The AZEK Company Inc. (NYSE:AZEK) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Spencer Kaufman: Okay. I appreciate all the color there guys. As my follow-up question, just on the share repo you guys obviously repurchased some shares in the quarter, but I guess why not being more aggressive here, especially with kind of CapEx coming down and the stock under pressure?

Peter Clifford: Yeah, look, I think the thing that excites us about ’23 is look, one thing we know for certain is that our CapEx profile for ’23 is going to be meaningfully down. We think it’ll be down close to $100 million sequentially from ’22 to ’23 as we’ve talked about and some of the pain we experienced in 1Q and really part of 4Q of not building inventory. As we know, we have the opportunity to take some cash off the balance sheet with working capital. So our goal is to continue to support the share repurchase program and I think the strength of the free cash flow in 2023 allows us to do that, while maintaining a responsible net leverage ratio. That as we’ve said, you’re not going to see us go far outside of the bounds of the 2 times to 2.5 times leverage that we’ve talked about historically.

Spencer Kaufman: Okay. Thanks, Peter. Good luck, guys.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Ryan Merkel with William Blair. Your line is now open.

Ryan Merkel: Hey everyone, thanks for taking the question. I just wanted to start off with a clarification question. It sounds like you’re not really this quarter, but for planning purposes do you think by 2Q volumes to be down 10%, did I have that right?

Peter Clifford: Hey Ryan, could you repeat that because you broke up a little bit?

Ryan Merkel: Yeah, it sounds like you’re not seeing unit sell through really slow yet in 1Q, but for planning purposes you think by 2Q volumes are down 10%. Just wanted to make sure I had that right?

Peter Clifford: Yeah, I — we are — we are seeing consistent — consistent patterns right now that we’ve seen over the last few months, which is positive dollar sales and modestly negative unit volume. Now it varies by — it varies by kind of geography and channel and product, but in general that’s what we’re seeing. I think what were challenges from a planning assumption standpoint, given the market indicators that are out there, that people are chatting about, we think it’s fair to assume for the year, it would be down 10% on our core volume. So, how that flows through? Obviously, we just told you the inventory correction that were taken in Q1, if you just do the math is half — more than half of — of kind of that correction. And then — and then we see the benefit of that on our Q4. Exactly when it manifests and how it manifest. We’ll see, but we’re just telling you it’s a planning assumption.

Ryan Merkel: Yeah. Okay that makes sense. My follow-up, Jesse are you seeing any signs that wood conversion is slowing or is it steady as she goes?

Jesse Singh: Yeah, you know the wood conversion data can — can get noisy. What I would say is in the customer sets that we deal with, we continue to see a focus on more composites, not less, right. So we haven’t — which to us shows that that conversion continues to sustain and we see it in our mix. We see it in — like the pattern that we’ve seen continues. And once again, we talked about how that’s a long-term effect of people getting the right visuals, the network effect, all those other elements that layer in converting contractors, converting architects, all that right and we continue to see that flow.

Ryan Merkel: Perfect, thanks.

Jesse Singh: Thanks, Ryan.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Susan Maklari with Goldman Sachs. Your line is now open.

Peter Clifford: Su, we can’t hear you, if you’re on mute.

Susan Maklari: Sorry, can you hear me now?

Peter Clifford: We can.

Jesse Singh: We can.