Acuity Brands, Inc. (NYSE:AYI) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Neil Ashe: Yes. Brian, we covered this in some detail on the last quarter call. So I’ll summarize it now, which is that kind of at the end of last fiscal year, our lead times and days were in the 50s range and now they’re in the 20s range. So basically, we’ve reduced lead times by about 30 days. So that resulted in a buildup of backlog kind of towards the end of last fiscal year that we’ve been working through this year. And correspondingly, obviously, a little bit of an order drought as projects have been — and needs have been pulled forward. So that’s the big picture view of that and why – and also why we’ve identified that we’re starting to come back into balance and that basically we ship what’s ordered over kind of basically a 60-day period.

Karen Holcom: Yes, Brian, the only thing I would add is that last year, if you recall, we had several price increases as well, and that resulted in some of that pull forward that Neil described in addition to the lead time.

Brian Lee: Okay. Fair enough. Yes. I appreciate that clarification. And then I guess second question I had, and thanks for bringing it up, Karen, just around the price. I know you guys have gone away from talking specifics on price. But as you alluded to, last year, price was a meaningful tailwind. Historically, price has generally been, I think, maybe a plus or minus kind of low single-digit type of number for you all. Is that kind of where we are in terms of back to being toward a more normal? And then in relation to that, you’ve had a decent amount of product vitality, You introduced some new stuff and the Design Select as well. So maybe any high-level sense you can provide as to the impact on mix and price just as you’re introducing a lot of these new products as well? Thank you.

Karen Holcom: Yes. Brian, I would just go back to our posture on strategic pricing that we talked about earlier. We have really focused on this discipline over the past couple of years. We talked about it with our Contractor Select portfolio, which is really a combination of 300 everyday lighting products that we’re able to compete with the right product, the right place at the right price. So that gives us the ability to compete in a certain part of the market that a while ago we weren’t able to compete in. And then if you look on the project side of the business, our strategic approach there is that we’re able to pick the projects that we want and just be more disciplined about our pricing overall. So that’s really what’s driving the pricing that we’re seeing today.

Brian Lee: All right. Fair enough. I’ll take the rest offline. Thank you.

Operator: [Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of Jeffrey Sprague with Vertical Research.

Jeffrey Sprague: Thank you. Good morning, everyone.

Neil Ashe: Hi Jeff.

Jeffrey Sprague: Hi, good morning. A lot of ground covered. I want to go a little bit further back just into what you’re seeing in kind of the renovation markets in general. You obviously address kind of seeing corporate account level. But anything you could kind of add there on kind of the rural markets within that? You think this is mostly kind of a function of rates squeezing out marginal projects? Or any other color there would be interesting.