And while we are certainly, it is something we are very highly focused on as a Company and will continue to be focused on, we believe as we go through 2015 and continue to see above-market growth in 2015, that we will be able to meet the labor requirements and service our customers the way that we have continued to.

Do you see amongst your smaller competitors -- and again this could be a regional question -- but amongst your smaller competitors, are they constrained from bidding on activity due to lack of labor?

This is Jeff. I mentioned earlier kind of the idea that the reason why we are winning in a lot of instances is based on resources and that would have been code for a lot of things. But certainly it would have included labor in addition to trucks and other things, working capital, etc. But I don't know if it would be specific to a company or to a competitor of being able to not handle that. It may have sounded a little earlier like we are downplaying the importance of labor, which by no means is the case, but what I would say is that we work hard on it every day at every branch and I would be remiss if I didn't say that. Our managers and the guys that are doing that, working that part of the business every day, frankly they deserve to be applauded in that way.

So for Michael to be able to answer the question the way he did I think says something. So we are real proud of their ability to handle that part of the business.

Okay, thank you.

Bob Wetenhall, RBC Capital Markets.

Good morning and nice quarter. I wanted to ask you going forward, do you see the opportunity on the margin side more from favorable operating leverage and gross profit or is it more going to be leveraging your SG&A?

That's a great question. It's really going to come both from gross profit leverage or improvement in operating efficiency and gross profit and then also administrative leverage.

On the selling expense side, we really don't get that much operating leverage, to be honest with you but we do on the administrative side. A perfect example of that is the acquisitions are very accretive or create a lot of operating efficiencies for the corporate office. We announced the acquisition of Installed Building Solutions on Monday; about $20 million of revenue. We don't have to add any incremental cost at the corporate office in order to support that business.

So we think with the combination of acquisitions and also the growth in the market, we will continue to see sort of operating leverage at leverage on the administrative side and certainly operating efficiency within the gross margin.

Fortunately in the third quarter if you adjust our second quarter administrative expenses for the charges associated with the IPO and the follow-on, we are basically flat quarter to quarter and so we believe we've gotten in the administrative side or administrative expenses, we've really gotten a lot of the noise, if you will, out of the numbers associated with being a publicly traded company. And we are more at a run rate level that now we can continue to get from operating leverages at the time.

That's helpful. On your IBS acquisition, congratulations, number one. Could you talk to what kind of EBITDA multiple you paid and the revenue growth from the acquired company?

Yes, that deal was very consistent with the deals that we've done in the past and we feel very good that it will be -- obviously it's going to have very little impact in 2014 given the timing of when we acquired it but we are very excited about what it will be able to bring to incremental growth and incremental EBITDA in 2015.

And as I think I mentioned earlier, we would expect that it's going to be at a midteens EBITDA margin contribution.

Okay, fair enough and final question kind of thinking about you are outpacing national growth rates in housing, which is great. Would it be -- just as a ballpark or two bookends, would somewhere like $575 million to $600 million be right way to think about revenues in 2015? Thanks and good luck.

As you know, we have not started providing guidance yet. We have considered doing that on a go forward basis but at this point we are not providing guidance. But we are confident in our ability to outpace the continued recovery in the new home construction market. A great thing about our business model is that we can flex the business whether it's 1 million starts next year, 1.1 million starts next year or 1.2 million starts next year, we have the ability to flex the business to meet that demand and we are confident that we will continue to see growth above what the overall market is experiencing.

(Operator Instructions). Ken Zener, KeyBanc.

Good morning, gentlemen. If you could talk, Jeff or Michael, about the gross margin, I think it's running a bit richer than you guys perhaps might have thought at the beginning of the year. Is that accurate or not accurate?

It is accurate and we are very pleased with the progress we are making.

And is that --? I know the administrative side which you have kind of locked in at around $20 million now. Will that be kind of flat sequentially in 4Q or is there some seasonality or other items that we might want to know about?

Yes, there is some seasonality within administrative expenses but it's certainly not as seasonal as our sales are. Keep in mind that the administrative expenses are not -- clearly only a fraction of the corporate office expenses. The bulk of it is administrative expenses at the branch level and those tend to flex a little bit more with revenue than certainly the corporate office expenses would which is why we like to talk about the 20% to 25% incremental EBITDA margins. Because I think that is the right way to look at the operating leverage that comes into the business.

Okay, and then related to the gross margins coming in better, in earlier discussions the volume to sales I thought initially was going to have much more of an impact on SG&A. It seems to actually be coming through more on the gross margin. And you talked about productivity, things like window time.

Does it -- if we are running roughly 200 basis points over last year in the second and third quarter, what would it take to have that type of margin expansion next year? Is it a similar rate of growth in the top line or how much of that is now the conversion over to pricing coming through from the manufacturers, you being able to recover it and/or maybe some on top of that? How does that dynamic kind unfold? I realize you're not giving 2015 but just if you could put it within a multi-year period as demand prices.

We believe that as we've stated and Jeff stated in his comments that we will regain midteens EBITDA margin in this business. This third quarter was the first time that we reported double-digit EBITDA margins of 10.4%. If you think of the midteens, there is 15% to 16%. We believe there is over time as the market reaches stabilization that there's probably an additional 300 basis points in gross margin and 300 basis points or more in operating leverage of administrative expenses. That is over time as the market comes to stabilization.

And keep in mind we are primarily a new single-family construction company. 75% of our revenue does come from new single-family construction. And on LTM basis through September, single-family completions were only at about 600,000, which is really half of what we would think as stabilization. So there's a lot of opportunity for us as a company to kind of grow revenue with the market as it comes back to stabilization and continue to improve gross margin and improve the operating leverage in the business.

This is Jeff but there's still some tailwinds a bit too and I expect those to drag into 2015 in terms of energy code compliance, size of home coming up a bit, mix, a number of other things that are helping us in that way and honestly as long as it's a fair, a rising price environment is I think good for everyone assuming it happens all the way up and down the chain, all the way from manufacturers.

And we don't want to necessarily kind of overstate this point but in the third quarter as I said earlier coming into the fourth quarter, we were very pleased to see the acceleration of growth within our local and regional customer base because we really believe that to some extent that's kind of -- that's a leading indicator for just the next leg of the housing market to recover in terms of single-family starts getting back to a more normalized rate versus where the single-family multifamily (technical difficulty) most of 2014.

Right and that was actually, that was going to be my last question because I thought that comment was very interesting, given where you are in the construction. Was that more regional given that you are in markets like Idaho or was that within markets that people generally think are dominated by the more publics who are probably squeezing you a bit more on price but giving you the efficiency?

Yes, there's no doubt that we as a company have a higher correlation or a higher percentage of our sales in the Northeast and Midwest, which is approximately 50% of our revenue but only 30% of the permits are generated in that market. But that market does tend to be more sort of local and regional builders than national builders. But that comparison or that trend that we were talking about is year-over-year, so we are comparing sort of same-branch analysis, if you will, and we think fundamentally the recovery that we are seeing in that part of the business at least anecdotally initially here, it seems to we believe it is good for the overall housing market.

Thank you.

Thank you. We've reached the end of our question-and-answer session and I would like to turn the floor back over to Mr. Edwards for any further or closing comments.

No, I would just like to thank everyone for all of your questions today and I look forward to our next quarterly update and conversation. Thank you.

Thank you. That does conclude today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Have a wonderful day. We thank you for your participation today.