Fortune Brands Innovations, Inc. (NYSE:FBIN) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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So that’s the long term goal. I think that’s how you would think about it knowing we’ll still make some investments this year to drive transformation.

Nicholas Fink: So just a quick example of what Dave just referred to, if you look at sort of our corporate line expense. I don’t have the actual number in front of me, but I would guess core kind of core corporate functions probably CAGR growth below inflation and have done really well in that historically. And then the rest of the growth in investment is really coming from things like digital, Fortune Brands advantage capabilities, things that will really, over time, continue to drive the transformation of the company and help us grow.

Adam Baumgarten: Got it. That’s helpful. Best of luck guys.

Nicholas Fink: Thanks Adam.

Operator: Thank you. Our last question is from Stephen Kim with Evercore ISI. Please proceed with your question.

Stephen Kim: Thanks very much. Appreciate the opportunity to ask a question here. You made a comment, which I thought was pretty striking, Dave. I believe you mentioned that you were incorporating a 6.5% to 6.75% mortgage rate assumption. But I think you said that if mortgage rates came in 50 basis points lower than that. I assume you mean for the full year that it would add only about 50 basis points to your overall sales. Could you — first of all, did I hear that right? Because that seems very low. I assume it probably scales dramatically if, let’s say, rates are 100 basis points lower or something like that. But can you just give us a little more color around the analytics because I think you said your team sort of ran some numbers and stuff, that would be very helpful.

David Barry: Yes, happy to, Steve. So looking at the data that we have that we use to create the market forecast the team sensitized rate environment relative to our demand going back over time. And that’s what we’re seeing. We didn’t change our assumptions around outside the U.S. demand. So that could be a piece of it. So that remains down in China, high-single digits in Canada, is a bit worse than the U.S. But the math that they ran just as a, I think, a model for us and a guide would be, yes, 50 basis points in rate would be 50 basis points of incremental growth. I think probably where the model could use some refinement is more — the R&R data is more murky. We’re definitely more correlated to rates, new construction than our data. So maybe there’s outside growth coming from R&R that we’re not picking up. That correlation is harder to see based directly just on rate.

Stephen Kim: Got you. Okay. Well, we’ll probably take the over on that, but that’s fine. The second question, just to clarify, your guidance points, I assume they exclude any impact from an extra week because I was under the impression that you might have an extra week in 2024. Just wanted to clarify that and then also, the D&A ran a little bit hotter than we expected this quarter. Can you give us a sense for what kind of a good run rate would be for D&A?

David Barry: Yes. No extra fiscal week. We’re tired of talking about that. So happy not to have one in 2024. And then I’d say for D&A, running close to $30 million.

Stephen Kim: Per quarter, you mean, obviously?

David Barry: Yes, per quarter. Yes.

Stephen Kim: Got you. All right, great. Thanks so much guys.

David Barry: Yeah, okay.

Operator: Thank you for joining today’s conference call. You may now disconnect.

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