Ferguson plc (NYSE:FERG) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Bobby Zolper: Okay, got it. Thank you. And then you mentioned that you’re seeing slight negative year-over-year pricing. Can you give us any magnitude? Is that down 1%, down 2%, any kind of quantification you could give on that would be helpful?

Bill Brundage: Yes, to-date, through the first, call it, whatever seven weeks or so, we’re — I’d say, at very low-single-digits as we’ve stepped into the year. Nothing dramatic, but more a continuation of that trend that we saw, again, rolling over those very difficult commodity inflation comparables.

Bobby Zolper: All right, great. Thank you very much. I appreciate it.

Bill Brundage: Thanks, Bobby.

Operator: This concludes today’s Q&A session. I’ll now hand over to Kevin Murphy for closing remarks.

Kevin Murphy: Yes, thank you, and thank you for your time today. In closing, I just want to say thank you again to our associates. Their execution during the quarter and the year as a whole was something we’re very thankful for. And in addition, really their dedication to serving our customers and making their complex projects more simple, successful and sustainable. And despite the challenging macro environment that we find ourselves in, I believe the business is really well positioned with a balanced business mix, res, non-res, new construction, RMI, and it’s an agile business model with a flexible cost base, generating good cash, normalizing our customers’ ordering patterns to get back to a traditional working capital profile and generating cash to fund our capital priorities.

So as we go through the year, it looks like it’s going to be a tale of two-halves, our best guess. First-half, second-half, almost the inverse of what we saw this past year. So we’re looking forward to what our associates can do to leverage the model that we’ve built to go after some structural trends in both our residential and non-residential markets that will serve us well for years to come. Thank you for your time. Very much appreciate it, and we’ll talk soon.

Operator: That concludes the Ferguson fourth quarter and year-end results conference call. I’d like to thank you for your participation and you may now disconnect your lines.