James Hardie Industries plc (NYSE:JHX) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Niraj Shah: Hi, good morning, guys. Hope you can hear me. Just one for me. How are you thinking about I guess; the multiyear CapEx spend program in light of some pretty quickly changing dynamics on the ground?

Aaron Erter: Yes. Hey, Niraj, thanks for the question. Just to really restate our expectations, we did — me being new, I continue to review all our CapEx projects, right. Want updated assumptions as the market is ever changing, but at a high level, we still expect to spend around $1.5 billion, I think probably what you’re going to see is instead of that spread out over three years, it might be a more extended time period here for us, as you can appreciate.

Operator: The next question comes from Peter Wilson with Credit Suisse.

Peter Wilson: Hi, good morning. Good evening. Just a question on gross margin. So North American gross margin for the quarter was down 190 bps. So this seems to be in the context of the strong price/mix, high value product mix. Aaron, you mentioned earlier that inflation for the group was $160 million to $170 million for the full year. So that’s $120 million higher expect at the start of the year. That should be more or less taken care of by the June price increase, I would have said like 4% is about equivalent to that. So just wondering why gross margins continued to decrease in the quarter, even after that extraordinary June price increase and in light and in the context of your high value product mix?

Aaron Erter: Yes, Peter, great question. Just being completely transparent, even though we’ve done a great job, from pricing as of late the team’s been able to go out and utilize our strong value proposition to get price, as I look over the year and hindsight is always 2020, we should have had probably two more price increases, or the earlier price increases should have been greater than what they were. That’s really the gap that you’re seeing right now.

Peter Wilson: Okay. And just a quick one on SG&A. The changes made, did they come through in the third quarter, or is that further decrease has to come in the fourth quarter and beyond?

Jason Miele : Yes, Peter, you will start feeling it completely in Q4. And we also had the restructuring charges above the line this quarter. So it’ll be Q4 will be favorable to Q3.

Operator: Your next question comes from Harry Saunders with Evanson Partners.

Unidentified Analyst : Hi, guys, thanks for taking my questions. Just firstly, I think you were alluding to multifamily outlook for €˜23 being better than single family. And so given the improved outlook being provided by US home builders, I’m just wondering if you could give some color on your expectations for single family new construction in calendar €˜23.

Aaron Erter: Yes, Harry, I think it’s all relative, right, when we’re looking for pockets of hope out here, right, multifamily, it’s exciting because it hasn’t been an area that we’ve really attacked much because capacity constraints and we are going after it. And we’re seeing in our Q was leads more than we ever have in multifamily. What I will say as we look forward single family is expected to be a down 17, multifamily suppose — is expected to be down 14 by the data we look at. So, not as severe as single family. But as we look forward, we think it’s a huge opportunity for us in an area where we really have the right to win. And what I’m excited about, as we’ve opened up the multifamily desk, we’re seeing a tremendous response as it relates to leads that are in our Q.

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