JELD-WEN Holding, Inc. (NYSE:JELD) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

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Mike Dahl: Julie, I wanted to ask about the implied second half sales. I think you characterized it and the guide would suggest that sales would be down slightly year-on-year. I think the pruning that you have articulated alone might account for like a 2% year-on-year headwind, which would put the organic ex-pruning more like flat? Is that the fair characterization? And I know comps get easier, but that does seem to imply some market improvement in the second half, which maybe as less visible today. Maybe just elaborate on that.

Julie Albrecht: Yes, sure. And you are right about the pruning being kind of in that 1.5% to 2% range as we kind of move, it’s on a full year basis. I think basically, with the re-set of our second quarter sales, like we have been mentioning, and then you think about the seasonal ramp-up from there, Q3 and then what we expect for Q4, it all kind of nets into this kind of now slightly lower year-over-year outlook for the second half. We did and I think you may have just mentioned this, we did have a – this is a slightly easier comp when we look at the second half of last year. But it’s very – that’s kind of very, I would say, nominal from a comp perspective. So, we do expect a slight improvement, two-half sales this year over first half, but again, it’s all – nothing too dramatic there.

Mike Dahl: Got it. Okay. Thanks. And then my second question is just on Auraline specifically. And I appreciate that this was an initiative that started under a prior management team. But it’s pretty new. I mean the ramp – the full ramp was really just in 2020. And at the time, it was touted as a pretty big growth opportunity over time. So, kind of short of 4 years later, shutting it down is notable. So, Bill, I know you probably still have work to do on the postmortem, but can you give us just maybe a little more insight on like what specifically happened? Did the market shift in terms of materials, did you just not get the traction with certain sales channels? Can you dive a little deeper into what really went wrong that ultimately led to this decision?

Bill Christensen: Sure. So, a couple of things. The project had a number of delays internally. So, it had been kind of born a long time ago and was moving through, but at different rates of speed. When we enter the market, clearly, there was an expectation that we would be able to gain share in a segment that exists, but is well managed by competitors of ours. And our traction in the sales channel was below our expectations which led obviously to lower volume growth, and that led to business case, red flags coming up. We also had some pretty significant input cost increases as we progressed through, I would say, our maturity curve. And so we had lower volume, higher input costs, and that created a pretty significant challenge to make the business case work and this is one of those things where we are still obviously reviewing it.

But as I have said, it’s pretty easy to see if this can get to the goal line or not. And clearly, our decision was we are not going to get there, and we need to redirect capital and resources to the other 700 projects that are creating significant value within our portfolio. So, this is I think, a tough – well, it is a tough decision, but I would reflect good news for the culture that we are trying to create at JELD-WEN, which is holding ourselves accountable in making decisions.

Mike Dahl: Thank you.

Bill Christensen: You’re welcome Mike. Have a good day.

Operator: This concludes the question-and-answer session of today’s call. I will now turn the call back to James Armstrong for any closing remarks.

James Armstrong: Thank you all for joining our call today. If you have any questions, please reach out and I am happy to answer. This ends our call and please have a great day.

Operator: This concludes the JELD-WEN first quarter 2024 earnings conference call. Thank you for joining. You may now disconnect.

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