Good day, and welcome to the HDI Corporate Announcement conference call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Ian Tharp. Please go ahead, sir.
Thanks, Kevin, and good morning, everyone. I'm happy that you're able to join us this morning to discuss HDI's acquisition of Mid-Am Building Supply. My name's Ian Tharp, Investor Relations for HDI, and I'm joined this morning by Rob Brown, HDI's President and CEO, and Faiz Karmally, HDI's CFO. HDI's press release regarding the acquisition was issued yesterday afternoon. It's available on the investors section of HDI's website at www.hdidist.com and also on HDI's SEDAR profile at www.sedar.com. We've also posted a presentation on the HDI website that will be referenced during today's call. The presentation can be found in the investor corporate section under the investors subheading. You'll find a blue button on the page which will link you to the presentation for today.
Just to repeat that, it's the investor corporate section, the investors subheading, and there's a blue button there. I'll just give you a moment to find it. If you have the presentation open, turning to slide two of the presentation, I wanna remind listeners today that forward-looking statements may be made during this call. These statements involve various known and unknown risks and uncertainties and are based on management's current expectations and beliefs, which may prove to be incorrect. Actual results could differ materially from those described in these forward-looking statements. Please refer to the text in HDI's press release for a discussion of the risks and uncertainties associated with such forward-looking statements. Also, note that all dollar figures referred to today are in US dollars unless stated otherwise.
Before I turn the call over to management, I also want to inform listeners that during today's call, for competitive reasons, we will not be discussing company-specific EBITDA or EBITDA margin for Mid-Am Building Supply or other information considered sensitive to the continued success of HDI's ongoing acquisitions program. I'll now turn the call over to Rob Brown. Rob?
Thanks, Ian, and good morning, everyone. Given that you're tuning in this morning, you've all seen the disclosures we made yesterday afternoon related to our acquisition of Mid-Am Building Supply. We're excited to share the key highlights we see for HDI and our investors as a result of this acquisition. Turning now to slide three. Late yesterday, HDI announced its acquisition of Mid-Am Building Supply Inc. We're acquiring the business by means of an asset purchase for a price of $270 million. The purchase price will be funded by an expansion of our current credit lines, which Faiz will elaborate on later in this call. The acquisition is expected to be 15% accretive to earnings per share on a pro forma basis. We expect to complete the final closing of the transaction in February.
Mid-Am Building Supply, which we'll refer to today as Mid-Am, is a leading wholesale distributor of building products to home builder distribution yards or pro dealers concentrated in the Midwest. As we'll discuss today and going forward, we see this acquisition as an important strategic addition to our capabilities in the pro dealer customer channel. Mid-Am represents a contiguous expansion of our current pro dealer distribution network. From its five distribution facilities, Mid-Am serves customers located in 10 Midwest states. Mid-Am was founded in 1967 and is headquartered in Missouri. Its success has been built on a strong sales network, a diverse product portfolio, and a workforce with extensive experience in the building products industry. Mid-Am is expected to add approximately $270 million in pro forma revenues, and it provides a broad range of products, including doors, millwork, and other diversified building materials.
Over its history, Mid-Am has developed broad customer reach. It services 1,600 customer locations from its six distribution and sales offices, and its deep customer relationships are managed by a sales team that has worked with Mid-Am and its customers for many years. Moving now to slide four. Mid-Am's geographic footprint represents a natural extension from our current operations, filling in white space on our map with one of the leading brands in the Midwest. Mid-Am strategically expands our access to the pro dealer channel. When combined with the strong access into the pro dealer and home center channels we gained when we acquired Novo Building Products in August of last year, we've substantially increased the addressable market opportunity for HDI's products. Over time, we also anticipate realizing meaningful synergies, including cross-selling opportunities for certain of our product lines.
The combined company will represent an attractive platform to both our vendors and customers and allow us to deliver additional value in the chain. With Mid-Am's pro dealer focus and product mix, we've expanded our access to the new home and repair remodel markets in the U.S., where we see multiple factors supporting a multi-year growth opportunity for HDI. Of course, Mid-Am adds further strength to HDI's financial capabilities. This is a well-run and profitable business. We expect earnings per share accretion from the acquisition to be 15%, and as noted, we'll pursue additional synergies going forward. Our pro forma leverage ratio will be approximately 3x, which is well within our comfort range and keeps us positioned to continue executing on our growth strategies. Turning now to slide five.
Looking at a combined HDI with Mid-Am, plus our Novo acquisition completed in August of last year, we have significantly diversified the business from a customer segment perspective. Pro forma, we have increased our participation in the pro dealer and home center channels to 25% and 15% respectively. We believe this more than doubles our addressable market going forward. Customers in the pro dealer and home center channels tend to be larger than industrial manufacturers. They increasingly want to do business with national suppliers who can meet their needs by managing complex supply chains and logistics models in multiple regions. We believe our platform is well positioned to service and grow with these customers. From an end market perspective, we've increased our access to the residential and R&R markets, which we now expect to make up roughly 80% of our overall sales.
This makes us a very important link between our suppliers and the customers they want to access throughout North America. That takes me now to my next topic, and we're on slide six. We see strong demand drivers in our end markets, and we're equipped with a diverse suite of products to take advantage of this. In North America, we continue to see favorable market dynamics in the new home and R&R markets. On the new home side, new residential in the U.S. has been chronically underbuilt, and this supports a multi-year runway for new home building in the U.S. Demographic changes are helping as well. Millennials are the largest group of the population and are making home purchases. Despite the likelihood of increased borrowing costs, interest rates are still at near historic lows. The outlook for repair and remodel also remains strong.
People have more home equity, and they're spending more time in their homes. The average age of U.S. housing stock also continues to increase. These factors are driving strong demand in the repair and remodel market. New home demand also helps to drive R&R because people either take on home improvements to enhance sale value or they remodel after their home purchase. Mid-Am strengthens our access to these markets and brings important new value to our platform. Mid-Am's product mix is diverse. It includes doors, millwork, and other diversified building materials. Within their door business, they're able to add value through services offered at four locations. Our current HDI team has proven experience in Mid-Am's main product categories and will work closely with their team to identify cross-selling opportunities.
All told, these are complementary businesses, and as we prefer to see, we don't expect any conflict in terms of overlapping vendor or customer issues as we bring the two businesses together. We only see positives. Moving now to slide seven. We think that Mid-Am is an excellent addition to HDI and demonstrates continued execution of our plan to deliver strategic growth through M&A. When we look at the combination of Novo Building Products, which we acquired mid last year, and the acquisition of Mid-Am, we've added nearly $1 billion in annual sales pro forma through these transactions. We are firmly established now in the pro dealer and home center customer channel. This has significantly broadened the markets for which we can bring HDI's deep expertise and worldwide sourcing of architectural building products.
HDI continues to enhance its position with a business model that is diversified by geography, by customer channel, and by product mix. Our business model generates significant cash flow. We have attractive opportunities to deploy that capital and a track record of doing so successfully while managing our leverage within a comfortable range. Mid-Am is our 11th acquisition in the last five years. During this time period, we've added CAD 1.4 billion in revenues through our strategic acquisition program. We continue to see opportunity for growth. The building product space remains fragmented, which creates avenues to grow our business through acquisitions. We believe that the HDI platform brings unique advantages to the building products market, and they can be leveraged across our brands and business to deliver significant value for customers and for our shareholders. With that, I wanna welcome the Mid-Am team.
We're excited to have you as a key part of HDI. I'll now pass the conversation over to Faiz Karmally to go over the financial highlights. Faiz Karmally?
Thanks, Rob, and good morning, everyone. I'm happy to highlight some of the financial details of the transaction and talk about some of the financial capabilities that Mid-Am adds to HDI. As Rob mentioned earlier, the total acquisition price is $270 million, and we expect earnings per share accretion of 15%. We're making an asset purchase on a cash and a debt-free basis, and we're funding the full acquisition price by upsizing of our credit facilities from the current borrowing capacity of $525 million to a new total of $900 million. I would also note that our borrowing rates are not changing as a result of this amendment to our credit facility. The upsizing supports this transaction, and importantly, it keeps us well positioned from a balance sheet perspective to pursue new opportunities as they arise.
Pro forma for this transaction, we forecast a bank debt to adjusted EBITDA after rents ratio of approximately 3x, which is well within our comfort range, and we expect our leverage to decline below 3x as we progress through 2022, notwithstanding potential future acquisitions activity. Looking at Mid-Am's financial capabilities, we're expecting approximately $270 million in full year 2021 sales. From a gross margin percentage perspective, Mid-Am is very similar to our base business. I want to echo Rob's comments and pass on my welcome to the entire Mid-Am team. I'd also like to thank our banking partners for extending their financial partnership with HDI. Now I'll pass the call back over to Rob. Rob?
Yeah, that's great, Faiz. Thank you. Operator Kevin, we're happy to open the line up now to cover off any analyst questions.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to ask a question, please signal by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. Please ensure that the mute function of your telephone is switched off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. Again, it's star one to ask a question. Our first question today comes from Hamir Patel of CIBC Capital Markets.
Hi, good morning. Rob, could you speak to the level of synergies that you're targeting? Where you see the greatest opportunities and likely timing to realize them?
Yeah. I think what's helpful is we're coming out of the gates with 15% accretion on a pre-synergy basis. That's always very helpful. Then, as I mentioned in my prepared remarks, we do have some very good synergy opportunities. Just to expand on that a little bit, there's some things that we've got in our existing brands where we perform very well. As an example, finished plywood on the hardwood plywood side within HDI's traditional brands, we're extremely strong in that particular product category, and there's things that we can bring to Mid-Am in terms of cross selling opportunities.
Likewise, when we purchased Novo in summer last year, extremely strong business in moldings and stair parts, and those are, you know, product categories that Mid-Am participates in, but Novo is going to bring some additional expertise and value for them. Likewise, going the other direction, you know, this is a very good door business, including value-added door services that Mid-Am runs, and there's things that they do that we're pretty excited about and we'll be looking at bringing back the other way to some of our other door facilities in our network. So those are kind of headline, you know, revenue opportunities, Hamir.
There's all the usual things you would think of just in terms of being efficient and saving costs in back-end areas like in insurance and working off a bigger base with employee benefit plans to get better rates, those types of things. Those are the ones that I would kind of highlight for now. In terms of timing, just as we've done with Novo previously, we'll go through a process post-closing to have teams really form up how to go after those opportunities. It's usually, you know, a 60- to 90-day process, and after that, we start to see some benefits. We're already seeing that on the Novo side. I think it'll be a similar story most likely here on the Mid-Am side.
Great. Thanks, Rob. That's really helpful. Just the last question from me. Faiz, could you speak to the amount of lease liabilities associated with the transaction?
Yeah. Hey, Hamir. Upon close of the acquisition, we are going to enter into lease agreements for the six facilities that we're acquiring. We expect the lease liability associated with that to be approximately $15. We're just sort of, it'll depend on the terms of the final lease agreement which are being finalized, but, it'll be in that range.
Okay, great. Thanks. That's all I had. I'll turn it over.
Our next question comes from Yuri Lynk of Canaccord Genuity.
Hey, good morning, guys, and congratulations on the deal.
Hey, Yuri. Good morning.
Rob, how do you think about valuation on this deal? I mean, it looks like you're paying a higher valuation than for Novo. Can you just talk about how you think about valuation in this business and how you arrived at the purchase price?
Yeah. I'll stay in my lane just relative to the opening comments that, you know, for competitive reasons, we don't wanna get into individual valuation metrics. But, I mean, there's no surprises here, Yuri. We obviously look at earning streams and look at, you know, multiples that we would apply to that within a range. It's always tough, I know, to kinda make comparisons on a price to sales basis, which is probably what you're trying to do. I mean, from our perspective, you know, the key headline that we'd wanna emphasize is just around the EPS accretion at 15%. As you can imagine, there's usually some goodwill and intangibles that travel along with these acquisitions.
Some of those are amortizable in terms of customer relationships. That 15% EPS, you know, when you look at that on a free cash flow per share basis, which is what we like to do, the accretion on that basis we expect to be even higher than the 15% advertised.
Right. Okay. Can you talk a little bit about the growth profile of this business over the last, say, three to four years?
It's a business that's performed well. We obviously have a very good benchmark with our existing 83 operations to kind of track that, and it measures up very favorably. It's done, you know, well from a volume perspective, in addition to some of the product pricing appreciation that the industry enjoyed last year in 2021.
I'll leave it there. I'll turn it over. Thanks.
Our next question comes from Zachary Evershed of National Bank Financial.
Morning, guys. Congrats on the acquisition.
Hey, Zach.
Hey, thanks Zach.
How good would you say Mid-Am's current supply chain is versus what HDI has set up overseas?
They've done well. I mean, it's a very diversified business. It has you know, broad participation from a product mix perspective. Full credit to the team there on their sourcing and vendor management process. I mean, clearly though, HDI as a company is a business that has a very well-established worldwide sourcing capability just due to size and scale. It's a key advantage for our company, and there's things that we can do and accomplish there that will you know, certainly add to and augment the supply chain that Mid-Am has got in place themselves, and we think that there's probably some synergies there as well.
Good color. Thanks. On that 15% accretion EPS figure, are you calculating that on 2021 earnings, your current run rate or your expectations for 2022?
Oh, hey, Zach, it's Faiz here. That 15% accretion to earnings per share comment is based on 2022. That's our expectation for the coming year.
Perfect. Thanks. Based on your comments, it seems like you're still rolling on the acquisitions. You don't think that you'll need to take any time to integrate the two big ones that you just did? You're still good to move forward on your pipeline?
We're still good to move forward on the pipeline. You know, Faiz can speak more to the balance sheet if you need that, but we've got room to continue to look at opportunities as they come up. I'll just mention organizational capacity. You know, we do have a deep team, and we're spreading the acquisitions work and integration work operationally around. So it's not like we're you know, pushing all this work through one point of contact. We've got breadth there. And with that, it allows us to kinda continue to be active, Zach, going forward. So we intend to be, and there's lots going on in the market today, and we intend to be looking at those as they come up.
Appreciate the answers. Thank you very much. I'll turn it over.
We can now go to Ketan Mamtora of BMO Capital Markets.
Thank you and congrats on the acquisition. First question, just curious, you know, from your perspective, you know, with this acquisition, do you think it's more, you know, sort of driven by the ability, you know, to increase your kind of the pro dealer channel participation, or is it kind of more driven by sort of, you know, Mid-Am's strength in the doors and the millwork side? I'm just curious, kind of as you look at it, you know, what was the most attractive to you guys as you looked at Mid-Am?
Morning, Ketan. That's a tough one if I was trying to pick between the two 'cause they're both attractive. We have, since 2016, built a very strong door business, and we've got foundational relationships with, you know, the big door manufacturers you would be familiar with. By bringing in Mid-Am, it just solidifies. From our perspective, so we do very much like that opportunity. I would probably say your first point around channel participation was, is very attractive. You know, the Novo acquisition in August gave us an outstanding base, and we're now building off that base.
We were able to build off of it in that, you know, pro dealer channel with the geographic entry where it just fills in a very nice, you know, bit of white space we had on the map between our existing Novo operations participating in that channel and now the Mid-Am operations.
Got it. That's helpful. If I kind of look at further growth opportunities, would you say? Is it fair to say that, you know, the channel participation still remains kind of an important, you know, sort of an interest area for you guys as you grow? Or you think you've reached a point where you think you've got a pretty solid, you know, position in the market?
No, there's more that we can do there, certainly. I mean, we're pleased with what we've established in a fairly short period of time. I mentioned, you know, it's close to a pickup of $1 billion in sales, and we really like the broadening of the addressable market because these products all make sense to us. We've got a lot of experience and maturity with them, but now we've got a, you know, more places that we can take it. So, you know, we look at it as there's more opportunity in this channel. We've done these two acquisitions, but we expect that there's other things that will come up that'll still be complementary.
Got it. Faiz, quick one for you. You said this, the pro forma leverage of 3x is still well within the comfort range. How would you think about the comfort range?
Yeah. Hey, Ketan. In terms of the comfort range, you know, for the right acquisition, we could take that into the high threes, I think, and still be in our comfort range. You know, the leverage profile of the balance sheet of the business, as you know, it's just high quality working capital. You know, in periods when we need to, we can work that down very quickly and turn that into cash. Like, you know, like we did at the onset of COVID, you know, or just over a year ago.
We're happy with the cash flow profile of the business such that, you know, running for a period of time at kind of the high threes for the right larger strategic acquisition is something we're very comfortable, you know, doing.
Got it. That's very helpful, Faiz. Good luck with the integration.
Appreciate it. Thanks, Ketan.
Yeah. Thank you very much.
As a reminder, please press star one to ask a question. We can now go to Jeff Fenwick of Cormark Securities.
Hi. Good morning. Good morning, everyone. I think most of my questions have been answered. Maybe one that's a little more granular just around the product mix of Mid-Am. How similar is it? Is it weighted more towards some of these value-added products like doors or other areas like that? Like, how does it look in terms of the versus the mix of HDI currently?
Yeah. Hey, morning, Jeff. Good question. I would describe it as a bit broader. You can look at the Mid-Am website and get a sense that they've found their way into a product mix that makes sense for their customer base. Often their customer base is a more rural based yard customer set, and they found their way into the right mix that makes sense to fill trucks and service customers with what they need from a distribution perspective. Within that though, you'll see there are, you know, brands and branded products that you would expect. I think what we were maybe most pleased with is there's a good base of products that match up very well to what we do today.
In some of those categories, we can look at it and say, "Actually, we think HDI brings some things that can make even stronger in those categories 'cause we've got expertise." Then, you know, as always, when we do some acquisitions, we tend to pick up something that's a little bit new or different and learn our way into that. The same may be true here, but we like the product mix that Mid-Am brings overall and thinks it, you know, is very complementary and fits well with our existing knowledge and kinda sourcing relationships.
Okay. Maybe just one question around the credit facility or the upsized facility there, Faiz. You said the funding cost is basically unchanged. Anything in terms of the covenants that might be looser or tighter on the back of that or does it continue to be pretty consistent?
Oh, hey, Jeff. No, it's pretty consistent. The covenants themselves are going to be the same as what we negotiated in our credit facility when we closed the Novo acquisition in August of last year. We haven't necessarily disclosed the, you know, the covenants. They're based on a grid, and there's some complexity to them. What I would say is, the way they're structured, we don't expect the bank covenants to be an inhibitor in terms of, you know, where we wanna to take the company and how we wanna use the balance sheet. We've got room there between where we are today and the covenants to operate comfortably.
Okay, great. That's all I had. Thank you.
There are no further questions at this time.
Okay. Thanks again for joining us, and do please reach out to Faiz, Ian, or myself if you've got any follow-up questions. Happy to take those. Otherwise, I wish everybody a good day.
Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's conference call. We thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.