Cable management systems. They're one of the leading players in the U.S. here. We have with us the CFO, John Deitzer, and we also have Matt Kline, Vice President of Treasury and Investor Relations. Thanks for joining us today.
Thank you, Justin. Appreciate everybody joining us here today as well.
I thought, maybe we could start out on guidance. You guys had your earnings report, you know, somewhat recently here, and you had delivered ahead of expectations revenue, EBITDA, EPS, but you maintained the full year guidance. Just wanted to check in, see how things have been progressing since you reported, on how things are tracking relative to expectations, you know, at the start of the year.
Yeah. Thank you. Again, thank you all for joining us here today. We were pleased with our first quarter results. As you mentioned, we were, you know, at the top end of our range or within expectations. Really, in the first quarter, there were several things that we're pretty pleased about. First of all, volume growth in the quarter was just right around 2.5%, but we also had a few less shipping days, so on a day's basis, we're probably even slightly higher. That was a positive momentum for us. For the year, we do have an expectation of mid-single digit volume growth for the year.
Slightly under that in the first quarter, but do project that to increase as we move throughout the year, and I'm sure we'll talk a little bit more about that. Also in the first quarter, you know, pretty excited about the positive momentum we had in it from a productivity standpoint and an operational efficiency. That was a key driver and a positive. We did have a few things that were somewhat isolated benefits that we had in the quarter from a productivity and operational efficiency standpoint that won't necessarily repeat into the future, but did have some, you know, benefits in the first quarter. Really pleased about those items in the first quarter.
Also from an ASP perspective, one thing we saw in the first quarter was our average selling prices were down also about 2.5%-3%. That was. The rate of change of that decline, though, was significantly reduced from where it had been historically. In the prior year first quarter, I think we were around 12%-13%, and last year in the second quarter, we were around 16%-17%. This year we're down around 2.5%-3%. I'm sure we'll talk about some of those dynamics, but we are seeing the rate of change and decline of our ASP, which has been. We've been on a multi-year journey of pricing normalization, and so we've seen that change start to you know, normalize and reduce.
Given where we're at here in the quarter, probably difficult to, you know, articulate too much about the forward look versus what we said back in, you know, early February on the earnings call. The only thing I'll say about the first quarter, it was slightly above, but it was somewhat within our expectations and within the expectations for the year. We're always gonna have a little bit of flow as you have between quarters and things like that. We were pleased with the results and the execution in the first quarter for a lot of the items we just talked about, you know, and then provided the rest of the outlook.
Okay. Great. I guess I think on the call, you had also outlined that you're anticipating more of a ramp up in the second half, so more heavily weighted in H2 than H1. Maybe you could just walk through what are the key drivers of that ramp that you're anticipating and what visibility you have into those at this point.
Yeah. Great. In our business, you know, as Justin kind of articulated at the start, and for those of us that don't know us, we primarily service the non-residential construction industry. Also do have some exposure to the residential construction industry, and then some other end markets, the solar industry as well, that we'll touch on in a minute. Given our exposure to the construction industry in general, we do have that natural seasonal element. Our fiscal year ends on September thirtieth. Our spring and summer, you know, is really the high point of our volume and expectations is, it aligns with the summer construction season. Naturally, we would historically had seen a higher second half than first half, just given that seasonal dynamic.
We definitely see that element playing out this year. Over the past few years, there's been some other ancillary dynamics, whether it was, you know, Liberation Day last year, you know, kind of somewhat causing disruption in the market or some of the other events that we've talked about over the past few years, COVID, et cetera, kind of dislocating some of that. But this year we are anticipating a more normal seasonal ramp second half versus first half. That's kind of the first underlying assumption. Second is we do see, you know, low single digit volume growth for the market consistent with what we talked about, you know, that 3% Dodge's growth we saw in the first quarter. You know, that's consistent in the market.
Our ability to outgrow that, we do have that mid-single digit volume expectations really driven by a few, you know, Atkore specific items. First, we are expecting, you know, our solar torque tube business to grow here in calendar 2026. That's been a business that's had some ups and downs for us over the past few years, but we think, you know, given where our operational efficiency is today, now finally nicely lining up with the market conditions, we're set up to execute and drive volume out of the facility where we made some investments in Northwest Indiana the past few years. Excited about that, and that would be a second half driver here versus, you know, really the, what we've seen in the first quarter. Other key parts of the business would be our construction services business.
This would be where we do for a large project owner, whether it's in a data center or a chip manufacturing facility or another heavy industrial, you know, construction project where we have a more holistic solution from the engineering and design work up front through the manufacturing of the product and, specifically in our metal framing and cable tray product lines, through to the assembly, you know, close by or, you know, somewhat geographically close to the final project, and then the assembly on site. We have line of sight to a few of those larger projects that should start to happen in the back half of this year. They are, you know, pretty sizable.
We've had some of those the past few years, and we've talked about when we see the ramp of those fall off, you know, we can have a little bit of lumpiness. That comes through in our metal framing, cable management, and construction services product category, which is roughly north of 25% of company sales today. That's now become somewhat of our largest product category. You know, in totality, it combines several things in there. Taking that with the growth in solar, the seasonal ramp, some other investments in capacity and capability that we've made over the past few years, those are the items which give us, you know, a higher expectation for the second half than the first half.
Got it. Just maybe following up on that, where do you have the most visibility in terms of like, do you have orders and backlog secured for solar at this point in time, or for construction services, or when would you anticipate kind of locking in the orders for those segments?
With different customers, it can kind of behave in a little bit different of a way where you know and versus what's a clear purchase order versus you know a letter of intent or a working agreement and things like that. Various customers have different ways. That being said, the feedback we're getting from the market, especially on the solar side and on the construction side, is you know a pretty solid expectation of that. You know what's different is our traditional electrical business, which goes through the electrical distribution channel here in the U.S., where generally we only have two weeks of backlog.
Now, we try to triangulate using things like, you know, the contractor's backlog from, you know, the Association of Builders and Contractors, you know, market feedback from the distributors and other large players in the market to help us triangulate beyond that two weeks of visibility. But really, on the electrical business in North America, which is roughly 75% of company sales, that is a two- to three-week backlog business. These other parts of the business are smaller, but we do have somewhat more visibility based off of some of the working relationships we have with people.
Right. Okay. Then, I was looking. It looked like the Dodge Momentum Index for February was down about 7%, and I think January was revised lower a bit. Just wondering if that's being reflected in terms of demand that you're seeing. Are you seeing any softness? You know, I think that's more of a forward-looking indicator. Maybe how are you guys thinking about that, and what are you seeing?
Yeah. I mean, I think it's always important to remember that, you know, month to month, you know, you can't, you know, overly index on one particular Dodge, you know, metric. You know, what's nice about Dodge is, you know, they do break out, you know, kind of institutional planning versus commercial planning. You know, data centers continue to be the fastest-growing part of the market. When you look at the largest jobs entering into planning, you know, not much has really changed there. Still highly concentrated to data centers. You know, the rest of the market, you know, we've seen, you know, healthcare, you know, not maybe get back to where it was pre-COVID, but that's growing, but then it's offset by, you know, office construction and multifamily. It's always a mixed bag. You know, we move as the market moves.
Again, not a lot of real change in data centers. Yeah, I would just always caution people, you know, month to month. You know, if you parlay that with, you know, contractor backlog, like that's been at eight months for two, three years at this point, right? I think the amount of projects that are in planning and are actually happening have stayed relatively unchanged, but you're just gonna get a little blips here and there between just how much new momentum there may or may not be month to month.
Right. Okay. I guess just thinking through, you know, how much growth can be driven by your own initiatives versus the market growth, what's the expectation at this point in terms of, you know, those two elements?
Yeah. I would say from our, you know, our base point of view is that the markets in totality that we are participating in are going to be in that low single digits, so 2%-3% market growth rate. For our perspective to get to, you know, a mid-single digit, it's these initiatives that are the incremental above that. Embedded within our assumption, though, is, you know, whether it's the main electrical business in North America or even the underlying some of these other markets that they're growing, and then we have the ability to outgrow the projects or on the solar side, et cetera. There is an embedded assumption that there's market growth and that in general, we have seen the construction industry have that low single digit, you know, volume growth over time.
Although some years, and even, you know, last year, you know, the market was really somewhat flat, but we still grew as well, and, largely driven by things like data centers, which are high consumers of our products. When you take a step back and you look at the totality of the square footage or, you know, put in place, et cetera, either relatively flat or slightly down, slightly up, but our electrical business was able to grow through that. Now we've had some puts and takes with some, you know, parts of the business that, you know, haven't grown and, you know, our HDPE products have had some challenges with volume and things like that over the past few years. You know, I think in totality, our electrical business has grown pretty well.
Okay, great. Maybe we can shift over to pricing here and price versus cost. I think in Q1, you experienced more of a headwind than you're anticipating later in the year, so you're expecting some moderation there. Maybe if you just speak to, you know, what you're seeing. You know, there's both the PVC side and also the steel side. How are prices trending for those two areas?
Yeah. I think, well, you know, I talked a little bit about the Q1 dynamics here a minute ago. Within that, on the steel side, I think we've had four straight quarters now of sequential price increases on our steel-related products. Some of those have tracked, though, with the underlying steel raw materials as well, and some of that has been, you know, impacted by some of the dynamics in the market related to tariffs and things like that. On other parts of the business, though, we've had, you know, continuing declines, and so on the ASP side. On the raw material side, the significant raw materials that we purchase are steel, PVC resin, copper, aluminum, zinc, things like that.
You know, those can all have their independent, you know, movement up or down, et cetera, that can have an influence then on our cost of goods sold. That relationship of the input costs is a driver in our mechanism of selling and our ASPs, but that's not the only thing. You know, there's three real components related to our ASP dynamics. First is, you know, and most important is the value of Atkore. What can we do, you know, providing, you know, the bundled suite of products which we think is differentiated? You know, how do we understand and execute upon that value proposition selling through our regional service centers? The second is then the supply-demand dynamics associated with those product categories respectively. Then the third is the raw material.
Now, we have seen some volatility in the raw materials, especially like we've talked about with copper here recently, where that's had some really significant spikes and then some declines, and then significant spikes and declines. That's caused a little bit of dynamics in the market. If you put yourself in the shoes of the distributors or then the end contractors on, you know, trying to be cautious on how much they're buying because that's a key category for them, whether it's more on the building wire side where we don't participate, but on the armored cable side where we are one of the, you know, top two to three players in that market.
Okay. Then, maybe you could speak to just what you're seeing on imports. Maybe we could start with steel imports. I think they were down 5% or so over the last three months. Is that continuing to be the trend where you're seeing a decline in imports, or what's the latest there?
Yeah, I mean, at its peak, you know, the market share of steel conduit coming from Mexico eclipsed 25%, and that's probably a little over a year ago. You know, the tariffs that are in place at 50% coming from Mexico, you know, they've been in effect for almost a year. It'll hit its anniversary in June. Where we see things today is, you know, we're probably in that high to mid-teens % in terms of market share from Mexico, so down from its peak of 25%. What's relevant about that is that also then coincides with the period of time where, as John said, you know, we've been able to raise our own average selling price.
You know, keeping up with the input cost changes of steel. I think things are generally trending in the right direction for steel conduit. Now, PVC, you know, keep in mind the percentage of the market that PVC represents from an import standpoint is less than 10%, but it's stayed relatively tight to that, you know, 6%-9%, give or take. We have not seen a sizable decline or reduction in the import levels. It's still highly concentrated from Latin American countries. We're just continuing to monitor that. The countries from which those products are coming from, you know, had a 10% tariff. You know, that obviously was just struck down by the Supreme Court, may be replaced with a higher tariff. We'll see whether that ends up coming to fruition.
I think right now the 10% is still kinda in play as far as what the border control is monitoring. There hasn't been any meaningful change in policy f or those countries.
Right. Okay. When we think about the price versus cost for steel, let's say, do you anticipate that being kind of a tailwind to your margins into the back half? Or how are you thinking about that?
Yeah. I think we wanna be somewhat cautious on trying to give too much granularity in the dynamics, which I can appreciate here that there's a lot of interest in that. You know, there's always a lot of moving parts within our business. I think that's one of the strengths of Atkore, and it's also one of the items that can create some complexity and nuance, which can be difficult to explain and articulate. When you have this many key raw materials that we're purchasing pretty sizable amounts, and they can move for different reasons, you know, we can have a situation like we found ourselves, you know, one year explaining X and then the next year explaining Y, which is kinda completely different and opposing.
Investors are like, "Hey, you've kinda given me a 180 here." You know, but that's some of the dynamics we have with these underlying raw material markets. I think the benefit we do have and what we're trying to drive towards is the strength of the portfolio and then focusing in on executing from these other initiatives that we've invested in, whether it's been in the solar industry, in the construction services business, trying to put these together, the elements that don't have as much raw material exposure as we do in some of the other categories that do have, you know, a pretty sizable element here of a raw material commodity input that drives that fluctuation.
Got it. Okay. Maybe on just the landscape of your competition, have there been any material changes to the competition, you know, within the United States, whether it's for steel or PVC? Has that shifted the supply-demand dynamic in any meaningful way?
Yeah, I think there's definitely been companies who have announced, you know, their intention. You know, we've had some other competitors on the steel conduit side indicate their interest in moving into the PVC conduit side and somewhat, you know, duplicate and emulate the strategy that we've done at Atkore of having a more holistic product portfolio to be the one-stop shop. You have seen some of that expansion. You've seen other companies, though, really stay within their kind of framework or product area that makes sense for them. You've seen some people try to cross over and others really stay within their category. We've talked at length here about the import activities.
I'd say to take a step back, though. Atkore has a lot of tremendous competitors in each of our product areas, but we don't have a single competitor, whether it's in a product area, you know, in North America or even internationally, that can replicate all the different dynamics that we do. I think that is one of the things that's unique about us and, you know, I think it's, you know, that value proposition that we think we can bring to the electrical distribution channel and the electrical contractors. That's incumbent upon us then to articulate why that's a value and then to utilize that market knowledge to help drive our new product development process.
You know, one thing we haven't talked much about, you know. We've had a lot of dynamics, but, you know, roughly 10% of company sales the past few years have been from new, you know, products, new products introduced in the past five years or less. A lot of that's been driven by our, you know, innovation in our armored cable products in the MC Glide, but we have had some good innovation in other areas, and so probably won't continue necessarily at that level as some of the armored cable products roll off. We have a pretty active dialogue with the contractors, channel partners, other engineers and designers in the marketplace on, you know, what's important to save labor and time throughout the value chain, whether it's at the distributor, at the job site, you know, the installation process.
You know, we think the labor-saving, you know, product innovation from a labor savings perspective, packaging innovation from a labor savings perspective all adds up to a value proposition that we can help, as a leader in some of these categories, help differentiate ourselves.
Right. It's more difficult to replicate, you know, the regional service centers plus the portfolio that you have, in terms of the breadth, that others may not have.
Absolutely.
Okay. I think one thing we haven't touched on is just some of the different productivity measures. I think you had a pretty decent gain from productivity in the first quarter. Maybe you could just speak to the initiatives that you have. I know you're consolidating three plants, and so what's the latest there, and how should we be thinking about the rest of the year here?
Yeah. As part of, you know, an announcement we made at the end of our last fiscal year in late September, we did announce, you know, that we would stop manufacturing operations at three facilities in the U.S. Those kind of crossed over different product categories, and so our expectation and intention was to have those done here, you know, in the first half of our fiscal year, so really here by the end of March. I'd say those projects are largely on track, and those are difficult projects to actually shut down effectively. I think the teams really collaborated and worked well together to execute those projects.
There'll be some remaining elements here in from a cleanup perspective in the third quarter, and we'll start to see some modest benefits from those in the fourth quarter, but that's largely going to be a benefit that carries us into 2027. Now, that'll be you know, some incremental benefit in the neighborhood of about $10 million-$12 million on an annualized basis. Some of that will be a little bit realized here in the back end of this year, but a good portion into our fiscal 2027. In the first quarter, in particular, though, we were very efficient from an operational perspective, and we did have some isolated benefits. I think we had roughly around you know, $30 million of year-over-year operational cost savings.
In the neighborhood of about $5 million-$10 million of that was probably isolated to the quarter related to some of our construction services business or one of these facilities that had been slated for closure and some cost avoidance related to that. That's probably not ongoing. Also, I think we were very efficient from an operational perspective in the first quarter. I don't know if we're going to continue at that level. We also had probably a benefit from a comp perspective year-over-year too in the quarter.
Yeah.
You know, as the year progresses, we still anticipate to have positive productivity. I mean, the year is setting up for that. You know, getting the increased volume through there, having the plant that produces the solar torque tubes be at the level that we want it to be. I mean, that's a real draw for us right now.
Right.
The level of change, we don't think we're gonna have quite as strong as we move throughout the year. That being said, very positive. That's after last year also, being pretty positive from a net productivity perspective. You know, we recognize some of the prior years we were unfavorable though, but we've started to claw that back and then some. You know, that is a key part of the Atkore business system. If we take a step back, you know, pre-COVID, et cetera, we had several years of, let's call it $15 million roughly of net productivity. I mean, through, you know, CapEx projects, other operational efficiency. That was a core part of our operating model. That is kind of a core part of what we see into the future.
Okay, great. I guess just thinking more high level, you guys are still undergoing a strategic review here, and there's a number of different alternatives that could be outcomes of that. Maybe you could just update us on where that is and how things are progressing.
Yeah. Not much to update on today other than we are evaluating a broad range. We started with the announcement at the end of September that, you know, several businesses that we've identified for potential divestiture, some of that we've completed, like our Tectron Tube divestiture that we announced, you know, here, you know, in the earlier part of this year. The facility closures that we've talked about, some cost reduction initiatives. We've also expanded that to, you know, include a potential of the entire enterprise, and so we're still evaluating.
Okay. Sounds good.