Hello, welcome to the AAON, Inc. fourth quarter 2021 earnings conference call. At this time, all lines are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. At that time, if you have a question, you will be asked to press star one on your touch-tone phone.
If you are listening to the live event via the web and would like to ask a question on the telephone, please dial in using the instructions provided to you and then press star one. As a reminder, this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the event over to our host, Mr. Joseph Mondillo, Director of Investor Relations. Mr. Mondillo, you go ahead.
Thank you, Andrea. Good afternoon, everyone. The press release announcing our fourth quarter financial results was issued after the market closed today and can be found on our corporate website, aaon.com. On the call with me today are Gary Fields, President and CEO, and Rebecca Thompson, CFO and Treasurer.
Just gonna begin with our customary forward-looking disclaimer. To the extent any statement presented herein deals with information that is not historical, including the outlook for the remainder of the year, such statement is necessarily forward-looking and made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, the Securities Act of 1933, and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, each as amended.
As such, it is subject to the occurrence of many events outside AAON's control that could cause AAON's results to differ materially from those interest rates. Please see the risk factors contained in our most recent SEC filings, including the annual report on Form 10-K and the quarterly report on Form 10-Q. With that, I'll turn over the call to Rebecca.
Thank you, Joe. I'd like to begin by discussing the comparative results of the three months ended December 31, 2021 versus December 31, 2020. Net sales were up 16.8% to $136.3 million from $116.7 million. Net sales for the quarter were primarily due to price increases, which contributed approximately 10%.
The acquisition of BasX Solutions, which closed on December 10, contributed about 3%. Our gross profit decreased 21.7% to $26.5 million from $33.9 million. As a percentage of sales, gross profit was 19.5% in the quarter just ended, compared to 29.1% in 2020. The decline in gross profit was mainly related to supply chain issues that resulted in production constraints and operational inefficiencies.
Another contributing factor was material cost and wages rising quicker than our price increases could counteract. Selling, general, and administrative expenses increased 44.4% to $21.1 million from $14.6 million in 2020. Including $4.4 million of acquisition-related transaction fees, SG&A expenses increased year-over-year 14.4%.
As a percent of sales, SG&A excluding these fees decreased to 12.3% of total sales compared to 12.5% in the same period in 2020. SG&A as a percent of sales increased mainly due to lower profit sharing expenses, which was a result of our lower pretax earnings compared to the year ago period. We had an income tax benefit of $0.8 million due to our lower earnings in the quarter and our excess tax benefit from stock awards of $1.6 million.
Adjusted net income, which is a non-GAAP measure, increased 35.5% to $9.5 million or 7% of sales, compared to $14.8 million or 12.7% of sales in the prior year period. Adjusted diluted earnings per share, which is a non-GAAP measure, increased 35.7% to $0.18 per share from $0.28 per share.
Now to the comparative results for the year ended December 31, 2021 versus December 31, 2020. Net sales in 2021 were up 3.9% to $534.5 million from $514.6 million in 2020. Net sales were up primarily due to price increases, which contributed approximately 5% for the year.
Volumes were down due to our plant shutdown in January for planned maintenance, weather-related shutdown in February, and various supply chain issues in the latter half of the year. The acquisition of BasX Solutions contributed about 1%. Our gross profit increased 11.6% to $137.8 million from $155.8 million.
As a percentage of sales, gross profit was 25.8% in the year just ended compared to 30.3% in 2020. Gross profit was down because of a handful of factors, production constraints due to supply chain issues and material inflation being the primary two. Selling, general, and administrative expenses increased 13.4% to $68.6 million from $60.5 million in 2020.
Including $4.4 million of acquisition-related transaction fees, SG&A expenses increased year-over-year 6.1%. As a percentage of sales, SG&A excluding these fees increased to 12% of total sales compared to 11.8% in 2020. Our effective tax rate decreased to 19.1% from 22.5%.
The decrease is the result of a lower income tax rate in Oklahoma, along with increased excess tax benefits on stock awards compared to 2020. Adjusted net income in 2021 decreased 17.1% to $62.1 million, or 11.6% of sales, compared to $74.9 million, or 14.6% of sales in 2020. Adjusted diluted earnings per share decreased by 17.7% to $1.16 per share from $1.21 per share.
Now looking at the balance sheet, you'll see that we had a working capital balance of $131.3 million versus $161.2 million at December 31, 2020. Unrestricted cash totaled $2.9 million at December 31, 2021, and total debt was $40 million. During the quarter, we used $103.4 million of cash to finance the acquisition of BasX Solutions, and we drew down $40 million on our revolving line of credit to finance working capital needs.
In the first quarter, we will be closing on the real estate related to the BasX sale, which will cost us $22 million. Early in the year, working capital will also be a use of cash before reversing in the second half of the year.
I anticipate net debt will climb a little more at the end of the first quarter before beginning to come back down. Our current ratio is approximately 2.5 to 1. Capital expenditures in 2021 were $65.4 million, down 18.3% from a year ago. Capital investments were down and were less than we expected at the beginning of the year, due primarily to delayed projects, which were a result of supply chain issues and other economic factors.
We have not slowed our growth-related investments at all. In fact, we've continued to be aggressive with our investment planning to help facilitate the robust organic growth we anticipate over the next several years. In 2022, we expect capital expenditures to be $100.4 million.
The company has stock repurchases of $22.5 million during the year ended December 31, 2021. Shareholder equity per diluted share is $8.68 at December 31, 2021, compared to $6.61 at December 31, 2020. I'd now like to turn the call over to our CEO and President, Gary Fields.
Good afternoon. Well, in the fourth quarter, there were three major positive achievements in the quarter. The backlog continues to grow at a significant rate, reaching a new record level. We closed on the acquisition of BasX Solutions, which was the company's first acquisition of substantial size in 20 years.
In October, we hosted our first sales event in several years with our independent sales channel, where we introduced a package of new products that we think are gonna be game changers. Obviously, the fourth quarter financial results were disappointing.
Sales, gross margin, operating margin, earnings were all weaker than we were even thinking when we last spoke to you in November. However, I believe we are gonna emerge from this a much stronger company, which is going to help facilitate a robust growth trajectory. Speaking of the growth trajectory, we believe our long-term outlook remains intact.
For those who have listened to us recently, we have aspirational goals, which include growing revenue organically in the double digits per year over the next several years. Nothing has happened over the last 9 months leading us to believe these goals are unachievable. In fact, we're as optimistic on the outlook as we've ever been.
The backlog reflects that, and we're beginning to pull out of a lot of the issues that were constraining our ability to produce. Let's take a little deeper dive look in this quarter, and then we'll talk about the outlook.
The environment our industry's been facing over the last 12 months is one of the most challenging ever, if not the most challenging in the last 30 years. Inflation's rampant. Supply chain issues have made managing operations extremely tough. This is all while trying to manage through the challenges of the pandemic.
Inflation pressures continued through the fourth quarter. We've been very disciplined with our pricing and are still confident we'll fully recoup gross margins at the 30%+ level. We need to work faster through the lower margin backlogs for producing products priced at our most recent price increases.
Unfortunately, supply chain issues have prevented this from happening in fourth quarter. Fourth quarter was the most challenging quarter of the year when it came to supply chain. October and November were particularly tough months.
The supply chain issues led to less than optimal production rates, causing operational inefficiencies, unabsorbed fixed costs, and an unfavorable mix of products that were priced at lower pricing than our recent price increases. The supply chain issues were a huge constraint to production, but also exacerbated the inflationary effects. While there were some positives in the quarter when we're looking forward.
First, at this point in time, we believe October and November were the worst we'll see regarding supply chain issues. December showed improvement, January and now February were even better. Margin profile of our backlog is quickly improving. Lastly, I said earlier, we're gonna emerge from this a stronger company. These supply chain issues have forced us to significantly increase the number of multi-source components.
I also mentioned earlier that this has been one of the most challenging environments our industry has faced in 30-plus years. Facing challenges like this almost always leads to a stronger operation and a more capable management team if you have the right people. I'm very confident we have the right people managing this company. We feel what we have gone through is gonna make us a much stronger company, help us execute our growth strategy more effectively.
Let's look back on some of those achievements a little deeper. The backlog. At the end of 2021, total backlog was up 250% from a year ago and up 43% from the end of Q3. Excluding BasX backlog, organic backlog was up 201% year-over-year and 23% quarter-over-quarter. Organic bookings in the quarter were up year-over-year 67%.
The growth rate is consistent to what we saw in the previous two quarters. The strong demand continued through the end of the year. Order trends remained strong through the first two months of 2022, including both legacy AAON and BasX. This performance is remarkable, especially when compared to the industry, which is not growing nearly as fast. It tells us we have the right strategy and we're executing.
Strategy includes focusing on customized, high-performance, energy-efficient HVAC equipment that takes advantage of secular trends like decarbonization and indoor air quality. This has been the foundation of AAON for 30 years. While much of our market is just starting to talk about manufacturing more capable equipment to meet these new demands, we've mastered it over decades.
Lower cost of ownership, selling a high-quality product at a minimal price premium that has the longest useful age on the market, most energy efficient, easiest to service and maintain. Continuous improvement of productivity.
Our manufacturing operations are highly automated. We've always had a culture of maximizing productivity. We still see many areas of improvement, though, and we'll continue to focus on this. We're strengthening our sales channel even more.
We have the strongest sales channel in the industry, and we're assisting our channel partners more now than ever through various ways to help them create their success. We believe that what we're doing to support our channel partners is leading to market share gains. Innovation and new products.
I'll touch on that a little more here in a minute. Leading in innovation is core to AAON. We've focused on parts and service. Parts sales were a record for us in 2021, growing 26.3%. In the total of revenue, parts made up 8%, which is the highest % of total sales in company history.
Overall, the growth in backlog reassures us that we have the right strategy in place. Also, we measure the size of our total addressable market being 30 billion, which is about 50 times the size of our company.
We think there's a lot more potential going forward. In our end markets, our strength is broad-based. Data center, warehouse related to e-commerce, growth facilities, education, manufacturing, healthcare and retail were all strong points for us. Hotels are weaker. Replacement drove a lot of demand in 2021.
New construction markets beginning to pick up. Leading indicators continue to point to a recovery in construction following the slow 2021. ABI, Dodge Index, non-residential construction starts, all of these indicators are pointing positively.
The big positive of the quarter was the backlog and the orders. Now let's talk about BasX Solutions acquisition for a second. That was our second big achievement. First acquisition of substantial size in 20 years. Historically, AAON has not been acquisitive at all. This was a real special deal for us.
We think it will generate accelerated growth for AAON and very attractive returns for our shareholders. The two and a half months that we've owned BasX have been extremely pleasing. You know, you always through all the negotiations, there were many metrics that, BasX had projections on, some of which looked pretty aspirational.
I'm here to tell you they hit every one of them right on the bullseye of the target. I couldn't be more pleased. The collaboration with the BasX group, bringing some opportunities for AAON, expanded opportunities that we always knew were possible if we had that kind of a partner, they're materializing very quickly.
Myself and Dave Benson made a trip recently up into the upper Midwest to visit with some sales channel partners and some of their end user clients, and came away from there with some outstanding opportunities that hopefully when we talk to you next time, we'll be able to tell you a little about capitalizing on those opportunities.
In October, we hosted a sales meeting in Dallas. We had around 600 sales channel partners there. One of the things we did was we introduced this state-of-the-art showroom trailer. Now, other manufacturers have some showroom trailers, but none of them have anything at all like this.
This thing is just outrageously wonderful. It's a Class 8 truck, which is great big Kenworth truck pulling a 53-foot trailer, but it expands on both sides to make a 1,000 sq ft showroom when it's parked.
It does this all with hydraulics, and it's very easy to do. It has a touch screen that's in three segments. Total length of it, I believe, is about 26 feet. You can show three different films at the same time or one film across the whole thing.
I mean, it's just wonderful. You've got virtual reality in there where we put headsets on people and show them how to build a unit, fly them through the laboratory, fly them through the manufacturing plant and the process.
There's just so many things that are just wonderful for people to see. We've got quite a bit of equipment in there. We've got controls that we build in our Fairfield facility there, and it's worked very nicely. It's been traveling across the country since October when we took possession of it, and continues to do that.
The reviews on it from a marketing standpoint are just wonderful. Some game-changing products that we introduced, we had told you earlier about vertical configuration water-source heat pumps. We had a water-source heat pump. The model name of it is F1 because it is very, very efficient.
The new model is called ProFit because it fits in a professional manner, exactly replacing the majority of units that are out there. It's very backwardly compatible. Reception from the sales channel partners has been great.
We've talked a lot about decarbonization. Currently, about 64% of all rooftop units manufactured in the world have gas heat. We believe that trend will begin to reverse itself and that these units will become electric heat.
A sufficient way to do that in a package rooftop unit, common application is air source heat pump. Now, we've manufactured these for a very long time, but what we didn't have the capability of until recently was low ambient or cold climate capable units. We were kinda limited to around 25 or 30 degrees Fahrenheit in the low end of where the unit was effective.
We've moved that down beyond zero and have very nice efficiency at 0 degree Fahrenheit. We're working towards lower than that even. Let's talk about our marketing efforts, what we're doing.
Historically, AAON has not been all that focused on the marketing aspects. They've relied on the sales channel partners to have technical expertise to make the sale. This is not changing in that regard, but we're giving them more support tools.
That trailer I talked about is considerable. We're building a new customer experience center that's going to be completed by the end of the year that will have a lot of dynamic features to it to show people why our fan system is better than most of our peers' fan systems. You know, a lot of the energy efficiency gains.
This new customer experience center will be connected to and coupled to Norman Asbjornson Innovation Center, otherwise known as our laboratory. We're gonna invest more in marketing so that we can really tell the story of what we're doing out there on a broader base. We're not the niche player we used to be. We are moving more mainstream.
Order book supports that, and I think it's time for us to get our marketing in accordance with that. Capital investments, we've continued to invest in the company. Rebecca stated we've got a budget of $100 million, $100.4 million, almost double what we spent in 2021. We intended to spend around 70-something million, but there was supply chain constraints.
I mean, you know, some of the machinery we buy comes from Europe and didn't get here in time. It's coming in now, but it just didn't make it on the 2021 side of the calendar measure. We do have some carryover from last year, but we continue to invest considerably. Maintenance CapEx is around $25 million, so a majority of it's growth related.
Continue to target organic sales growth in the double digits for the next several years, and we'll continue to invest in capacity to help service those bookings. As you can tell, we're very optimistic on the long term. Unfortunately, there's still some uncertainties in the near term. Supply chain issues have eased some, but we're still not back to normal.
Visibility is still quite unclear. This is something we're constantly monitoring on a day-to-day basis. Inflation continues to be a challenge. Starting to see a little softer prices of steel, but most every input cost is up substantially, including components, raw materials, wages, freight. We initiated four price increases since the beginning of 2021, including the latest on January 30. We also announced another price increase earlier today that will be effective on March 31.
We'll continue to be disciplined with price and expect our margins to fully recover. This is something we're constantly monitoring. As you know, we don't provide earnings guidance, but I wanna provide you with some information on how we're thinking about 2022. The following info will pertain to the legacy AAON business.
From January 2021 to January 2022, we initiated 4 price increases across the board for a cumulative 21%. In 2021, we only recognized about 5% of that. The rest of it's in the backlog, so it wasn't realized in 2021, but it is being realized now.
That will have us up double digits in 2022. The price increase that we announced today will be a small benefit to 2022. It really catches toward the end of the year. Mostly, it'll be a 2023 benefit.
Unit volumes were down 2% in 2021, including 6% reduction in our core rooftop units. Depending on construction constraints, which is a question mark. We should have a reasonably easy comp as far as volumes and the backlog is up to date, so we should see recovering volume, particularly in the second half of the year.
There's no structural change in our gross margins. We're confident our gross margins will recover to our target of 30%+. Question is timing. At this point in time, we estimate this will be sometime in the second half of the year. SG&A will be up this year. With earnings expected up, our compensation expense will be up. Higher headcount wages will be the biggest driver, but also things like depreciation and investments in technology will be driving this.
Most years, we expect a little leverage on SG&A, but in this environment, we'd expect SG&A will be up similar to revenue growth. For all the info pertaining to the legacy AAON business, as far as BasX goes, in 2021, the business generated $80.7 million of revenue and $10 million of EBITDA. BasX is on somewhat similar footing as legacy AAON in that backlog and orders are up significantly, but supply chain issues have led to production constraints.
Overall, though, they've done a great job at working through the issues. In 2022, we estimate BasX will generate $95 million-$100 million of revenue and EBITDA margins will be up year-over-year. Based on the backlog, though, we expect profits will be weighted towards the second half of the year.
Overall, we have some macro issues we're dealing with in the near term, but the long-term outlook is very positive. Before I take any questions, I'd like to thank all of our employees. 2021 was a difficult period with all the challenges we faced, including the issues related to the pandemic. I'd also like to thank our channel partners.
We value your business tremendously and will continue to support you. Lastly, I just wanna mention we'll be attending the J.P. Morgan Industrials Conference in New York City on March seventeenth and the Sidoti Virtual Small Cap Conference on March twenty-third and twenty-fourth. I hope to see some of you at those events. For now, I'll open it up to questions.
Thank you. The floor is now open for questions and answers. If you would like to ask a question and have already dialed in, simply press star one on your telephone keypad. If you are only listening to the live event via the web and would like to ask a question on the telephone, please dial in using the instructions provided and then press star one. Our first question is from Brent Thielman of D.A. Davidson. Brent, go ahead when you're ready.
Thank you. Can you hear me?
Yes.
Yeah, maybe first, it sounds like we've transitioned here into a period, sort of December through February, that hasn't seen, you know, the level of disruption we've seen before. Maybe you could just help us out with what's improved in particular in the supply chain that's allowed you to pick up production rates and, you know, what confidence you're getting from suppliers that can kinda meet the requirements you need here in the short run?
Yeah. Good question, Brent. While we didn't have absenteeism of any magnitude on our plant floors in Q4 due to coronavirus, some of our suppliers did, and some of it was in late Q3 when they were manufacturing components and things for us. We really saw a huge choke point in October.
It began to improve a little bit in November, and we were able to get some additional suppliers in place for some of these items. Those were fully in place and helped December a good bit. January almost uninterrupted at all. February to this point, today's the last day of the month, uninterrupted. We do see some with some electronic components coming up, but we're managing real well around those.
We got some equipment in place that helps them select alternative electronic components to put on those boards. They've been very nimble and very responsive. Like I say, things have improved a lot. I don't know what this situation in Ukraine is going to do.
I was reading earlier today that neon and palladium, both of which are used in chip manufacturing, Ukraine's a huge supplier of those. They're just the way this article talked, the electronic situation could get a little more challenging going forward. Right now, I think we've seen a lot of improvements. We're in a much better place.
Okay. Would you expect to be able to run, I mean, provided all that holds, able to run off all the remaining lower priced backlogs here in the first quarter and for them just to carry over in the second quarter as well?
In December, well, let's just kinda dissect October, November, December. October was built completely on backlog that was booked prior to the September first price increase of 21. November was the same way. December, we began to see a little bit of that trickle on the plant floor.
In January, 76% of what we built had the September first price increase, which was 5%. We had a 4%, if you do that math, that'd be 4% better margin profile related to the price increase. February, of course, we're just finishing up today, but the expectation was it would be built almost 100% on that 5% higher price backlog. I think starting the year, like I say, we just nearly got all better quality backlog.
The 8% went into effect January 1. With the way things are flowing, I don't expect to reach that until probably the end of next quarter. We will have at least 4%-5% better margin profile capability related to that price increase from September 1. Most of the pricing we've got in place for this quarter and beginning next quarter was already captured.
I look for good margin improvement related to that higher priced backlog we're using now. In addition to that, we're producing at a rate that's the highest rate that we've ever produced at in both the Oklahoma factory and the Texas factory. I get a daily report on that, and it's the highest numbers on a daily average that we've ever achieved.
This is before we factor in the higher price. It's volume improvement. We're getting materials out there. We're getting units built, so we're gonna perform a good to better Q1. I think you're gonna be very pleased. You know what I'm seeing so far in Q1, unless something drastic happens related to this Ukraine situation next month.
I think we're good. Going forward, we're not seeing anything significant, just little nips here and there, but we're poised to do quite well. BasX is kinda dealing with the same situations. Most of their things are flowing much better now. But there's just not clarity on what else is gonna happen to us, you know, longer term.
Yeah. Understood. Maybe last one for me. I mean, the organic booking is obviously super strong. I know one of the things you talked about is that you've had more advantageous lead times, perhaps versus some of your competition.
I don't know if that still stands, and whether there's a good function of just better confidence there, maybe among customers and the marketing efforts. Maybe if you could just dissect some of those things that are driving such a substantial gain there.
Sure. While our lead times went out just a little bit, we still have an advantageous position with that. I think the improvements we've made in the sales channel, the support we've given them, the tools we've given them are helping them become more effective. When I started here nearly six years ago now running this place, we had regions that were very strong, but they were only a couple of them.
We had multiple regions that were very weak relative to what the market capability was. Now, the regions are fairly uniform in what they're doing in meeting our expectations. You know, very significantly, the Southeast, which should have always been a top performing region for AAON because it fit our equipment profile so well.
It was a horrible performing region prior to me taking over and some of the sales channel adjustments I made there with different sales channel partners have really shown merit. They performed just outstanding in 2021 and beginning in 2022. We have improved the sales channel.
That's brought more business. Our lead times are certainly advantageous. Our utilization of indoor air quality measures that have always been a hallmark for AAON are now more widely recognized throughout the market. It's not a piece of specialty vertical that's looking to have that like it was at one point in time. Now it's more commonplace for people to ask for these things.
Very good. I'll get back in line. Thank you for taking the question.
All right. Thank you.
Okay, just a reminder, if you would like to ask a question and have already dialed in, simply press star one on your telephone keypad. If you are only listening to the live event via the web and would like to ask a question on the telephone, please dial in using the provided and then press star one. I'll now open up our next question from Julio Romero from Sidoti & Company, LLC. Julio, when you're ready, go ahead.
Great. Thanks. Good afternoon, Gary and Rebecca. Just staying on the order trend, the organic orders, you know, still very strong, historically down a bit sequentially, I have $177 million by my math, so slightly down sequentially from the last two quarters. Can you just talk about how orders are trending? Do you see organic order trends accelerating, decelerating or steady going forward?
Well, first off, since that price increase was January first, we always expect that there was some pull forward, and so we expect somewhere around 40-50 days thereafter to be a bit softer. Very pleasantly surprised. It is just outstanding what's going on with bookings. Just outstanding.
I would have to say that it's never been as strong as it's been. We really began this strength late first quarter a year ago. One of the things that I'm looking at is trailing twelve months booking.
The trailing twelve months booking continues to grow. That's why I say it's, you know, that one. Here, I'm trying to pull it up right now. Yeah, when I look at trailing twelve months, I'm just really pleased with what I'm seeing. It continues to go up.
Got it. Makes sense. On that point about the price increases, the one announced today effective March 31,
Yes.
I don't know how much of a price increase that was, and is it across the board in products?
7% across the board.
Got it. That's helpful. Just switching gears to labor, you talked about increased wages, new hiring initiatives. Can you just touch on how headcount at Tulsa and Longview are compared to last quarter?
Let me see if I can find it. Every Tuesday I get headcount. Let's see here. Let me go back a few days. I'll get an updated headcount tomorrow, but in general, I'd say versus last quarter we're up slightly in Longview and up a little bit more in Tulsa.
Here it is right here. Let me look here. All right. We are up. Well, they give me a prior 12 months change, so Oklahoma's up 11% and Texas is up 17% over a year ago. Now let me go back here. That's on 2/22. Let me look at those headcounts real quick. All right, I got those. Let me go back here to December 30.
Yeah, we were up 7% and 19% at that point in time versus a year before then. In absolute headcount, let's see here, 1,955 versus. We're up about 25 people in Oklahoma over last quarter. We are up 30 people in Longview. Both of them have grown headcount. Our turnover ratio in Oklahoma has gone down to just a wonderful number.
A lot of the things that our HR department with their new leadership put in place, working with some of the individuals in plant management, those are all proven concepts. Well, the Director of Manufacturing that was in Oklahoma just helped put all that together. January first, he became the Executive Vice President in Longview, so he's carried some of those things down there.
We've been using them a little bit, but not quite as thoroughly. He's taken those down there. Some of our HR team from Oklahoma decided they wanted to live in Texas, and so they've gone down there.
We have a very uniform approach. That's the results of it. We're growing both headcounts. Right now, headcount is not our constraining factor. It remains materials. That's gotten better as well. Like I said, it's doing a lot better now.
Got it. Appreciate the color. Good to hear about the retention rate. Just quick clarification on the gross margin commentary. Gary, did you say you expect gross margin challenges in the first half, but you'll see a recovery to 30% in the second half?
Yeah. I'm not gonna call them challenges so much, but you know, 30% is dead center, bullseye. We give a 28%-32% range. I think we're gonna be within the range the entire year. So far what I'm seeing every quarter is gonna be in the range, but it's going to be strengthening throughout the year.
That on year-end, I expect to be 30%+ on the total year. Quarter by quarter I look for it to strengthen each quarter. A lot of this is due to price increase coming on board, offsetting more stably the pricing pressures. Price cost ratios are gonna be better. In addition to that, we've really got the production side of the business streamlined very well.
Very confident management that's now quite veteran at this. I just see improving production. Each day that goes by, production seems to grow just a bit more. I'm very pleased with how we'll be absorbing its cost better.
Great. Thanks very much for taking my questions, and best of luck with 2022.
Thanks to you, Julio.
All right. That appears to be all the questions we have for today. Presenters, did you have any final remarks?
I think we're all set, Andrea. Thank you.
Perfect. Well, thank you so much. This concludes today's event. You may now disconnect. Have a great day.
All right. Thank you. See you all at