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

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Operator: Our next question comes from Eric Bosshard from Cleveland Research Company. Please go ahead.

Eric Bosshard: Thank you. A couple of things. First of all, you talked about the pressure on price/mix, which still look to be, I think, ahead of cost as was here in 4Q. But I’m curious, Jeff, in prior cycles, is it — this changes for — it sounds like it’s — there’s some pressure for a quarter or two and then it improves. How should we think about how price /mix behaves through sort of this phase of the cycle, not just 1Q, but throughout kind of 2023?

Jeff Lorberbaum: Price /mix, first of all, you have a channel change as you go through. As you go through the cycles, the highest -margin businesses we have, with the retail replacement business, remodeling businesses and those slowdown first. So those margins slow down, and that impacts the mix as we go through. So that’s having one part of it. The margins have been affected by these lower throughput through the plant as our cost increase and then we have to make conscious decisions over what we do with the infrastructure and how far you cut it back in order to make sure that you’re able to operate as the business improves on the other side of the pieces. So we’re managing those and keep changing the strategy based on what the volume levels do.

The other thing, I guess, going on this year is you have — recently, all the channel inventories were taken down. We think they should be bottomed out about now. We think the energy and inflation in Europe is going to be a big change in it as it flows through the economy over there. We see residential remodeling and home sales improving as we go through the year. And with that, we expect the mix to improve as the other categories improve.

Eric Bosshard: Okay. So the favorable price /mix, which was $270 million or thereabouts in the quarter, that number from what you’re saying, that doesn’t have to necessarily step down meaningfully in 2023. That number can still — I guess the question is, is there a trade down? Is there this change? Does that number deflate or contract meaningfully from the level that it’s at now? Or is that not how it works?

James Brunk: You are going to — Eric, and we’re seeing it right now, you’re going to see some trade down. Again, it depends if you’re looking sequentially versus year -over-year. But in the first quarter year -over-year, you do have some still favorable price /mix from all the pricing that was initiated in Q2, Q3 and Q4 of last year. And then you are going to get to a point where you start overlapping the initiatives from 2022. The point is, and especially in the first quarter with the lower volumes and until that starts to pick up, you’re going to continue to see pricing pressure in the marketplace.

Eric Bosshard: Okay. And then the second question just relates to the competitive environment. I think you talked about some restructuring of your Europe LVT business. Is transport costs, and specifically, I’m thinking ocean costs of bringing containers of LVT to the U.S. has changed. I’m curious how you’re seeing the U.S. competitive dynamic supply situation. I guess, narrowly in LVT, different now or ask differently, how the global supply of LVT is influencing the market and your expectations for 2023?

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