Q4 2023 JELD-WEN Holding Inc Earnings Call

Participants

James Armstrong; VP, IR; JELD-WEN Inc

Bill Christensen; CEO; JELD-WEN Inc

Julie Albrecht; Chief Financial Officer, Executive Vice President; JELD-WEN Inc

Phil Ng; Analyst; Jefferies

Susan Maklari; Analyst; Goldman Sachs

John Lovallo; Analyst; UBS

Joe Ahlersmeyer; Analyst; Deutsche Bank

Michael Rehaut; Analyst; JPMorgan

Steven Ramsey; Analyst; Thompson Research Group

Matt Johnson; Analyst; UBS,

Alex Rygiel; Analyst; B. Riley

Keith Hughes; Analyst; Truist

Presentation

Operator

Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the JELD-WEN Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2023 Results Call. I would now like to welcome James Armstrong, Vice President, Investor Relations, to begin the call. James over to you.

James Armstrong

Thank you and good morning. We issued our fourth quarter and full year 2023 earnings release last night and posted a slide presentation to the Investor Relations portion of our website, which can be found at investor dot Jeld-Wen.com. We will be referencing this presentation.
During our call today, I'm joined by Bill Christianson, Chief Executive Officer, and Julie Albert, Chief Financial Officer. Before I turn it over to Bill, I would like to remind everyone that during this call, we will make certain statements that constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties, including those set forth in our earnings release and provided in our Forms 10-K and 10-Q filed with the SEC. JELD-WEN does not undertake any duty to update forward-looking statements, including the guidance that we are providing with respect to certain expectations for future results.
Additionally, during today's call, we will discuss non-GAAP measures, which we believe can be useful in evaluating our performance. The presentation of this additional information should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for results prepared in accordance with GAAP. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to their most directly comparable financial measures calculated under GAAP can be found in our earnings release and in the appendix of our earnings presentation.
With that, I'd like to now turn the call over to Bill.

Bill Christensen

Thank you, James, and thank you, everyone, for joining our call today, I'm pleased to report that our fourth quarter earnings were better than we expected, and we are making great progress on strengthening the foundation of JELD-WEN. I want to thank all of our employees for their continued dedication as we work together to plan and execute our performance improvement activities.
Today, I'll start by giving a brief overview of fourth quarter results and discussed some of the actions we've taken to improve our financial performance. I'll then introduce several of our new leaders before handing over to Julie to discuss the financial results in more detail. I'll then return to discuss our transformation journey before providing 2024 financial guidance and taking your questions.
I'll begin with our fourth quarter highlights on Slide 4. While sales were in line with our expectations. Earnings were above the top end of our guidance, primarily due to solid execution of our ongoing productivity actions. As a result, margin significantly improved year-over-year. We continued to generate strong cash flows, driven by improved earnings and reduced working capital balances.
Lastly, I'm pleased to report that we achieved our 2023 cost savings goals as we continue to remove fixed costs, including site closures and implement additional performance improvements across the business. At the beginning of 2023, we committed to improving our business. And as I look back at what our team accomplished last year, I'm proud of what we achieved.
On slide 5, you see some of the important actions that are driving our improved results. We are focused on streamlining our business and took important steps in 2023, such as initiating our transformation journey as well as selling the Australasia business next, we prioritize strengthening our balance sheet and using the Australasia divestiture proceeds, we repaid $450 million of long-term debt. We also made significant working capital reductions that were an important part of our strong cash flow generation. All of this delivered a net leverage of 2.5 times, down from 3.6 times at the prior year. End.
Finally, we have taken significant steps to reduce our cost base, including closing or announcing the closure of five sites. And as I mentioned earlier, we delivered our targeted $100 million of cost savings. As you can see, we take our commitment seriously and we are delivering on what we said we would do in the fourth quarter, we continued to strengthen our foundation, a key initial phase of our transformation journey.
On Slide 6, we outline some of the major actions in our key focus areas of People and Performance as part of our culture and capabilities workstream, we finalized the key leadership behaviors that we believe will support achieving our goals. We're starting a broad training program about these behaviors in the coming weeks. Targeting 1,600 global leaders.
Another important action was launching our change agent network. This network consists of approximately 300 associates within the organization who are both trusted and recognized by their peers as leaders at all levels. The change agent network will allow us to more effectively share information, gather insights and provide support for the many projects we have underway.
Switching to performance. We completed an extensive bottoms up planning process that engage thousands of our associates to generate ideas, followed by a business case and a project plan for each initiative. We have now sequenced these initiatives and are using a disciplined approach to track our implementation progress. Our expectation is that these projects will lead to significant long-term profitability improvements.
Finally, we announced or completed the closure of four facilities in North America and Europe. Combined, these closures are expected to drive more than $13 million of annual EBITDA improvement that will phase in over the next 12 months as part of our transformation journey, it is important that we have the right people to execute the significant changes we are planning,
As you see on slide 7. And as announced on February seventh, we recently added several new executives to our senior leadership team. First, Gustavo Viana was appointed as EVP and President of Europe. He brings over three decades of experience from various multinational companies. His experience includes operational and commercial transformations as well as promoting cultural change. Second, Danville entity was pointed at EVP. North America doors and distribution. Dan joined us from Whirlpool Corporation, where he spent nearly 13 years in leadership roles, most recently as SVP and General Manager, KitchenAid small appliances. Dan possesses significant commercial product development and supply chain experience. His expertise in understanding market dynamics, identifying growth opportunities and making informed strategic decisions will be extremely valuable to our team.
Finally, Matt Meyer has joined us as EVP, Chief Digital and Information Officer. Matt has helped multiple companies advance their digital transformations. His most recent position was EVP, Chief Digital and Data Officer driven brand holdings, where he was responsible for data technology outcomes for the largest automotive aftermarket services provider in North America. We are confident that these new leaders will be important catalyst in helping us achieve our goals, and I look forward to their insights and expertise.
I'll now turn it over to Julie to discuss the financial results.

Julie Albrecht

Thanks, Bill. Looking at slide 9, our fourth-quarter revenues were approximately $1 billion, down 13% from the prior year. This decrease was driven by a reduction in our core revenues due to market driven volume declines in both North America and Europe. Despite the lower sales, our adjusted EBITDA was $87 million in the fourth quarter, up 11% year over year, leading to an adjusted EBITDA margin of 8.5%. This strong year-over-year margin improvement of 190 basis points reflects solid execution of our productivity actions in areas such as site closures, headcount reductions, freight management and sourcing optimization.
On Slide 10, you see that our full year 2023 results tell a similar story. As the fourth quarter, our full year revenue was $4.3 billion, down 5% year over year. This decrease was driven by our core revenues as volume mix was lower by 10% with a partial offset from 5% of higher price realization. Our full year 2023 adjusted EBITDA increased by 9% to $380 million and margins expanded by 110 basis points to 8.8%. Our full year EBITDA growth was driven by operating cost reductions and positive price cost results that were partially offset by the impact from lower volumes as Bill mentioned earlier, in 2023, we significantly increased our cash flow and reduced our leverage.
Turning to slide 11, you see that we generated $345 million of operating cash flow, a $315 million improvement year over year as we have strong operational performance and significantly reduced our working capital balances. We also substantially improved our balance sheet using proceeds from the sale of the Australasia business and our strong cash flow, we reduced our net leverage ratio by more than a full turn to 2.5 times at the end of 2023. Our leverage is now within our midterm target range of 2.02 0.5 times.
As you can see on slide 12, our fourth quarter revenue decline was driven by lower volume mix of 16%, which was slightly offset by 1% of price realization and a 1% positive foreign exchange translation impact, I'll provide additional comments about our North America and Europe volume trends shortly. Additionally, you'll find our revenue walk, including segment details for the fourth quarter and the full year in the appendix of our earnings presentation at slide 13, you see that our adjusted EBITDA increased by $9 million year over year. Despite significant volume mix headwinds, we generated solid profit contributions from improved productivity, lower SG&A expenses and favorable price cost.
Regarding price cost, we remain focused on pricing discipline as we do continue to see inflation and costs such as labor and insurance.
Moving to our segment results on Slide 14. In the fourth quarter, our North America segment generated $748 million in sales, which was a decline of 13% from year-ago levels. This was driven by a core revenue decline of 13%, did a lower volume mix of 14%. However, North America's adjusted EBITDA improved to $94 million, which was up 8% year over year, while margins improved by 250 basis points, 12.6%. This was due to positive price relative to inflation and strong productivity, which more than offset the negative impact of lower volume mix.
In Europe, we generated $273 million in revenue and $16 million in adjusted EBITDA. Core revenues decreased by 18% in the fourth quarter, driven by lower volume mix of 20%. Adjusted EBITDA declined by $6 million from last year, leading to 110 basis points of lower margin. This decline was due to continued weak demand that was partially offset by improved productivity.
Now turning to the market outlook on slide 15 and starting with North America. We expect North America volumes to be down by low single digits in 2024. We anticipate that new single-family home construction will be flat to up slightly during the year. However, the outlook for repair and remodel activity remains uncertain, and we currently expect R&R activity to be down by low to mid single digits in the US. High interest rates continue to weigh on consumer confidence and create an affordability challenge.
Existing home sales remain at relatively low levels as people with low interest rate mortgages are reluctant to move. However, this dynamic creates an opportunity for increased new housing starts. European market is expected to continue experiencing demand weakness due to the ongoing macro economic and geopolitical challenges.
Overall, we anticipate volumes in the region to be down by high single digits. Residential construction markets remain soft across Europe, and we anticipate that these volumes will be down by high single digits. Additionally, commercial project volumes are slowing in Europe and this demand is expected to decline by mid single digits.
I'll now turn it back to Bill to talk about our transformation journey.

Bill Christensen

Thanks to. Julie I've shared in previous earnings calls, we are taking a two-pronged approach to improve our business as we show on Slide 17. In the short term, we are focusing on strengthening the foundation of our business. Our solid 2023 results underscore the significant progress we are making on reducing our operating costs and improving our operational performance. However, our margins are still not where they should be, and we have a lot more work to do. We remain committed to building a strong foundation that supports our future growth.
In addition to the short term focus, we continue to assess opportunities to grow our business and we commit to only invest where we have the right to win while this process is ongoing, we see a lot of opportunity for profitable growth in the years to come.
Turning to Slide 18. As I've shared before, my three focus areas, our people, performance and strategy and our transformation journey is currently focused on people and performance. We are engaging thousands of associates around the world and activities to positively impact both culture and financial results.
Our teams have identified validated and now sequenced more than 800 initiatives related to our culture. We are working to more clearly connect our values to our everyday work This includes investing more in training about important behaviors, including safety, continuous improvement and accountability. We are then measuring our progress and getting feedback from our teams. I'll talk more about our organizational health activities.
On the next slide. Shifting to performance. Our numerous initiatives include a balanced focus on both growth and cost reduction actions. We are working to improve our team strength processes and tools within our various commercial activities. In addition, we continue to right-size our manufacturing network as well as invest in automation and utilize our scale to streamline sourcing among many other smaller initiatives across the organization. We are investing more in ourselves as we execute on our solid pipeline of high ROIC. projects to deliver improved profitability this year and in the future to give you a better understanding of the type of work we're doing; I want to walk through a few examples of specific projects.
Slide 19 outlines our focus areas aimed at fostering a more agile culture after assessing our organizational health index in the first half of 2023, we have homed in on three key areas, communication training and incentives in our global organization, ensuring that important information reaches the right individuals in a timely manner presents a significant challenge. Nevertheless, we are committed to fostering transparent communication at all levels employing both formal and informal channels.
One method we are employing to improve communication is utilizing our recently launched change agent network. This network comprises approximately 300 individuals within the organization who are empowered to accelerate communication in support of our cultural transformation. We are also investing in employee development through a variety of training initiatives. These programs cover leadership change management and technical skills. While some of these trainings take place in formal classroom settings, we are also leveraging on the job mentorship for more effective learning experiences.
Finally, we are realigning rewards and recognition across the organization to improve connectivity with both financial performance and targeted behaviors. Simultaneously, we are decentralizing responsibility while improving accountability within the organization.
Now shifting to performance on slide 20, we show one of the growth-oriented projects we have underway in Europe. An opportunity that we have identified is improving efficiency in our quoting process. Our European team is developing a next-generation CPQ or configure price and quote system. It will allow customers to configure their own orders and identify the right Jeld-Wen products that fit their needs. The system will then accurately price and provide detailed quotes to customers.
When this project is complete, we will improve our customer service, refine our profit visibility and integrate quotes with our manufacturing systems to execute this project, we expect to spend approximately $2.5 million in both expense and capital, but anticipate a cumulative EBITDA impact of more than $15 million over the next five years and an IRR of more than 50%.
Moving to slide 21, I want to highlight an initiative that is a first in a series of investments to increase automation in our North America door facilities by leveraging proven technology. This project will drive operational efficiencies on our production line and elevate our product quality. Furthermore, the project will address bottlenecks in our facility, resulting in a substantial reduction in the build cycle duration.
This initiative is expected to generate more than $6 million in EBITDA a year once fully ramped up with an IRR of more than 45% once this work is complete and will also lead to further opportunities to reduce our network complexity and improve cost to serve these two performance related projects are just examples of the over 800 large and small projects that came from our bottoms-up planning process. We expect these projects will lead to a much stronger Jearld one with a solid foundation and significantly improved profitability.
I now want to discuss our 2024 guidance on Slide '23. You see our initial guidance for revenue and adjusted EBITDA, we expect our 2024 revenue to be between 4.0 and $4.3 billion. Our core revenues are expected to be flat to down 7% compared to 2023. This is driven by the continuing market uncertainty in both North America and Europe. As Julie mentioned earlier in her comments, we anticipate that our adjusted EBITDA will fall within the range of $370 million to $420 million, driven potentially by lower volumes, which we expect to be more than offset by ongoing productivity improvements.
We expect cost savings of approximately $100 million, which is a combination of approximately $50 million of carryforward benefits from last year's actions and new initiatives that will be delivered this year at the midpoint of our guidance. Our margins are improving from 8.8% last year to 9.5%, a solid 70 basis points as we look at the phasing of earnings and this year, we expect our first quarter EBITDA to be slightly lower than the same period in 2023 due to anticipated volume headwinds and lower backlogs than we had when we entered last year. However, we expect benefits from our internal investments to ramp up throughout the year and therefore expect approximately 40% of EBITDA in the first half of the year and the remainder in the second half.
I'd now like to provide some information about our cash flow outlook for 2024, which is outlined on Slide 24. We expect that this year's operating cash flow will be similar to 2023 before we invest approximately $100 million of nonrepeating cash expenses to fund portions of our transformation journey. And in addition to these investments in Jeld-Wen future, we plan to increase our capital expenditures to approximately 4% of sales to drive costs out of the business and set ourselves up for future growth.
As you can see from the examples of projects that I discussed earlier, we are keenly focused on delivering returns significantly above our cost of capital. All in, we expect our free cash flow to be approximately $50million to 100 million this year, which reflects both our strong commitment to investing in Jeld-Wen future and our ability to self-fund these investments with planned operating cash flows.
As I wrap up, let's turn to Slide 25. I'm excited to continue updating you on our transformation journey as this year progresses. As I mentioned earlier, we take our commitments seriously and we are executing on what we have said we will do. We know that by fixing our foundation, we are preparing for profitable growth when the market improves. I'm confident that over the next few years, Jeld-Wen will deliver significantly improved profitability and return on invested capital. We appreciate your continued interest. And I'll now turn it over to James to move to Q&A.

Question and Answer Session

Operator

Thanks, Bill. Operator, we're now ready to begin. Q&A.
Floor is now open.
For your questions to ask a question at this time, simply press the star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. We ask that you please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up question. We'll now take a moment to compile our roster.
Our first question comes from the line of Phil Ng with Jefferies. Please go ahead.

Phil Ng

Hey, guys. Congrats on a really strong quarter.
And Bill, really appreciate the color you shared with us today in terms of the transformation journey at sounds real exciting product so committed, is there a way to help us kind of think about the productivity savings in the next few years?
And you know, I appreciate some of these investments you're making and just these training efforts decentralizing, the process is going to take some time to take flight, but help us think through how that perhaps progress, whether it's productivity next few years, the growth profile or maybe even aspirationally, what a target you aspire to deliver from an EBITDA margin standpoint in a more normalized growth environment?

Bill Christensen

Yes. So Phil, thank you for the question. As we look at our transformation. And as I shared in my prepared remarks, we have a significant pipeline of projects. So over 800 that we're currently working through, and we sequence these obviously over the next number of years. And there's projects that are dropping in '24. We expect that's going to deliver probably $50 million to the bottom line.
There's other projects, one, which we talked about automation in some of our door facilities where we are in the pipeline and ordering the equipment, but that will be installed late in the year. So that will clearly have been an impact in '25 and out years. So it's too early for us to commit to what we see that we're going to deliver in '25. We'll clearly have strong line of sight as we get into the back half of this year.
But our expectations is that the project pipeline, based on what we see today will be ramping up in the out years, but too early to calibrate our message this year, Phil, is we want to overcompensate the market headwinds with our internal actions as we did last year, and I think we did well. So we're expecting to deliver more benefit than what we're going to lose in sales headwind. But we are expecting a significant pipeline ramp up as we roll into the back end of the year, and we'll be sharing that as we get into, let's say, Q3 through Q4 results.

Phil Ng

Okay. That's helpful. And then when you think about 2024 of perhaps maybe a question for Julie on great to hear that you're expecting price-cost to be a largely neutral. Can you give us some color on what you're seeing out there from a pricing standpoint, there's been a lot of chatter about the retail retail channel, pushing their suppliers a little more aggressively on pricing concessions. So help us give us a little context in terms of where you are in terms of negotiations with retail, the retail channel, if there's any line of reviews that we should be mindful of and then the price cost component of what's price, what's costs, what's baked into your outlook for this year?

Bill Christensen

If I maybe I can start at a high level first and then Julie maybe can augment with some detail. So our aspiration this year is definitely to be neutral from a price cost standpoint. I would say at the end of last year, we finally had caught up. As you well know, we were lagging for a while on price. And so so we do feel that we've caught up. We still see cost inflation coming at us, even with the down volume, there's labor inflation, there's benefit inflation, there's glass inflation.
So, there are some key input costs that are increasing. We're doing our best to offset that. And clearly the aspiration is neutral this year in a pretty demanding, potentially down volume market negotiations are ongoing, some are already complete. So, it's I'd say too early to draw final conclusions about where things land, but our teams are doing their work, and we feel comfortable currently giving the guidance that we want to be price cost neutral.

Julie Albrecht

Maybe I'll just add a little bit to that. I think, you know, top line impact from prices. Again, we'd say very neutral, maybe very low single digit type of price increase just to focus on the inflation that Bill just mentioned. It is specific to labor. We really are looking at similar inflationary impacts this year and 24 that we saw last year. So call it, it kind of 4% to 5% labor increases between North America and Europe as well. Otherwise, I mean, inflation is moderating, but as we all know, there is still inflation in certain aspects of our materials on. And again, as we've already mentioned today, definitely labor and related benefits on insurance is definitely really no slowdown there.

Phil Ng

And what we're experiencing appreciate all the great color, guys. Continued great work. Selling Good day.

Bill Christensen

Thanks Phil

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Susan Maklari with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Susan Maklari

Thank you. Good morning, everyone.

Bill Christensen

Is there any questions?

Susan Maklari

Concerning the first question I want to focus a bit on is your expectation for North America volumes to potentially be down somewhere in that low single digit range. As we think about that coming through. How do you think of the cadence through the year perhaps? And then any thoughts on the upside from there as we do start to see some of that single-family starts or activity coming through?

Bill Christensen

Yes. So thanks for your question, Susan. Here's from a high level how we're looking at the year currently and then I'll talk maybe at the end about how we're looking at 1H versus 2H potentially. So if we break down North America, we got three buckets that are relevant to our very relevant. So new construction single-family, that's about 50% of the sales in North America. We're seeing it's flat to slightly up in 24 and R&R, which is close to 50% of our sales is down low to mid-single.
And we do have a small bucket of nonresidential or commercial, which is our multi-family business, VPI. That's a very small share and we're growing well. We expect that markets can be down double digits. We see ourselves only down high to high single because we are gaining share. But again, that's not a material mover for us. We're talking about less than 5% of total sales.
So really new residential and for new residents up flat to slightly up. And then on the repair and remodel down low to mid-single. I'd say that there's definitely a view in the market talking to our customers, retail partners that you know, if someone had to pick a half. That would definitely be H2 with a little bit of potential upside.
As we look at macro headwinds, potentially, we're deciding as we move into the back half of the year with interest rates easing and mortgages becoming a little more attractive that could do a couple of things. Number one, get some more people into the resale market and that could trigger some potential R&R upside. But still current view today is we're not planning on that upside.
You can see the high end of our guidance. Top line is to be flat year over year, and that would actually imply slight growth in the US and Europe definitely being down. And that would be saying what we're thinking is an optimistic case given current view. So that's kind of where we are at. Julie can give a little more balance on what the sales is going to look like.H1 H2.

Julie Albrecht

Yes, sure there are cases. And I guess when we look at the phasing of sales through the year, we do see come in at the midpoint of our guidance of one half a little bit weaker than to have, so maybe slightly off center of 50 50 there that would have been a little bit lower. And that means that really looking at first half of this year versus first half of 23.
That's about a 10% decline in our in our sales, which is split pretty balanced between North America and Europe. So, we do see when you look at the comp of up again first half this year versus first half 2nd year, so first half last year, a little bit of weakness there there on those already mentioned our first quarter and up 23 was a little bit stronger than we'd expected and was stronger than kind of normal seasonality for Q1 because of that backlog we were bringing into last year. So that does create a more difficult comp specific to Q1.
On the other thing, other than just mention about first half of this year versus last year. And then looking at second half is really margins in the first half of this year, we see being relatively flat year over year. So despite lower sales again of maybe 10% or so. We do expect to maintain margins at around what was around 8.5% or so in the first half. That means that a lot of the benefit from the productivity and a little bit of ramp-up in sales really does help our margins expand second half of the year.

Susan Maklari

Okay. That's very helpful color. And maybe building on that a bit from the commentary, it does sound like those productivity initiatives really have gained some momentum in the last quarters or so as you think about coming into the year with those tailwinds there and the potential for that second half lift. Any thoughts on what a improvement in the volumes could mean in terms of some of these initiatives in the way that they could be realized? And just broadly speaking, what they could mean for the business and results?

Bill Christensen

Yes. So I mean, if we think about what we're trying to do now, Susan, with getting our foundation in order, clearly, it's to create pretty significant operating leverage as the volume bounces back and the volume will bounce back. Clearly, the US is underbuilt. There's a pent-up demand and we know kind of we know what the macro upside is, but this is actually a great opportunity for us to be doing a lot of the homework that we need to get done.
And again, the over 800 work streams that we currently have running are balanced over the next three years. And we're going to see a pretty significant exit run rate ramp up as we move into the end of this year. And so, we are expecting that a volume uptick will be clearly good news for us, but that's not controlling what we see in '24.
We're doing our homework and we're planning on delivering those results to outpace the market headwind. If things change and surprise everyone in a positive manner. Clearly our upside will be more significant. I think we've told you in the past, we see 25% to 30% operating leverage on the uptake. And we've done a good job in the last, I'd say, 12 months of really dialing in our capacity and making sure that our supply chains and our cost to serve are well balanced for the future. So we feel that we're in pretty good shape and still doing a lot of the homework that we need to do because our margins, as I said in my prepared remarks, are still a long way away from where we need to be.

Susan Maklari

Okay. But that's great color, and thank you both and good luck with everything.

Bill Christensen

Thank you, Susan.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of John Lovallo with UBS. Please go ahead.

John Lovallo

Good morning, guys. Thank you for taking my questions as well. The first one is and

Bill Christensen

Good morning.

John Lovallo

The first one is within that 15% decline in core revenue on a consolidated basis in the fourth quarter. Is there any way to parse out the impact of the lower volume versus the negative mix, perhaps on a consolidated basis and maybe even around North America versus Europe, if possible?

Bill Christensen

Yeah. So, I would say so a couple of maybe high-level comments, John, and then maybe Julie can jump in with some detail. So clearly, the run rate, if you look at Q4, about 14% volume mix down in North America, 20% in Europe, which I mean, those are pretty significant numbers and that it's mainly volume. And the was not a lot of price in Q4 so really volume was the key driver.
And especially in North America, if you think about a lot of the large retail partners that are balancing their inventories going into their fiscal year end, which is early this year, some of the tight inventories in the market, and we're being reloaded. And by the way, we're starting to see some rebalancing of inventories as people start to better position themselves for potential growth in the in the back half of this year. So some of the signals that we're seeing are, I'd say and better balancing of channel inventories. And that's why we feel that the run rates that we saw in Q4 are not going to pull through to Q1. We're expecting a bit better traction in Q one. Julie can share some numbers in some detail that may help underscore that.
Yes, it's a little more color on the mix.

Julie Albrecht

There are really in Europe that was almost entirely volume. So there is really very little negative mix in that, that negative at 20% of volume mix, North America on, gosh, I'd say that volume impact was probably more like 10 or 11% within that incremental two, 3% being negative mix. So again, still in North America, heavily weighted to lower volumes, but did have a little bit of negative mix in that region in the fourth quarter.

John Lovallo

Okay. That's really helpful. And then just maybe moving forward, you gave us the expectation for low single digit volume declines in North America and high single digits, call it volume declines in Europe. Are you expecting any meaningful mix impact in either region in 2024?

Bill Christensen

Yes, I would say no, I think it's going to track on kind of what we saw the back half of last year. If you just think whereas the market in general, I'd say we're mixing down because the the new construction market is tilted towards starter homes and lower price point homes. What we see, especially in January and February, a lot of the projects in Canada, we have a lot of projects on our VPI. commercial side also in Europe, which are typically, you know, better margin profile businesses are being pushed out based on financing constraints that the projects have.
So, people are still going to run the projects, they're just waiting. So we do think that in general, what we are mixing down, which is consistent with what we saw at the end of last year.

John Lovallo

I thank you, guys.

Bill Christensen

You're welcome.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Joe Ahlersmeyer with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.

Joe Ahlersmeyer

Hey, good morning, everybody. Congrats on the strong finish to the year here.

Bill Christensen

Thanks, Jeff, and good morning.

Joe Ahlersmeyer

Yes, maybe moving beyond '24, just thinking about the two parts of your North America business, the R&R business and the new construction side of things. Could you talk about, I guess, your views today, multi-year on which of these end markets provide more upside off of what you deliver in '24. And then if you could just also speak to how you feel your manufacturing base, your infrastructure on distribution is agile enough. I guess to handle one outperforming the other?

Bill Christensen

Yes. So starting with the second question first, Joe. So I would say that we're definitely cleaning up our distribution model, and we're looking at that as we do assess our footprint and our cost to serve our key customers across all markets in North America. So we're making sure that we're balanced not to current state, but to what we expect future state to be. And clearly, based on the light volume, there's been overcapacity in some of our sites in the market as well.
So, we have taken sites off-line as well know, last year, and we're continuing to critically look at cost to serve model. And that is, I think, well balanced to an upswing in the market because we've been doing a lot of great homework there on the other side as we kind of roll forward and just look at a very high-level view US North America and it does go up a level and say that we clearly expect macro headwinds in Europe to continue into next year.
So clearly, the outlook in Europe is definitely weaker in the next couple of years than we would expect for North America and North America. Clearly, as I said before, we're underbuilt we need the units, but there's also going to be a snapback of R&R activity as resales kick in when interest rates come down. So, we do expect both levers to be moving in the right direction.
And clearly, we're getting ourselves ready to be able to serve both of those models and make sure that our cost to serve is well balanced. And if we see an increase in volume in '25 as many people expect currently in North America, we should have some nice operating leverage that drops to the bottom line. We're focused on both pillars traditional and retail because they're both very important to us, and we're making sure that our cost to serve and our on-time delivery and our quality is meeting customer expectations in both of those segments.

Joe Ahlersmeyer

That's really helpful. Thanks for that. And then Julie, on the CapEx guide for this year, understand the need to invest here. Could you help us maybe think about how long we might be running at this type of level, if it's sort of the new stable state or if maybe next year we see some productivity coming out of the CapEx budget?

Julie Albrecht

Yes, I'd say on it I think clearly, we'd say in the past, Jeld-Wen underinvested in its and its capital for both gross inefficiency, which again has shown in the results we've delivered historically. So on this year. We've obviously evaluated our pipeline. We're pretty bullish on the opportunities. We'll continue to reevaluate that, obviously on an annual basis, but on, but I would expect it to be higher than the past to call it that 2% to 2.5%. And again, if it continues at 4% and I think TBD, that absolutely had expected it to be elevated over our historical levels on for capital.
The other thing I'll note is we mentioned in our materials and our outlook for this year that we've got around $100 million of nonrecurring cash expenses this year that I would say we do feel like are unique to this year and that we'd expect that type of activity to go back to more normal levels beyond this year. And so also wanted to highlight that from a cash flow perspective and investing in ourselves.

Bill Christensen

Yes, Joe, I would just add that these 800 plus projects we have. We have high visibility in our system. We're sequencing as long as we see opportunity to deliver IRRs, you know, 20% and above. We're investing in ourselves because I believe that is an outstanding return for our shareholders in the right way to deploy capital. And so I would expect that also next year, CapEx would be elevated from a historical run rate, if it's, you know, the same as this year. We'll have a discussion as we see the portfolio, the maturity and what kind of investments we need to make, but we will be investing and that will continue into next year.
On the capital side, Julie mentioned the one-time we'll be out, but we'll still be funding projects that are very attractive. And candidly, we just don't have the resource currently to push all of these through the pipeline at the same time. So we're making sure that we're not biting off more than we can chew.

Joe Ahlersmeyer

Yes, makes a lot of sense. I agree with the philosophy there, and thanks for the call it on the one-time expense, and I'll pass it on Thanks. All right.
Thanks, Joe, and good day.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Michael Rehaut with JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Michael Rehaut

I guess, Andrew, Rosie on for Mike. I appreciate you taking my questions and

Bill Christensen

Good morning

Michael Rehaut

Good morning. I just wanted to ask maybe on the new single-family construction side in North America at least flat to up slightly, it looks potentially a little bit conservative as compared to maybe some of the larger homebuilders in terms of a year over year, a percentage increase. And I'm just hoping maybe you can help me bridge that gap and maybe if there's some upside or conservatism baked in there?

Bill Christensen

Yes. Well, so there's still a high level of uncertainty. I would argue in the market in general. Clearly, there's some key macro levers that are going to potentially soften the back half of this year, which could potentially improve the reality. But don't forget, we're three to six months behind Star until our prime products are built in and, you know, first windows to button up the envelope and then DOORS later in the process.
So, it takes a while for this to trickle down. Second point is we potentially see these starts out there, but it's a lower end. And so we would actually like to see the higher end come back. So the custom and that's a pull through for our wood windows and our premium products. And so clearly, there's some pretty good value appreciation when that market comes back but clearly, it's way softer than the low end of the market.
So we are I would say I wouldn't call us overly cautious. I would just say that we're careful because there's just so many things that are influencing this market in the current state. And this is our view. If things are better than I think we'll all be proud and happy to report that as the year goes on.
Understood. Yes, I think that's definitely sounds appropriate.

Michael Rehaut

I guess I'm just curious on the price cost neutral, is that on a dollar basis or a margin basis?

Julie Albrecht

Yes, it's really a dollar basis, which against drop through is really not having much impact on margins and says, yes, but we say that we're definitely talking about a sort of targeting and dollar neutral or close to zero impact on year-over-year changes in EBITDA.
And I would say we've talked Andrew on prior calls, there's a couple of things. I mean, we still have a lot of work to do on cleaning up kind of the pricing foundation and making sure that we are we are doing a better job of being consistent, and that's still ongoing. But I'd say on a broader level, the input costs, we want to make sure that we can offset that with price, but nothing more than that.

Michael Rehaut

Okay. That's all for me. Thank you, Bill and Jillian.
Good luck, Tom, congrats on the quarter or has anything changed here?

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Steven Ramsey with Thompson Research Group. Please go ahead.

Bill Christensen

Good morning.

Steven Ramsey

Maybe to that honing in on North America repair and remodel activity, can you talk to how much of your volume depends on existing home sales coming back or what other drivers on the North America R&R side? Are you looking for to get more confidence and clarity on where volumes could go I think that Steve and I think that's the big lever.

Bill Christensen

It's roughly 50% of our North American sales. And you know, as we look as we look at at retail there's a couple of things that are important in retail. I've said this before, you know, you need to have the product there, especially if it's Cash & Carry. There's a couple of different elements that the retail partners are working on. So it's making sure you have the product there if the traffic is in the store. And the second is they're trying to do a better job of rebalancing inventories as we're coming out of a very tight inventory reality in the last couple of months.
And I do see that some of our partners are doing a better job of making sure that there's availability in stores and the second key lever for growth. And that's linked a lot of that's linked to resale and whatever resale, there's some R&R activity and then there's another for resale behind that. So there's a number of things that are linked together when the resale market really starts to kick in. And I would argue that that's driven by interest rate relief and people being able to get into mortgages that are closer to where they currently are. And I'd say the second pillar that we're really driving on R&R is that professional growth and professional growth is one of those areas where if there's a big cash and carry market and a lot of the customers are already there. There are some products as well that our retail partners believe that that would be a good opportunity for them to take some share on what they call the Pro segment. So those are those are the two things. And Pro is not distinctly linked to the new construction or the resale market.

Steven Ramsey

Okay. That's great color. And then a follow-up on the CapEx range, $150million to $200 million, somewhat wide range.I'm curious what you're looking for that would swing that to the low or the high end, how much of it is demand versus transformation progress, timing versus equipment delivery and other other factors to move CapEx up or down?

Bill Christensen

Yes. So it's number one it's the ability of our organization to execute on those projects. That is the bottleneck currently. We feel we feel great about the strength of the balance sheet and our ability to self-fund this transformation, which was one of the key things that we wanted to deliver. There are longer lead times for certain things. And obviously, that's going to also it defined time lines and our ability to spend and also to deliver and install certain lines and equipment. So I would say where the bottleneck would be, please if we could spend the upper end of the range. But I think that's going to be a challenge for our organization because we're coming from a very different reality.

Matt Johnson

That's helpful. Thank you.

Bill Christensen

You're welcome to have a good day.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Alex Regal with B. Riley. Please go ahead.

Alex Rygiel

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. Could you talk a little bit about industry consolidation.Can you talk a little bit about industry consolidation and any opportunities or negative impacts that you could see from a more competitive environment?

Bill Christensen

Yes, I would. So in general you know, we don't want to make comments about competitors. Clearly we can talk about the competitive landscape and our main focus is to execute on what we have in front of us to really improve our operating performance. So we are totally focused on doing that and delivering the appropriate returns. And that means cleaning up our supply chain. That means optimizing our footprint. That means driving growth initiatives. And if we execute on that, which I'm very confident that we will that puts us in a great position in the market.
I think maybe it's more challenging for the equity analyst environment. There's one less direct comp for us in the market, but we're focused on really ourselves and really delivering what we see. We need to do and have a pretty clear view on how we're going to do it, what we're investing to get there.
So I think that would be my comment. In general, we're very bullish on the market. It's gone through a tough time and it will continue to be tough in Europe, but it's a great opportunity and we're taking advantage of that to do our homework, cleaned ourselves up and really get ready for the rebound. So we can come out pretty strong. So we feel well positioned, but still we have a lot of work to do.

Alex Rygiel

And then can you rank the gross margin on new construction versus R&R versus multifamily.
And maybe talk a little bit about the headwind in weaker volume anticipated in multifamily as it relates to gross margin impact?

Bill Christensen

Yes. So Alex, we typically wouldn't share that kind of detail on profit pools across different channels. And that's that's not the kind of detail that we provide.

Alex Rygiel

Fair enough. Thank you. All right.

Bill Christensen

You welcome. Have a good day.

Operator

Our final question comes from the line of Keith Hughes with Truist. Please go ahead and queue up the questions on Europe.

Keith Hughes

You talked about going from identifying Europe pushing potentially some strategic actions. And we've got the we've got the announcement this morning are around that plan it is in Europe in the structure you wanted to be with the improvement you're going towards? Or could there be other potential changes that could come down the cost?

Bill Christensen

Yes. So I would Keith, thanks for the question. As you know, we have stepped up the leadership quality in the European market with the hire of Gustavo, and we're really looking forward to actually accelerating the transformation plans that we have for Europe. We've said all along, we have strong brands in strong markets, but we have yet to deliver commensurate margins to really validate that case.
So the ball is in our court to do that. And that's a challenge that we've accepted and we want to deliver on. So we have a broad portfolio of projects to improve the profit levels in underperforming markets. And we have also high expectations of margin appreciation even in '24 with continued market headwinds. And I'd say they're a little behind the US. from a volume development standpoint.
So there will be also a challenging 25 at least to start a 25. So we need to make sure that we're well prepared for that. So no other and strategic implications for Europe outside of, hey, we've got to fix the foundation in Europe and get ourselves ready for the profitable growth, which will clearly arrive. It's just going to take a bit longer than in North America.

Keith Hughes

Okay. Thank you. All right. Okay.

Bill Christensen

Thank you.

Operator

I would now like to turn the call over to James Armstrong for closing remarks.

James Armstrong

And thank you for joining our call today. And if you have any follow-up questions, please reach out and I would be happy to answer this ends our call today and have a great day.
This concludes today's call. You may now begin Connect.