Builders FirstSource, Inc. (NYSE:BLDR) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Peter Jackson: Yes. Yes. No, your point is right on. We’ve had a lot of change in that Multi-Family category. We’ve invested a lot, and we’ve been very successful, even in the core business in terms of how we’ve competed in the marketplace. I think that the overall impact of our kind of leaning into this has been a big change in the market and a big change for us. So it’s increased that Multi-Family mix, but it’s a mix that’s attributable largely to truss, right? So we’re not in sky scrapers. We’re not in shopping malls or certain large-scale apartment complexes, right? We’re in four-storey and below wood frame structures. That’s sort of our operating arena and our sweet spot. That has been doing remarkably well.

And I think we have been able to improve our positioning in the market and be seen as a serious, reliable competitor. We’ve got the ability to withstand sort of ebbs and flows. We can be counted on to deliver even if there are some capacity constraints through our network of facilities around the country. So, we do think we’ve gained share. We do — we know we bought share, and we think that that has all sort of come together to really give us some nice momentum. And that momentum is true, even though we’re really in the middle of integration. So, this is still early days for us in terms of getting all those teams to work together. So, we’re really excited about what the future holds. Now, you are right about the reset. We think that as we get into probably back half of next year, when we’re seeing things normalize, maybe beyond that, it’s probably closer to 10% directionally, we’ll dial that in for you, but it’s probably 10% of sales in an environment like we’re in today in a normal world.

Dave Rush: Yes. I would just add. We were purposeful when we added that acquisition and entrants into that Multi-Family segment, knowing that it would be a diversification play from Single-Family and vice versa. So, what we’re expecting is as Multi-Family normalizes, we’re expecting Single-Family to remain on stable footing. In addition, in the truss world, what makes it so — such a good investment for us is we can run Single-Family jobs out of a Multi-Family truss plan. So, we do that today. When we have Multi-Family plants that are maxed out, we run Multi-Family jobs out of our Single-Family plants and vice versa, when each side has more work than they have capacity. So, we’ve got a plan in place to manage through all ebbs and flows of both sides of those businesses and we did so intentionally.

Mike Dahl: Got it. Yes. That’s very helpful. Thank you. And then my second question, you’ve spent a lot of time kind of dissecting the margins. Maybe at a high level, just between commodities, between the Multi-Family legs, when you’re now talking about a 29% plus on normal, can you just kind of help us simplify this at a high level in terms of margin differentials by not necessarily every product category, but high level. Just where do you think your new value-add margin will be? Is it kind of like a low-30s value-add and a 20 on lumber? Just any — what’s kind of driving at a high level the blended 29%?

Peter Jackson: Yes. So, if you think about the historical kind of guidances that we’ve had, we were running — we were running gross margins kind of 25% to 27%. We talked about how the commodities were generally kind of high-teens to low-20s for gross margins. We talked about how value-add was 800 to 1,000 basis points higher than that. I would tell you kind of where we are today with some of the noise in it. We’re substantially higher than that on the value-add. But we’ve also seen sort of increases across the board. The increases across the board we talked about a lot, just to reiterate, we’ve seen some inflation, right? So if the cost of delivery is higher, the margins need to be higher in order to pay for the increased costs.

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