Q3 2024 Worthington Enterprises Inc Earnings Call
Participants
Marcus Rogier; Treasurer & IR; Worthington Enterprises, Inc.
Andy Rose; President & CEO; Worthington Enterprises, Inc.
Joe Hayek; EVP, CFO, & COO; Worthington Enterprises, Inc.
Daniel Moore; Analyst; CJS Securities, Inc.
Susan Maklari; Analyst; Goldman Sachs
Kathryn Thompson; Analyst; Thompson Research Group
Brian McNamara; Analyst; Canaccord Genuity LLC
Presentation
Operator
Hello, and welcome to the Worthington Enterprises third quarter fiscal 2024 earnings conference call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode until the question and answer session of the call. This conference is being recorded at the request of Worthington Enterprises. If anyone objects, you may disconnect at this time. I'd now like to introduce Marcus Rogier, Treasurer and Investor Relations Officer. Mr. Rogier, you may begin.
Marcus Rogier
Thank you, Sarah, and good morning, everyone, and welcome to Worthington Enterprises Third Quarter Fiscal 2024 earnings call. On our call today, we have Andy Rose, Worthington's President and Chief Executive Officer; and Joe Hayek, Worthington's Chief Financial and Operations Officer. And before we get started, I'd like to note that certain statements made today are forward-looking within the meaning of the 1995 Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ from those suggested we issued our earnings release yesterday after the market close. Please refer to it for more detail on those factors that could cause actual results to differ materially. In addition, our discussion today will include non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of these measures with the most appropriate comparable GAAP measure is included in the earnings press release, which is available on our Investor Relations website.
At this point, I'll turn the call over to Andy for opening remarks.
Andy Rose
Thank you, Marcus, and good morning. I want to welcome everyone to our first full quarter as Worthington enterprises. We have hit the ground running and are already delivering solid results as evidenced by our adjusted EBITDA of $67 million and adjusted earnings per share of $0.80. While there are a number of one-time items mostly related to the separation, which Joe will run through, we are proud of our people and their ability to stay focused over the past year. I remain as excited as ever about Worthington enterprises and our opportunity for long-term value creation. Our consumer products, building products and sustainable energy businesses represent a strong franchise have market-leading products and brands that will enable people to live, safer, healthier and more expressive lives. We have a unique and proven growth platform that has been purposefully created using deep industry expertise, a performance driven people-first culture and the best employees in the world and a thoughtful long-term investment strategy. We find the best product opportunities invest to drive value at scale and build sustainable advantage through safety, quality service and a reputation for doing the right thing for our customers.
The Worthington business system of transformation, innovation and M&A is well entrenched and enables us to grow faster and deliver on our number one goal of generating attractive returns for our shareholders.
Our transformation playbook now and its third evolution continues to provide a systematic approach for improving our commercial operations and supply chain functions, enhancing the top and bottom line for our businesses. Innovation is now deeply embedded competency that we put to work across our business from process innovation to new product development, which we intend to make best in class with a pipeline that will distinguish us from competitors and provide enhanced value to our customers and finally, our expertise in strategic M&A will help us drive growth and higher returns as we add new products, new brands and consolidate markets. To that end, we recently welcomed Halo products into our portfolio of brands, offering an innovative collection of pizza ovens, pellet grills and grills that is disrupting the outdoor living space. This acquisition immediately accelerates years of product development for us with its lean and capable team. And while it's early days, the company is already benefiting from our relationships with major retailers and gaining greater access to our capital and expertise to drive accelerated direct to consumer marketing and sales. This is a nice example of the Worthington business system at work and how we build market-leading businesses. We are disciplined stewards of capital and not only making new investments to deliver long-term value creation, but also redeploying capital in situations where we can earn a better return.
We're off to a good start in our first quarter as Worthington enterprises, and Joe will now walk you through the numbers.
Joe Hayek
Thank you, Andy, and good morning, everyone. two three was our first stand-alone quarter as Wilmington enterprises. And given the recent business separation, we have recast our historical income statement and balance sheets for periods prior to December first, 2023, to reflect Worthington Steel as discontinued operations. As a result, there is and will be some noise in our reported financials, but we will attempt to call out unique items and adjustments to facilitate year-over-year comparability of the business performance. In Q3, we reported GAAP earnings from continuing operations of $0.44 a share versus $0.6 in the prior year. There were several unique items that impacted our quarterly results, including the following. The current quarter was negatively impacted by one-time discrete tax charges of $9 million or $0.18 a share, all related to the business separation. In addition we incurred pretax expense of $3 million or $0.05 per share related to the separation in the current quarter. We do not anticipate having additional separation costs in future quarters. We also took advantage of the current interest rate environment to annuitize.
Our only remaining legacy defined-benefit pension plan, which resulted in a non-cash pretax charge of $8 million or $0.12 a share. We incurred modest restructuring charges, which negatively impacted earnings by a penny per share in the current quarter. And lastly, results in the prior year quarter were negatively impacted by $0.21 a share due to several unique items, the largest being corporate costs that were eliminated at the time of separation, along with smaller restructuring and other nonrecurring items. Excluding these items. We generated adjusted earnings from continuing operations of $0.8 per share in the current year quarter compared to $0.81 a share in Q3 of last year. Additionally, our building products business recorded a one-time pretax charge of $2 million or $0.03 a share in the current quarter related to a lower of cost or net realizable value adjustment on propane tanks that were imported from a third party supplier in Europe. The LCM was primarily driven by higher expected transportation costs for those tanks.
Consolidated net sales in the quarter of $317 million decreased 8.5% from $346 million in the prior year. The decrease was driven by lower sales in Building Products, which experienced an unfavorable product mix and slightly lower volumes during the quarter, partially offset by slight increases in sales within Consumer Products and sustainable energy solutions, which both benefited from increased volumes gross profit for the quarter decreased to $73 million from $79 million in Q3 a year ago, while our gross margin increased to 23.1% from 22.8%, including the $2 million charge in building products. Our adjusted EBITDA in Q3 was $67 million, down from $70 million in Q3 of last year. And our trailing 12 months adjusted EBITDA is now $279 million, and our trailing 12 months adjusted EBITDA margin is 21.5%.
With respect to cash flows and our balance sheet. Cash flow from operations was $50 million in the quarter and free cash flow was $40 million. It would have been higher if not for $13 million in cash outflows related to the business separation. During the quarter, we invested $10 million on capital projects, which included $5 million related to our previously mentioned facility modernization projects. We also spent $9 million to acquire an 80% interest in an affiliate of Halo products group and paid $16 million in dividends, which represented the larger pre-separation Worthington Industries dividend that was paid in December. We also received $40 million in dividends from our unconsolidated JVs during the quarter and 93% cash conversion rate on that equity income.
Looking at our balance sheet and liquidity position, we ended the quarter with an exceptionally strong balance sheet, $298 million of long term funded debt carrying an average interest rate of 3.6% combined with $227 million in cash that is yielding around 5%. We continue to operate with extremely low leverage ending the quarter with a net debt to trailing EBITDA leverage ratio of about a quarter turn. And we are well positioned for the future with ample liquidity having a $500 million undrawn bank credit facility. Yesterday, the Worthington enterprises Board declared a dividend of $0.16 per share for the quarter, which is approximately $8 million and will be payable in June 2024.
We'll now spend a few minutes on each of the businesses and consumer products. Net sales in Q3 were $133 million, up slightly from $131 million a year ago. Increase was a result of higher volumes, which were partially offset by lower average selling prices. Adjusted EBITDA for the consumer business was $26 million and adjusted EBITDA margin was 19.3% in Q3 compared to $21 million and 16.1% last year. We experienced a strong sequential improvement with volumes increasing 19% compared to Q2 as a result of some storm and weather related demand as well as recent market share gains at level five so some demand may have been pulled from Q4 into Q3. We are cautiously optimistic heading into the spring as people begin to enjoy the outdoors more frequently and begin to take on more repair remodel projects during the quarter.
As Andy mentioned, the consumer business acquired an 80% controlling interest in an affiliate of Halo Products Group for approximately $9 million Halo is an innovative asset-light provider of tech-enabled products, including pizza ovens, pellet grills, grills and accessories complement our other leading outdoor living brands like Coleman, portable propane tanks and BernzOmatic torches fuel and accessories. Halo is a natural match with these products and creates a powerful combination of Halo is small today with 2023 revenues of $7 million, which was primarily direct to consumer. We intend to leverage our strong relationships with channel partners to help further grow and scale the brand. We're excited to have Halo as part of our consumer business and we welcome that talented team to Worthington coating products generated net sales of $148 million in Q3, down 19% from $184 million a year ago. The decrease was driven by a less favorable product mix, lower average selling prices and lower volumes, especially in the large format heating end market, which continued to see destocking coating products generated adjusted EBITDA of $53 million for the quarter, and adjusted EBITDA margin was 35.8% compared to $58 million and 31.6% in Q3 of last year. Results in the current quarter were negatively impacted by the $2 million due to the LCM on imported tanks that I mentioned earlier, the destocking we continue to see in our heating end markets should run its course by the summer. And we are optimistic that that demand will return to more seasonally normal levels thereafter.
Additionally, our water business continued to show growth in revenues and margins in Q3 as the initiatives we put in place in early 2024 are having a positive impact during Q3. The Water team also continued the launch of our Amtrol Titan well tanks with two new sizes. The Titan is a patented composite tank that combines the strength of steels and the advantages of high-tech composites providing superior impact resistance and UV protection wave delivered very strong results, contributing equity earnings of $26 million in the quarter, up from 19 million a year ago. The team at WAVE continues to focus on refining and enhancing their value proposition to customers, and they saw both volume and margin improvements in the quarter for Dietrich also continued to perform very well and contributed $18 million in equity income for the quarter. So their results were down $1 million compared to the prior year quarter and were up $4 million sequentially from Q2. The Tiger ClarkDietrich team is leveraging its national presence and benefited from higher volumes in Q3, which was offset by some margin compression in sustainable energy solutions. Net sales in Q3 of 35 million were up 11% or $4 million from the prior year, primarily due to higher volumes, which were partially offset by lower average selling prices and an unfavorable product mix.
Scs reported an adjusted EBITDA loss of $3 million in the current quarter compared to breakeven results in the prior year due to lower gross margins and several one-time expenses in the current environment. The SCS team continues to focus on near term cost controls and long-term investments as they attempt to balance current market conditions with the exceptional growth opportunities that we believe will materialize as the hydrogen and CNG ecosystems grow during the quarter, the team had success getting additional new product certified and customer ready and quoting activity continues to improve, which should ultimately result in a better demand environment.
At this point, we're happy to take any questions that people might have in queue.
Question and Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Daniel Moore, CJS Securities.
Daniel Moore
Thank you. Good morning Andy, good morning, Joe. Thanks for taking the call.
Joe Hayek
Good morning, Dan.
Daniel Moore
I wanted to maybe start with where we finished off there at the tail end of the comments on the JVs, what can you tell us about demand and activity levels, both at WAVE in Clark feature and a forward looking basis, I know you don't quote backlog. So how would you describe the level of new business coming into the pipeline relative to say maybe six months ago or this time last year?
Joe Hayek
Yes, it's a fair question. I think the markets have evolved in that construction space leaving, for instance, WAVE whose mix of repair and remodel versus new is typically 65% to 70% repair remodel. It's higher now in part because the new spend is down there, their mix of end markets, our estimates of those at least it's still kind of tough sledding in commercial buildings that are office centric, but also in commercial, you have lots of other things, including data centers, which is showing good growth, but 70% of their and markets we believe are noncommercial right there, a mix of health care, education, retail and transportation projects. And so volumes seem steady there in ClarkDietrich, there's a little bit of a different mix there, slightly more new there.
They're broadening the types of projects we're working on, not because they're super focused on X or Y or Z, but just because it's where construction is happening. And so we think that as construction activity kind of came down, it seems to be more sort of flat now it's not continuing to go down at least right this minute, nor is it going straight up. I think the Architectural Billings Index that came out yesterday or the day before was 49 five, which is just below 50. It was was 45 the last few months. It was I think the last time it was at 50 was was April of last year. That's a good sign. I think we mentioned in December that the activity level, not the billings, but activity with architects had started to pick back up, which is typically a precursor to billings, but that also takes what we do see a good ABI that takes 12 to 24 months to show up in somebody like ours is revenue or ClarkDietrich or waves. And so we generally are still feel very good about the spaces that they're in kind of mid to longer term. And I could call it a bit murky out there in the short term.
Daniel Moore
Very helpful. Pete, maybe switching gears, I still early days, obviously, but maybe just update us on progress in the direct assumed direct to consumer channel. Obviously, a key capability of Level five. Now you're bolting on tacked on halo. Some may know any tangible examples of product you're now offering or plan to offer DTC. that perhaps you didn't historically and just, you know, progress in general and that's a match.
Joe Hayek
Yes, I think, Dan, the short answer is that when we acquired Level five, we acquired not only a new set of products, but we acquired a capability and it really helped us really helped open up our eyes in terms of the direct-to-consumer channel. And so the team in consumer really is looking across the product line to figure out which products we think we can sell into that channel. And hey, look, excuse me, Halo is another example of a product that is sold direct to consumer only right now. And so that's part of the overarching strategy. Now when we either develop new products or acquire new products is looking across all the channels direct to consumer and using and leveraging our big box retail relationships to sort of maximize the opportunity for those products. So I wouldn't say there's one opportunity there's probably a bunch of opportunities where, you know, we're looking to sort of leverage those capabilities.
Daniel Moore
Helpful. Last one for me. I'll jump out on. I think you mentioned that puts a little bit of potential pull-forward in demand in the consumer side in from Q4 to Q3. Any details there? Or can you quantify that at all? Thanks again for the help and congrats on a really solid quarter.
Joe Hayek
Thank you. Yes, sure. The the consumer business, particularly our camping gas cylinders, to a lesser extent, the torches that go with those there is a little bit of weather related spike demand from from time to time. And so if you remember in January, the polar vortex and then the storms that were kind of back-to-back across the country. It really created kind of a need because those products are sometimes used as emergency heat sources and they're certainly used to repair pipes that break again, if you not to be become a weatherman. But if you get past those two events, the weather in the winter has been relatively benign. And so we feel really good about the spring and the season and how we're positioned and how we've helped our retail customers get to where they want to be and to where they'll be able to best serve their own customers. But sometimes that spike demand can really move move things from a month to a month. That's the reason for kind of some of our, I'll call it cautious optimism in Q4?
Yes, there's still the storms are incremental demand. The question and it's hard to predict is was there pull forward or not? And you know, the answer is if our retailers are fully prepared and fully stocked. There may be a little bit of pull-forward, but it's again, it's not an exact science in terms of estimating it.
Daniel Moore
Understood. Thank you.
Operator
Susan Maklari, Goldman Sachs.
Susan Maklari
Thank you. Good morning, everyone.
Joe Hayek
Good morning.
Susan Maklari
Good morning, Ito. I'd like to start with the price for a bit on. Can you just give us more color on what's driving that lower? Is it mix? Is it absolute declines in there? Just what's going on in there and how you're thinking about that going forward?
Joe Hayek
Yes. I think your question was around pricing.
Susan Maklari
Yes.
Joe Hayek
So no, it's it's mostly it's mostly mix, honestly, of the some dynamics within consumer and in Building Products was right, I guess building products, for example, the destocking in those very large propane heating tanks, those are our most expensive tanks and they and they come at pretty healthy growth gross margin. So there's there's an outsized impact when those are running up or in this case destocking.
Susan Maklari
Okay, right. And perhaps turning a bit to the outlook. And you mentioned on the potential for this pickup as we get into the spring and summer, maybe some lift in the R&R activity. I guess when you think about the macro backdrop and some of the more recent news and data points, just any thoughts on how that could come through to the business and how you're thinking about the setup more broadly there.
Joe Hayek
Yes, I think I think if I would maybe call it some sort of pretty close to seasonally normal with some continued, I think, above what we say cautious optimism. But since hub and you're right, the data points out, there are still a little bit mixed. And so I don't think it's certainly not worse than it was six months ago. But again, the consumer is still relatively cautious. We still have some destocking in these large and good-sized margin of propane tanks. And so yes, I would say that we continue to be thoughtful about our markets. Our teams have done a phenomenal job being there for their customers. We haven't at least we don't think we've lost any share in a lot of these categories, but ultimately higher interest rates matter. If you look at if you look at the large propane tanks, for instance, and you look at kind of housing starts and then our demand there. There's about us six to 12 months lag and how those have have worked for us the last several years. Housing starts, I think bottom like last summer, the end of July and have kind of crept back up since. But because of that lag in residential construction, at least come, we anticipate needing another kind of quarter to quarter point for that to run its course.
Susan Maklari
Okay. That's helpful. And then just one one last one for me. It was exciting to see the Halo acquisition come through. Can you give us just an update on the overall M&A pipeline, how that's coming through and anything that, you know is of interest, perhaps there?
Joe Hayek
Sure. As far as M&A activity in 2022 and 2023, really sort of slowed down? That was okay for us, right? Because we were in the midst of the spin from activity in 2024. It has certainly been predicted to pick back up from where hopeful that that is the case is still early in 2024. I think you'll see us acquire a lot of companies smaller than halo from that was a really good opportunity for us, as Andy said, to really fast forward a bunch of product development and be able to really grow and leverage what we do to make that business better. But we have kind of a pretty robust program of kind of making outbound calls and trying to be as smart as we can, knowing who the right fits for us are in building products and in consumer products right now, less in the SCS business. Some are pretty large, some are not as big and more bolt-ons, but there's nothing that we're kind of getting ready to announce or anything. It's burning a hole in our pocket, but we continue to be out there. And as we said, have it have a really good balance sheet and some liquidity so that when we find the right fit, we'll be able to think about that. But going back to our criteria for those, they're going to be are going to be margin-rich. They're going to be asset-light and they're going to have a sustainable competitive advantage that we think we can either leverage or have it even make us better.
Susan Maklari
Okay. All right. Well, that sounds great. Thanks for all the color and good luck with everything. Thank you.
Operator
Kathryn Thompson, Thompson Research Group.
Kathryn Thompson
Good morning. This is actually Brian Barrows on for Kathryn. Thank you for taking my questions. Good morning, Brian, and a further on the GBS. I think the past few quarters has kind of seen the to fill in kind of opposite directions almost and probably not always the case, maybe more of a short-term blip. Just given what markets have been recently guess do you think that dynamic is kind of over going forward? Seems like maybe it is a little bit given your comments about our teacher kind of stabilizing from here, but just interested to hear your thoughts on how two may or may not be linked in momentum going forward?
Andy Rose
Yes. I mean, if you think about the products, BRIAN ClarkDietrich tends to be more on the front end of construction wave a little more on the back end of construction. So as the cycles move up and down, they're going to not move in lockstep if that makes sense. And you know, Joe kind of talked about it earlier that the market for our overall commercial construction products is pretty steady. There's pockets of weakness, which is office. Everybody knows and talks about that. But there is a bit of a belief, I think that there could be a renovation, the renovation, renaissance of sorts that that comes from companies trying to attract workers back to the office and changing up things to make it more appealing to be there as well as some of the other kind of macro trends around reshoring, near-shoring, health care education. Those markets continue to be pretty pretty strong. So it's a little hard to predict if those businesses are going to it kind of move together. But I'm there demand, I would say is reasonably steady right now once again, ladies and gentlemen, if you have a question, it is star one.
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Brian McNamara, Cannacord Genuity.
Brian McNamara
Good morning. Guys. Congrats on the results, Mona, and thank you buying more of I hate to put you on the spot, Joe, what I'm going to say I get a lot of questions about the earnings power of the business for maybe some folks new to the story kind of can you can you put up some guardrails in terms of how we should look at the business in terms of both the gross margin side and then how that flows into EBITDA margin if you wouldn't mind?
Joe Hayek
I mean of the way, our gross margin for the quarter was 23.1% and it's going to be a little different by business. You know, the historically the consumer products business is going to have higher gross margins just based on what they do and maybe a little bit higher SG&A as a percent of sales as well. But we think when we see consumer at kind of 19.3% EBITDA margin in the quarter. That's kind of what we think. And they think good looks like for them. They get they get good volumes and ultimately, you can you can kind of hang in there or that number around there or better than we feel really good about it as revenues grow and the gross margin from building products on the on the heating cooling and water side of the business was really strong. This past quarter. I think it was 6.2%. They had 130 basis points of that was the LCM that we talked about, which we certainly believe is nonrecurring. So that would be adjusted 7.5% was 11% a year ago. And this is the EBITDA margin. I'm talking about the B. 11% last year.
And so but I think you get a normalized environment and you're certainly significantly higher than 6.2%, got some good things going on there and the water business, you will get through this destocking in the larger propane businesses and those guys and that team, I think are absolutely focused on doing the right things. The water business is showing great progress. We talked about some of the businesses historically as kind of having more upside and not really running at full speed. That's one of them, but a big improvement there. And then the core business continues to seek through what's happening now. But if you go back to kind of Andy's comments on innovation and new product development there. There's a lot going on a lot of good work being done that we think can add both to top line and to margins.
Andy Rose
And maybe just to take it up a level, Brian, if you think about our long-term goals of driving our EBITDA margin up to 24% over the next three to five years. And everything that we do is very much focused on that. Our transformation playbook is about improving the profitability and the margin profile of the businesses. We own today. And as we think about M&A and capital that we're going to deploy into our innovation pipeline there, again, we're looking to drive not only higher margins but also higher return on capital. We talk talk a lot about returns and making more money using less capital where possible. So I think the fact that the businesses are where they are today, there is upside there. But over the long run, we fully expect that we're going to drive higher margins and that will start at the gross margin line.
Brian McNamara
That's really helpful. Thanks and just one more for me. I think all my other questions have been answered already. I'm just curious relative to your Joe or Andy or both of you relative to your your own expectations heading into the separation. I'm curious, have you run into any surprises either good or bad in your first kind of three or so months as a separate entity Yes, you know.
Andy Rose
I would say the process has been exceptionally smooth on the surface. You know, there's been a few struggles underneath the surface, but nothing that's really no major. I mean, look, when you take a company that it was put together over 68 years and you're trying to separate it into two public companies, that's a lot of work by a lot of people, you know, you talk about the IT group, separating systems, the finance group having to recast financials, which continues to this day. So there's just a ton of work and it's never perfect. But I would say it's been an exceptional performance by everybody involved, and we're fortunate that we get to sit here and kind of and on the surface talk about it, but it's been a tremendous effort and success, I would say, really across the board. I mean, I don't know if there's anything else to add there, Joe but we're really proud of everybody that it has been a part of it.
Brian McNamara
That's great. Thanks a lot. Thanks a lot, guys.
Operator
Kathryn Thompson.
Andy Rose
It has its primary and key driver. I had what you call new.
Kathryn Thompson
Katherine. I hope you appreciate that off to Brian for today. I had a quick follow-up on that again, but not earlier, but in the building products segment, I know you guys have called out mix kind of impacting the sales and overall, the volumes seem pretty good relative to the destocking going on that I think are only down 2%. You touched on it in the opening comments and some of the responses here. Just maybe further parse out what was maybe up or down across the different products in that category? You called out propane, you call it water. Anything else to specifically call out because it seems like there's maybe pretty good stuff going on there that might be masked by the propane destocking in the short.
Joe Hayek
Yes, that means that if you get if you get away from the LCM, which again, we think was one-time couple of million. The big the big factor was mix, honestly, and it's that destocking in those largest propane tanks. We've every every kind of, I think, Facet around home goods, building products, some consumer goods, right had had a post COVID run up and then kind of a post COVID trough. It's just that's just what's happening in that business. The water business was was solid on our other businesses. Couple of other businesses were around some of the large kind of refillable refrigerant tanks, those sort of slowed year over year just because of the same dynamics that that destocking. But other than that, there were a couple of puts and takes, but those are the those are the real drivers.
Kathryn Thompson
Thank you.
Operator
There are no further questions time. I'll turn the call to Andy Rose for closing remarks.
Andy Rose
So as I said, last quarter. We're proud of our history and who we are today, but we're mostly excited for our future. We are determined to leverage our capabilities to reward our employees, our customers, our suppliers and our shareholders as our founder, John McConnell. Once said in his speech in 1980 quote, we've only scratched the surface on quote that quote is as true today as it was back then. And I think it represents how we all feel about Worthington enterprises and the opportunity in front of us. Thanks for joining us today. We'll see you next quarter.
Operator
This concludes today's conference call. We thank you for joining. You may now disconnect your lines.
