Installed Building Products, Inc. (NYSE:IBP) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

And the team is just doing a great job of getting back to where they have been before and being operationally efficient from that perspective. The backlogs in that business continue to be solid, bidding continues to be solid. That business actually had a record month in October and from a sales perspective and we feel really good about where that business is headed right now, different from the way we thought 12 months ago.

Susan Maklari: Got it. Well, that’s great to hear. And thanks for all the color and good luck with everything.

Michael Miller: Sure, thank you.

Operator: Our next question comes from Trey Grooms with Stephens. Please proceed with your questions.

Noah Merkousko: Good morning. This is Noah Merkousko on for Trey Grooms. Thanks for taking my questions.

Jeff Edwards: Sure. Good morning.

Noah Merkousko: So first, I just wanted to talk about maybe the near-term outlook on single-family and multifamily. We’ve seen a bit of an improvement in single-family starts over the last couple of months. Cycle times have come down. So would you expect that lift to contribute to the 4Q volume? And then on multifamily, I think there is some concerns that it’s a little pinkish there, but I imagine there is still a pretty strong backlog. So on multifamily, for how long do you think that will be a positive contributor to volume?

Michael Miller: So it’s our belief on the multifamily side based upon our current backlog and obviously, this can change, but we feel good certainly about that business through ‘24. There is no doubt that there are considerable macro headwinds to the macro multifamily environment, which I’m sure everyone on this call can appreciate it. On the single-family side, you’re absolutely right. Cycle times have, I would say, completely normalized, have not even gotten a little bit better than normal. That should have an ability of flowing through a little bit into the Q4, but I think it’s much more of a 2024 event. In October, our volume trends for October were the best they have been all year, quite frankly. And October was actually a tie for record monthly sales for us as a company.

But I would say that we would expect the typical in – from Q3 to Q4, we would expect the typical seasonal softness that happens in Q4. If you look back at last year, that softness from Q3 to Q4 was about mid-single digits. We will probably be a little bit better than that. But we would definitely expect to see that kind of softness. One of the things that’s maybe too much of a nuance to talk about on the call, but Thanksgiving is very early this year and construction activity slows quite a bit from Thanksgiving to the beginning of the year. So we think that will impact fourth quarter results for all of the building products businesses.

Jeff Edwards: But on the model family side too, I mean, that business still for us, is it nearly as mature in terms of our market penetration as single-family business. So regardless of what’s happening with the multifamily market on a go-forward basis, we will continue to let that mature for us and gain share to some degree within that market segment.

Michael Miller: And that’s an excellent point. If we look at our single-family market share in the markets that we’re in compared to our multifamily market share of the markets that we’re in. We are 10 points lower in market share in those markets in multifamily relative to single family.

Noah Merkousko: Got it. That’s all really helpful. Maybe shifting gears here to the price mix side of the revenue equation. I think previously, as we look to sort of the back half of this year, we were anticipating two negative mix impacts. One, on serving more production builders; and two, on serving more multifamily demand. And I think on an answer to a question earlier, it sounded like the potential negative mix impact from serving more of the larger production builders hasn’t really materialized yet. Am I hearing that right? That’s more of an impact to potentially come? And then I guess, in the quarter, was there a significant mix impact for multifamily…