Advanced Drainage Systems, Inc. (NYSE:WMS) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Scott Cottrill: Yes. I think right now, we’re happy and in line with our expectations. We’ve managed those costs so that we’re still investing in certain areas. You think about the engineering technology center, engineering and in those kind of areas. So you think about our service capability and other things that we’re investing in so right now on a dollar basis, we’re pretty much flat first quarter to first quarter, but a little bit of an impact from a margin perspective. So that 350 bps year-over-year very much gross margin, offset by a little bit of degradation on the SG&A side. I would expect that largely to continue. Again, actions around T&E and a lot of other things that we put into place, advertising and other things, we’ll continue as we go through the year and monitor such. But I would say, generally, those programs are in-flight in having the desired impact.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of John Lovallo with UBS.

John Lovallo: Maybe just first one following up on Garik’s question there. On SG&A, dollars were flat on a year-over-year basis on a decline in revenue of 15%, well, I guess what’s driving the — or what’s maintaining sort of the stickiness in SG&A there? And how should we sort of think about that as it plays out through the remainder of the year?

Scott Cottrill: Yes. I think in there, there’s really nothing in there other than the fact that you’ve got favorability from how we’re looking at T&E, advertising spend, all the other cost reductions that we took on our spend, but we’re still making investments in areas that are going to be for our long-term growth and profitability, areas around engineering and technology, IT. We’re not going to cut those programs that support the service and logistics and other things that are going to differentiate or continue to differentiate ADS and make us more competitive. So we’re ramping up those investments and those are offsetting the cost-cutting actions that we’ve taken to get to a flat dollar basis, and that’s exactly what we intended to do coming into the year.

So it’s not a surprise to us. It’s exactly where we wanted it, and that will continue as we march through the year. We’ll see gross margin favorability offset by a little bit of margin degradation because of SG&A because of the lower demand environment but we’re not going to cut these programs short based on a lower demand environment this year.

John Lovallo: Okay. Understood. And then given some of the improved manufacturing strategies and efficiencies and the lower transportation costs. How should we think about incremental margins in a scenario where volume comes back maybe sooner than expected?

Scott Cottrill: Yes. I mean you’ve seen our results and what we can do in those areas. I think the exciting piece about it is, obviously, you got to look at that price cost bar and what do you think is going to happen to resin materials in a higher demand world using those tend to go up, but our ability to price and recover that goes up as well. But that fixed cost leverage that we get when you start seeing that leverage come to bear, especially given the investments we’ve made around productivity, automation and growth in capacity in certain geographies of the country, those are really going to kick in. And we’re already getting the productivity savings out of those new machines and new investments we’ve made. But we start getting the volume when we do see that turn the corner and those green shoots arrive, we’re going to get really good fixed cost leverage, and that’s something that led to really good expectations around incremental margins.

I’m not going to give you a range or a percent, although the fact that it should be very leveraging.

Operator: Your next question will come from the line of Joe Ahlersmeyer with Deutsche Bank.