Tecnoglass Inc. (NYSE:TGLS) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Santiago Giraldo: Yeah. That’s going to be one of the strongest points for 2024. We see probably the best free cash flow year that the company has ever had. And that’s predicated on the fact that we again, are seeing double-digit growth. And CapEx is expected to essentially go down by half, I would say, to the range of $40 million to $45 million. So that’s going to give us a lot of flexibility to do many things, including being opportunistic on the buyback. As you know, we still have roughly half of the program available to us. And if we make sense, the free cash flow is going to be there to get another approval, if you make sense. So we’ll definitely be opportunistic on that end.

Stanley Elliott: Perfect. And last for me, with kind of a lot of moving parts this year, how should we think about SG&A maybe on a dollar basis or a percent of revenues, however, you want to frame that out, but just to kind of give us some direction there?

Santiago Giraldo: Not a whole lot of changes, I would say in there, Stan, other than the adjustments that you have to do on salaries locally, which are to the order of 8%. But other than that, the only moving pieces are on the transportation and commission side, which are the variable expenses related to higher sales. But nothing really out of the ordinary. I wouldn’t say flattish, but I would imagine that growing slightly less than revenues. And that’s also based on the fact that we have some non-recurring expenses in 2023, which we do not expect in ‘24. So to that extent, I would imagine that we can generate operating leverage on those higher sales.

Stanley Elliott: Perfect. Thanks so much for the color. Appreciate and best of luck.

Santiago Giraldo: Yeah. Thanks.

Operator: Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our next questions come from the line of Tim Wojs with Baird. Please proceed with your question.

Tim Wojs: Hey, guys. Good morning.

Santiago Giraldo: Good morning, Tim.

Tim Wojs: Maybe just on the underlying kind of residential business. I guess, what do you think has kind of changed over the last three to four months? And I think Jose Manuel you said that February was a little bit better. I mean has that business kind of gotten back to growth? I’m just kind of curious as you kind of look at expectations and order rates and things, what have you been hearing from your customers around kind of the underlying residential business?

Jose Manuel Daes: Well, this residential (ph) business we expect to grow because we are moving upward. We were only selling a lot from, let’s say, St. Petersburg, South of Florida. And now, we’re moving all the way up to Georgia, Carolina and also Tampa, the Panhandle (ph). So we expect that market to grow. It was installed for three, four months. I mean, not bad, but it wasn’t growing because a lot of housing projects were delayed because of the high interest rate. But lately, it seems that the interest rate went down like 1 point, and people are enthusiastic. Like I just said, this month was a very good month for me, February. We’re very happy. And I think the trend, I mean we just went to the show in Vegas, and the acceptance of our new products for Northern Florida and outside of Florida has been tremendous, and we’re very happy.

Tim Wojs: Okay. That’s good. And then Santiago, just on the cadence of kind of growth through the year, I guess how — I’m just trying to kind of understand maybe like how we should think about the sequential ramp? Would you kind of expect it to be fairly linear through the year or is there more of a, I guess, second half weighting to kind of some of the sequential improvement at this point?

Santiago Giraldo: I would expect sequential improvement each quarter. Typically, you know that Q2 and Q3 are the best out of the year, but that’s again going to depend on how the vinyl initiative and the geographical expansion on the residential side ramp-up. But I would model it – as we were saying, Q1 in line with Q4 is going to be the seasonal low quarter, given the fact that we had almost half a month of January of invoicing, and then ramping up the rest of the year is how we’re modeling this out.

Tim Wojs: Okay. Very good. Thanks, guys.

Santiago Giraldo: All right. Thanks.

Operator: Thank you. We have reached the end of our question-and-answer session. I would now like to turn the floor back over to Mr. Jose Manuel Daes for closing remarks.

Jose Manuel Daes: Okay. Thanks everyone for participating on today’s call. We expect to keep giving good news to our investors, and I think this next two, three years are going to be fabulous for the company. Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. That does conclude today’s teleconference. We appreciate your participation. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Enjoy the rest of your day.

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