Commercial Metals Company (NYSE:CMC) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Lawson Winder: Fantastic. Now hopefully, I’m not pressing my luck too much to maybe ask one more question, but I just wanted to follow up on that Slide 9, the downstream backlog and bidding volumes. Thank you for providing that. That’s extremely helpful. Could you maybe provide a little bit of detail on the makeup of that? Like, for example, what proportion is warehousing and what proportion is reshoring? Thank you so much.

Barbara Smith: I don’t think we’re prepared to give that granularity. What I would say is it’s a strong balance between infrastructure and nonresidential. And we would expect infrastructure to increase over time. It’s going to be a well-balanced mix. And I don’t think it’s heavy weighted towards any one segment. And the projects once they’re in that backlog, they’re going to get concluded and completed. I think the real beauty or message in the material that we provided is there is an enormous margin opportunity in the backlog that is going to evolve and play out going forward as we service that backlog.

Lawson Winder: Okay, great. Thanks so much.

Barbara Smith: Yes. Thank you, Lawson.

Operator: And our next question will come from Phil Gibbs with KeyBanc Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Philip Gibbs: Hey, good morning.

Barbara Smith: Good morning, Phil.

Philip Gibbs: Lots of good questions were asked that we’re basically already focused on what I was wanting to hit on. But what’s the openness to further M&A as it relates to your strategic longer-term growth framework?

Barbara Smith: Phil, I think you have followed us through the good, the bad and the ugly, and our balance sheet has never been in condition that it is extremely strong. It gives us the flexibility to do a lot of things. As you know, of late, we’ve been returning more to shareholders through the share repurchase and the increase in the dividend. We think about that in terms of just a balanced capital allocation strategy. And we have complete confidence that we can continue to do that as well as look at and fund the organic growth that we’ve talked about and leave the opening and the flexibility to consider M&A if the right thing comes along. And I think you’ve also followed us long enough to know that we’re very disciplined in terms of our capital allocation, and we’re very disciplined acquirers to ensure that it’s the right strategic fit and that we have something to offer when we do combine and when we do acquire.

So we remain open, and I think the balance sheet can support that kind of activity while still having a pretty balanced capital allocation strategy.

Philip Gibbs: Thank you. And then just a follow-up. You had mentioned something about a 13 €“ excuse me, a 12x increase in something. I think as it related to perhaps infrastructure quoting or something like that. I missed exactly what you said around that?

Barbara Smith: That was around the infrastructure, I believe, Phil, that the massive increase in the preplanning and then the design phase.

Paul Lawrence: Versus two years ago.

Barbara Smith: Versus two years ago for infrastructure projects, which is really the leading indicator for the new Infrastructure Bill to begin to translate into orders and backlog for us. So that’s an incredibly encouraging sign that, indeed, we are going to see that coming to the market here in the near term.

Philip Gibbs: Thanks so much. Appreciate it.

Barbara Smith: Yes. Thank you, Phil.

Operator: And our next question will come from Tristan Gresser with BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.