Janus International Group, Inc. (NYSE:JBI) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Anselm Wong: Sure. Yeah. We haven’t provided guidance for next year, but I’ll give you a little color. If you look at what we’re seeing for inflation, obviously, steel is our biggest component driver that we use. And if you track steel beginning this year until now, it was going down. But if you look at the last couple of weeks, it’s coming back up the other way. I would tell you that I wish I could forecast it better than anyone else, but it is what it is, commodity. So I think the key thing is we have the levers that we need to do from a commercial action if it sustains one way other way. I think right now, if you look at where the latest is, it’s actually going back to almost the kind of average at the kind of high point. So, we’re not past there yet. So, I think it’s just — it’s costs we’re going to have to continue to watch and then have the appropriate action if we need to based on where it’s sitting.

Andrew Maser: Thank you.

Operator: Next question, John Lovallo with UBS. Please go ahead.

Spencer Kaufman: Hey, guys, good morning. This is actually Spencer Kaufman on for John. Thank you for the question and nice results.

Anselm Wong: Hey, Spencer.

Spencer Kaufman: Maybe my first question — hey, Anselm, overall sales were up 7% in the quarter. Is it fair to assume that this is mostly volume? And how are you guys thinking about pricing actions over the next quarter or two? I’m trying to kind of tie back your comments around steel pricing coming in for most of the year and then getting a little bit more volatile in the last few weeks.

Anselm Wong: Yeah. I think, again, it’s been volatile, but if you look at the average where steel is at, even with the more recent announcement of steel price increases, it’s still kind of — if you did an average, you’re still about the average where we did our last commercial actions. So, at this point, again, not saying that we wouldn’t do an action if we need to, but right now if you looked at that, you’d assume, hey, where we price it is probably matching kind of where our cost is coming in, right now on average. And in terms of kind of what you saw in volume, it’s a mix. If you look at the overall, a lot of the growth is still pricing. But if you look at it split between commercial and the self-storage side, yes, there’s a decent amount of volume that we’re seeing on the self-storage side.

Spencer Kaufman: Okay. That makes sense. I think you talked about a newer competitor coming into Nokē’s market fairly recently. Can you just give us an update on how you’re seeing the competitive dynamics in that business?

Anselm Wong: Still I think it’s still early to say, because I think, there’s definitely competitors in there. But just to — at least from our view of the market and what we’ve seen so far, we haven’t seen anyone or close to kind of, obviously, the amount of deals and implementations we’re putting in right now. And I think it’s good to have another challenger out there. I think if you look at our Nokē solution what we offer there, let’s just say there’ll be more offerings coming out of that since that we’re doing because of what we’ve learned with the initial solutions that we’ve had out there, and constantly looking at how to improve and add more value-added offerings to our customers.

Ramey Jackson: Yeah, one more thing. The new entrants, just right off the bat are generations behind where we stand today. We’ve been at this for several years, very integrated into our customers, are learning a lot, adapting to their actual needs. We continue to bring out new products. The AWS partnership was extremely beneficial, and we’re starting to see that with the productivity in the solution. And keep in mind, we integrate this with our doors and hallways. So we’re the number one provider in the space. And it’s just going to be difficult for competitors to kind of match that value proposition.