Mohawk Industries, Inc. (NYSE:MHK) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Brian Biros: Okay. That’s helpful. And second question, I guess, is given the restructuring plans you guys have, adjustments of product, operating lines, plants, is there a way to think about kind of the new Mohawk capacity going forward here, a lot of moving pieces, especially since you’re also adding some products as well. But is there just a way to understand what the company is able to serve going forward now versus what it was previously? Maybe something like we took out 5% of capacity or across our footprint. Just any color on that kind of dynamic would be helpful.

Jeff Lorberbaum: I think that the — on the capacity side, what we’ve done is we’ve reduced some of the carpet less -efficient plants. We’re aligning the rug business with lower volumes in it. And we said we were taking out the — some capacity and flexible in Europe. So those are the decreases in the business. The increases are in the main growth categories, which we’ve been telling you about, and I can repeat them again or I think you have them already.

Brian Biros: We got them. Thank you. Okay. So that’s helpful. Thank you.

Operator: Our next question comes from Matthew Bouley from Barclays. Please go ahead.

Matthew Bouley: Good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for taking the questions. Another one on the Q1 earnings guide, just to make sure we got all this right. It sounds like you’re speaking to some additional kind of headwinds that might be worse sequentially. Price/cost, I heard you mentioned, obviously, reducing production and all that. You’re guiding to earnings flat sequentially, roughly, and historically, Q1 is below that of Q4. So I’m just curious what else we’re missing there? What might be a little bit better than you typically see seasonally? Thank you.

Jeff Lorberbaum: I don’t think that we’re anticipating Q1 being significantly better. We are trying to tighter manage our inventories given that our future view is weaker and that we don’t want to build inventory. We think that the commodity prices and energy prices will stay low. So we’re not trying to build the inventories in the first quarter.

James Brunk: Matt, sequentially, when you think about it, so the two benefits that you have sequentially is the lower cost Q4 to Q1 and then less shutdowns Q4 to Q1. And so those are being offset partially with — as we talked about, the price/mix, which is kind of all kind of leading you back to relatively flat quarter-to-quarter performance.

Matthew Bouley: Okay. That makes a lot of sense. That’s very helpful there. And then secondly, back on the pricing environment in European Ceramic. And just any thoughts kind of if you kind of educate us historically, how does the market kind of typically react there to reductions in input costs and you mentioned the competitive environment. Just I know it’s prognostication, but any thoughts from you guys on how you think the competitive environment will evolve, given the reduction in costs there? Thank you.

Chris Wellborn: I’ll give you sort of an overview. Our business is under pressure there with slow demand, customer inventory reductions and inflation. Our results in the quarter were impacted by energy prices from the third quarter and temporary shutdowns. The market is still being supported with energy subsidies. And we still are, at least in the first part of the year, disadvantaged because of the hedging. I think as that — as you go through the year, what we would hope to happen is that energy costs come down, that the consumer will be able to have a better situation with wages going up and energy costs going down. But I still think it will be a competitive situation in Italy for the short term.

Jeff Lorberbaum: Some of you don’t keep up with Europe, there were people that their energy costs were more than their mortgages. I mean, it’s a huge drag on the economy.

Matthew Bouley: Yes. Got it. All right. Thanks everyone.

Operator: Our next question comes from David MacGregor from Longbow Research. Please go ahead.

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