Roper Technologies, Inc. (NYSE:ROP) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Alex Blanton: Now most of my questions have been answered, but something came up from one of the other participants regarding the business that accumulates commercial construction plans. And Barry Sternick, who’s the CEO of Starwood was on CNBC yesterday, saying that in his business and across the board really in commercial construction, as interest rates have gone up, people will complete the projects they have, but hold off on starting new ones. And so that’s why he’s looking for a big drop in commercial construction in the second half of this year because new projects are sliding. Do you see that in your statistics?

Neil Hunn: So it’s interesting. So I can add Zach — ConstructConnect publishes, look at that quarterly, quarterly the macro of what they’re seeing from a construction planning point of view, and I can have Zack for that to you. I have not read the — personally, I’ve not read the most recent report yet, so I don’t want to comment on its content, but we can send that to you.

Alex Blanton: Okay. Because it would seem that if new construction projects are not being put into implementation, it would show up in those numbers, wouldn’t it?

Neil Hunn: So here’s the countercyclical nature of that. And so if you have several hundred thousand construction workers, construction, small subcontracting firms ConstructConnect has tens of thousands of customers. So as those hundreds of thousands are looking for work, it only takes a small percentage of that cohort to become a customer of ours to exhibit countercyclical growth behavior, which is what’s happened in every prior slowdown in the history that we’ve been able to observe with ConstructConnect.

Alex Blanton: Okay. So you’re really talking about your business and market share rather than the overall trend of that market.

Neil Hunn: Correct.

Alex Blanton: Yes. Okay, thank you.

Operator: And ladies and gentlemen, this concludes our question-and-answer session. We will now return back to Zack Moxcey for any closing remarks.

Zack Moxcey: Thank you, everyone, for joining us today, and we hope to see you all at our Investor Day on March 21 in New York.

Operator: Thank you. The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today’s presentation. You may now disconnect your lines, and have a wonderful day.