Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Q2 twenty fourteen Armstrong World Industries Incorporation Earnings Conference Call. As a reminder, this call is being recorded. I would now like to introduce your host for today's conference, Mr. Tom Waters, Vice President of Treasury and Investor Relations. Sir, you may begin.
Thanks, Sylvia. Good morning, and welcome to everyone on the call. Please note that members of the media have been invited to listen this call and the call is being broadcast live on our website at armstrong.com. With me today are Matt Espie, our President and CEO Dave Schultz, our CFO Tom Mangus, CEO of our Worldwide Floor businesses and Vic Grizzle, CEO of our Worldwide Ceilings business. Hopefully, you have seen our press release this morning and both the release and the presentation Dave Schultz will reference during this call are posted on our website in the Investor Relations section.
I advise you that during this call, we will be making forward looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. Actual outcomes may differ materially from those expected or implied. For a more detailed discussion of the risks and uncertainties that may affect Armstrong, please review our SEC filing, including the 10 Q filed this morning. Forward looking statements speak only as of the date they are made. We undertake no obligation to update any forward looking statement beyond what is required by applicable securities law.
In addition, our discussion of operating performance will include non GAAP financial measures within the meaning of SEC Regulation G. A reconciliation of these measures with the most directly comparable GAAP measures is included in the press release and in the appendix of the presentation. Both are available on our website. With that,
I'll turn the call over to Matt. Thanks, Tom, and good morning, everyone. Our second quarter financial performance was largely a continuation of the first quarter. Our global sales and manufacturing operations executed crisply, but similar to the first quarter, markets were softer than expected. Sales versus guidance came in at the low end of our range, but as with Q1, we were able to deliver EBITDA in the middle of our guidance.
Now when we discussed market conditions in April and May, we were cautiously optimistic that the
first quarter subdued activity was a result of the severe winter weather
in parts of North America.
Conditions.
We anticipated that 2014 would mark an inflection point in commercial markets in North America. Now as a result of market activity in May and June and the recent significant downward revisions to GDP, we no longer believe this to be the case. While we continue to see growth in new commercial construction, that's a small part of our overall business. We now believe that both residential and commercial discretionary repair and remodel spend, the large majority of our U. S.
Business will be flat to down for the full year and that overall commercial volumes will also be down. Now I say this while being fully aware that GDP and construction forecast for the second half of the year remain favorable and that there remains significant optimism in our customer base. With that said, we do not believe it's prudent to maintain optimism in our guidance, absent actual realized activity to support the view. But as a result, we're lowering our full year guidance for sales by $100,000,000 and our adjusted EBITDA range by $30,000,000 Other than lower than expected volumes and some related mix degradation primarily in The Americas, very little has changed from our previous view. Dave will provide more specifics on guidance, but I wanted to be upfront about this change in our outlook for the year.
So turning back to the quarter. As I mentioned, sales of $710,000,000 were at the bottom of our guidance range of $710,000,000 to $750,000,000 Sales were up $3,000,000 or 0.5% from 2013. Foreign exchange had minimal influence on the year on year sales growth. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter of $99,000,000 was right in the middle of our $90,000,000 to $110,000,000 range as softer sales were offset by lower than estimated SG and A spending, most of which is timing related as spend was deferred in the second half of the year. As we mentioned at our Investor Day in May, we constantly review our portfolio of businesses and our manufacturing footprint.
In the quarter, we took additional steps to right size our global plant portfolio. We announced the closure of our Thomastown, Australia vinyl tile flooring plant effective July 31. This small facility was no longer economically viable given the shrinking size of the Australian vinyl tile market. We'll be able to service Australian customers cost effectively from our South Gate, California plant. And also just today, we announced that we would be closing our Kunshan, China engineered wood flooring plant with production scheduled to cease at the September.
Now as many of you know, this facility manufactured wood flooring utilizing veneers shipped from The U. S, scraped by hand in China and then exported back to North America for sale. Rising labor and freight costs in these products have been among the factors negatively impacting our recent segment profitability. Proprietary manufacturing advances now enable us to onshore this production to our Somerset, Kentucky facility and produce the desired scrape visuals more cost effective more cost effectively here in The U. S.
In addition, this ship will allow for lower transportation costs, reduced inventory levels and better customer service. This is yet another action we're taking to restore the Wood segment to an acceptable return on capital. Dave will walk you through our performance by segment and geography, but I want to talk about a few of the areas of recent interest: Wood performance, Russia and our European Flooring business. As many of you know, we had a good first quarter in the Wood segment when compared with last year. We highlighted that the second quarter was likely to be a pause in the upward trajectory of the segment as lumber inflation was again likely to be out in front of price increases.
We're pleased that in the second quarter, the segment delivered EBITDA up almost 50% versus 2013 and modestly above our expectations. Sales were up slightly versus last year's 10% volume declines were offset by strong price and mix gains. As expected, price lagged year over year inflation, but we should now be priced appropriately versus our outlook for lumber costs for the second half of the year. Mix was positive year on year as our emphasis on higher end products continues to bear fruit. However, as I mentioned in my opening comments, wood volume, especially in repair and remodel channels, was below the expectations that informed our guidance.
This also drove negative mix results guidance, mix versus guidance. SG and A spend was also lower than we forecast as spending was moved in the back half of the year. Despite improvements in unemployment and housing prices, we continue to see restrained demand for big ticket discretionary projects. As we look forward, we continue to expect the Wood segment to make progress, but the challenge in the second half now looks to be an uncertain consumer demand environment. I want to comment on Russia.
Last quarter, I mentioned that our construction and business process were proceeding without complications despite the issues in Ukraine and that our biggest challenge was the decline in the ruble. We We instituted a 10% price increase in April to offset the ruble devaluation and so far this has been this has held with seemingly minimal impact on demand. Plant construction and product shipments continue unimpeded. The situation remains fluid, so we'll continue to keep you posted. And finally, at our Investor Day in May, we discussed the challenges that we've been experiencing in our flooring business in Western Europe.
As you may have noticed in our 10 Q, we mentioned that we are evaluating strategic alternatives for this business. At this time, I really don't have anything more to add to this statement other than say all options are on the table and that we'll keep you appraised as decisions are made. I also want to be clear that any decision we make on the European business will have minimal to no impact on our core markets here
in North America, The Pacific Rim and The Middle East. With that, let me turn the call over to Dave for more details on our financial performance and guidance. Dave? Thanks, Matt. Good morning to everyone on the call.
In reviewing our second quarter results, I'll be referring to the slides available on our website starting with slide four key metrics. As Tom already covered slide two and slide three is simply an explanation regarding our standard basis of presentation. For the second quarter, sales of $7.00 $5,000,000 were up slightly versus 2013 on a comparable foreign exchange basis. Operating income was down 5%, but EBITDA was up 2.5, largely due to higher depreciation in 2014. Earnings per share was roughly flat as this year's lower share count offset lower after tax income on a per share basis.
Free cash flow for the quarter was $10,000,000 down from $32,000,000 last year. I'll talk more about cash flow and EBITDA on coming slides. Net debt was up $199,000,000 driven by our $260,000,000 share repurchase in September of twenty thirteen, partially offset by operational cash generation. Return on invested capital was lower, driven by a reduction in unadjusted earnings and a slightly higher capital base. Slide five details the adjustments we made to EBITDA and provides a reconciliation to our reported quarterly net income of $21,000,000 Matt mentioned the plant closures we are executing at Thomastown in Kunchan.
And as a result, we are recognizing $8,000,000 of cost and impairment charges primarily associated with these actions. In contrast, last year we had $3,000,000 of cost reduction expenses related to actions in Europe. Our 2014 tax rate of 54% is higher than prior year as the impact of unbenefited foreign losses was greater this year than in the second quarter of twenty thirteen. The increase in unbenefited foreign losses in the current year was also impacted in part by the Kunshan plant closure I just mentioned. Moving to slide six, this illustrates our sales and adjusted EBITDA by segment for the quarter.
Excluding the impact of foreign exchange, resilient flooring sales were down 2% as volume declined in North America and Europe. North America was driven by the repair remodel factors Matt discussed as well as continued weakness in the healthcare sector. EMEA sales were impacted by continuing weakness in Central Europe. Of note in this region, sales in The Middle East more than doubled in the period. Pacific Rim sales benefited from a more than 50% increase in China and very strong growth in India, partially offset by continued weakness in Australia and a down quarter in the volatile Southeast Asia markets.
Mix in North America continued to be positive. Despite lower sales, the Resilience segment delivered flat EBITDA as manufacturing productivity, reductions in SG and A in The Americas and profitability improvements in Asia offset the volume weakness. The Wood segment saw sales increase 1% driven by price and mix and profitability increased $3,000,000 despite significant volume declines. Matt commented on these results, so I won't dwell on them, But I will note that lumber costs appear to be stabilizing, albeit at near record level. Ceiling sales were up 2% on an equivalent foreign exchange basis despite volume declines in The Americas and Europe.
Volume in The Americas was impacted by the same factors as the resilient business, but somewhat softened by the relative strength in new office activity. Europe experienced continued soft demand in The Eurozone and The U. K. Now we called out The U. K.
In the first quarter and mentioned that the issue was largely related to distributor inventory levels. We continue to believe this to be the case and expect a stronger performance from The U. K. In the back half of the year. Europe did benefit from strong sales to The Middle East, up over 25% from last year as the Architectural Specialties business had a great quarter related to the Jetta Saudi Arabia airport project.
Russia sales were up driven by our April price increase, but volumes were relatively flat. Pacific Rim sales were up mid single digits aided by strength in the Architectural Specialties business. China volumes were up, but mix was down as the project business remained soft. India had a strong quarter and Australia was up on the quarter behind growth in the Architectural Specialties business. Price and mix was up modestly in all regions.
Building Products EBITDA was up $2,000,000 on a global basis as margin gains in The Americas were offset by declines in Europe and The Pacific Rim. The Americas benefited from price and mix gains as well as SG and A deferral. European profitability was down due to the Russian plant construction costs and Pacific Rim profitability was impacted by higher SG and A spending. Corporate expenses were higher than last year largely due to the timing of project work including expenses associated with the analysis of strategic alternatives for the flooring business in Europe. Slide seven shows the building blocks of adjusted EBITDA from the second quarter of twenty thirteen to our current results.
Of note, price and mix offset inflationary headwinds from lumber costs, but volume was negative, primarily in flooring. Manufacturing was a positive, primarily in flooring in The Americas and Europe. Despite the business segments deferring some spending in the quarter, SG and A was up year on year due to the corporate expenses I just mentioned. Turning now to slide eight, you can see our free cash flow for the quarter was impacted by lower after tax cash earnings and greater year on year capital spending. On capital, the Russia and LBT plant expenditures
are at a
high level now versus the China plant spending winding down at this time last year. The other category largely reflects VAT recapture in Asia as our plants begin to self finish goods and collect VAT. Slide nine begins our discussion of year to date results. Sales, operating income and EBITDA are following a similar pattern to the quarter. EPS is up for the first half of the year, driven by our $260,000,000 share repurchase last September.
September. Free cash flow was down and I will discuss that and the EBITDA details in the next few slides. Slide 10 shows segment level EBITDA year to date and the only significant variance with the second quarter results is the inclusion of the relatively strong first quarter EBITDA performance in the Woods segment demonstrating the effectiveness of our new strategy. Slide 11 shows the building blocks of adjusted EBITDA from the first half of twenty thirteen to our current results. All of the bars mirror the quarter directionally as first quarter trends continued into the second quarter.
Turning to slide 12, you see that our free cash flow for the year is down versus 2013, primarily due to unusually favorable working capital in the first quarter of twenty thirteen and higher CapEx spend in the second quarter of twenty fourteen. Slide 13 updates our guidance for 2014. As Matt mentioned, as a result of market conditions, we are reducing the top and bottom of our sales range for the year by $100,000,000 to $2,700,000,000 to $2,800,000,000 At the midpoint, this will be a two percent increase in sales. I want to provide some additional comments on the markets. Recall previously, we assumed a modest recovery for the year.
While we still believe key market indicators point to a longer term recovery, particularly in new construction, continued softness in GDP and the impact on the repair remodel segment inform our view that 2014 will be flat to slightly down compared to last year. For markets outside The U. S, our view is generally unchanged for the year. We believe key markets in Western Europe and Australia will be flat to down consistent with our previous guidance. The Middle East continues to be an area of growth, while we now expect the Russia market will be down high single to low double digits given the current political environment.
We are also reducing our operating income and EBITDA ranges by $30,000,000 due to lower volume and the fall through to profit. At the midpoint of the range, EBITDA would be up 5%. Earnings per share is also reduced and at the midpoint of our range, EPS would be up 15%. Free cash flow is lower than the previous guidance, primarily due to lower after tax cash earnings. Slide 14 provides more details on guidance.
Our inflation expectation for the year is unchanged at $30,000,000 to $40,000,000 This assumes lumber prices remain stable through the balance of the year. Productivity and SG and A as a percent of sales worsened as a result of the lower volumes and mix decline. Expectations for capital spending and earnings from WAVE are unchanged. On taxes, we continue to anticipate an effective tax rate of 48% to 50%, but have taken our cash taxes down $5,000,000 For the third quarter, we expect sales of $740,000,000 to $780,000,000 and adjusted EBITDA of $110,000,000 to $130,000,000 Finally, with the closures of Thomastown and Coonchon, we have increased our expected exclusions to $15,000,000 to $20,000,000 With that, I'll turn it back over to Matt.
Thanks, Dave. Well overall, this is a mixed quarter for Armstrong. On the plus side, adjusted EBITDA improved in wood for the second quarter in a row after our strategic pivot at year end. Architectural Specialties, especially in the EMEA and Pacific Rim regions, had a very solid quarter. The Americas Ceilings business achieved a record EBITDA margin and the total business was able to deliver the midpoint on our EBITDA guidance despite softer sales.
On the negative side, our view of improving end markets, especially here in North America, is not being realized. If markets are stronger than we now anticipate, we're well positioned to take advantage of the opportunity. But we now believe 2014 will be another down year for volumes. We continue to focus on the items in our control and drive commercial excellence around the globe. And with that, we'd be happy to take questions.
Thank And our first question comes from Keith Hughes from SunTrust. Your line is open.
My question on the guidance cut. Has there something occurred in your commercial orders in June or July making you take some upside out of these numbers? Just kind of what are you seeing recently I guess is the question.
Well, Keith, it's Matt. First of all, in the commercial on new construction in commercial segments, we're actually seeing fairly robust activity in office and to a slightly lesser degree in retail. And that's showing up in backlog particularly in the AVP business and in mix in the backlog in the AVP business. The issue is that's only about 20%, twenty five % of our of the revenue stream for AVP. What we're seeing is the effect of a relatively softer GDP in the overall market demand for remodel in all commercial segments applying a little downward pressure not only in our ceilings business, but also to a lesser degree from resilient and pouring.
So there's a fairly tight correlation between performance in GDP and in the remodel business. So we're seeing a little bit softer remodel and repair than we anticipated.
Thank you. And our next question comes from Bob Windlehill from RBC Capital Markets. Your line is open.
Good morning. I love the granularity on that. Matt, if you could extend just office retail industrial as well as healthcare and education, how those trends are playing out? Obviously, your commentary around volume was
your commentary suggests that there's not
a lot of acceleration. Is this because trends are going in one direction for all these categories? Or do you see pretty substantial differences by end market? Thank you.
Yes. It's a good question, Bob. If you look at commercial in North America, office is up, new construction and to a lesser degree remodel. Healthcare is weaker in both in some cases actually significant weaker than we outlook coming into the year. Education is flat to down in both new construction and remodel.
And retail is slightly up. I would say a little better than anticipated, particularly in new construction, but not quite as strong as we're seeing in office. And we're seeing pretty significant new construction closes in retail and office in both of our businesses in North America. Again, the issue we're experiencing is in the remodel business. If you look at Western Europe coming in just going outside The U.
S. Coming in about as anticipated flat to slightly down. As we said in the remarks, Russia is down high single digits to low double digits based on sort of the political environment that we're experiencing there. Our revenue in Russia is actually up due to more of our price performance and volume and we think we're actually continuing to gain share in Russia. And then emerging markets in China and India are performing largely as we expected.
So that's kind of a quick run around the world. Bob, just a couple extra thoughts on education. I mean, it was a slow start. Also back to Keith's point, it was a slow start to the summer repair remodel season. I think the delay particularly in the North and the Mid Atlantic with the weather extending school openings through June in many places put a significant delay on school remodel and we're still trying to read the tea leaves on that one.
I think that's somewhat of the weather hangover effect and people are trying to jam jobs in and there's significant amount of pent up demand out there. But I'm not clear what the demand trajectory is for the balance of the summer given the late start. And just to amplify Matt's point on healthcare, I mean, which is a big important segment to the flooring business. It has it's been tough on healthcare and I think people are still in the wait and see mode on how the economics work out from healthcare reform and before they dive in and put significant new capital into repair remodel.
Thank you. And our next question comes from George Stadtouf from BoA Merrill Lynch. Your line is open.
Good morning. Thanks for all the details. Continuing on the guidance adjustment question. So in the end markets where you've seen less than expected improvement, if that's the theme here, in which markets did you see the most variance relative to what your initial forecasts were? And the related question would be free cash flow guidance dropped more than the guidance for your other metrics recognizing it's off a small base.
What was driving that? Thank you.
Let me comment on this on the market and segment performance. I'll let Dave comment on free cash flow. I guess in general, George, we're seeing greater than expected softness in all of our served commercial markets in repair weather related issues we experienced. But as we exited the first quarter and entered the second quarter, we saw very choppy demand month by month in Q2, which pointed to something other than weather. Going to new construction and commercial, I would say that I'd characterize office new construction about as expected retail about as expected I think as Tom mentioned, health care weaker than we expected and education about as we expected in new construction.
Residential, we had a very good start in new construction. It's weakening a little bit. The challenge we have with the Housing Starts performance is the mix of multifamily versus single family. Multifamily units do not use as much wood and the resilient product that goes into those applications is a little bit lower mix. So while we're encouraged that in general, there is some level of strength in new residential construction.
We'd like to see more single family starts. And of course, residential remodel is kind of tracking similar to what we're experiencing in commercial. And then Dave, free cash flow.
Your help. George, it's Dave Schulz. So just on the free cash flow. As we mentioned during our prepared remarks, the primary driver is just the lower fall through from the volume that we guided to also the mix of where that volume is anticipated impacting our cash flow.
Thank you. And our next question comes from Nishu Sood from Deutsche Bank. Your line is open.
Thanks. Digging into the third quarter guidance, you have revenues midpoint to $7.60, which is a 4% increase from last year. But EBITDA, you have at 120 midpoint, which is a decline year over year. It certainly runs counter to what we've seen in the first half of the year where you've been able to deliver some solid operating leverage despite some softness in revenues. You mentioned some SG and A being pushed from the second quarter into the third quarter.
I was wondering if you could quantify and describe that a little bit more. Also you have this phenomenon I'm describing reversing in your kind of implied fourth quarter implied fourth quarter guidance with better operating leverage. So I guess I'm just trying to dig into why the EBITDA outlook for the third quarter is worse than the revenue outlook and why that reverses in the fourth quarter?
For Anisha, it's Dave Schultz. Thank you for your question. A couple of factors. The first is that we do have a couple of the expenses associated with the Russia plant build that are going to impact those expenses are higher than what we had realized in Q3 prior year related to our China plant build. The second part of your question about the SG and A is absolutely right.
So we do have more SG and A that was deferred out of Q2. Obviously, as we saw some of the volume patterns developing in late May and in early June, the business units deferred some of the spending on SG and A related to the volume build plans. We haven't provided you any specific guidance on Q3 to that relative impact. But I can tell you that some of that is related to some of the additional promotional and selling activities that we have planned in the back year half primarily here in The United States.
Thank you. And our next question comes from Stephen Kim from Barclays. Your line is open.
Thanks very much. I wanted to follow-up on the raw material energy inflation guidance you've given for the year $30,000,000 to $40,000,000 I think we heard in your prepared remarks that lumber was about $17,000,000 year to date. And so what I was hoping we could get from you is a little bit more of a granular breakdown separating maybe raw material versus energy first of all in that $30,000,000 to $40,000,000 And then secondly the remainder how you expect that to play out over the different divisions? That'd be great. Thanks very much.
Sure, Stephen. It's Dave Schultz. So in terms of what you're seeing year to date and what we already commented on related to wood, as I mentioned, we anticipate that wood pricing has stabilized for the balance of the year. That's incorporated into the guidance that we've provided you. And so I would anticipate that we would see about 2x what we experienced in the first half of the year impacting the Wood business.
Obviously, as you take that into account, we have some puts and calls related to materials plus freight and transportation and energy costs within the business units. We generally don't break those out for you. But obviously just based on the trends that you're seeing on lumber relative to the total inflation impact for the year, I would anticipate that the balance of that would be split between the two business units about equally.
Thank you. And our next question comes from Dennis McGill from Zenman and Associates. Your line is open.
Thank you. Matt, just going back to your comments on the non res, I think the numbers that you've been citing are the McGraw Hill starts numbers, but correct me if I'm wrong. When we look at those, those were up double digits the last couple of years and there's a lag with that flowing through both ceilings and flooring. And the volatility around GDP, but GDP has been positive, employment has been accelerating. So even if you were to look over the last four quarters or so, it seems like volume has been a struggle on the non res side, even though that backdrop would seemingly imply some volume improvement whether you wanted to look new construction or remodel.
So just wondering why some of those macro data might not align with what you're seeing on the ceilings and flooring side?
Sure, Dennis. It actually is aligning in terms of new construction. Our new construction orders are up and backlog is up. The issue is really one of mix and percentage represented in the revenue streams. And GDP has to be better than positive in order for volume growth in remodel.
It has to be close to 3%. So GDP growth at 1.5% or 2%, two point five % doesn't really help as much. Market volume has been down really year over year in remodels since 02/2008. So we are seeing traction in new construction as we said particularly in office and to a lesser degree, but positive in retail showing up in our backlog, showing up in richer mix in our backlog. But with GDP tracking trailing anywhere or tracking anywhere between one point five and two point five points, that's not enough to drive meaningful remodeled business in the commercial segments.
And Tom?
Dennis, this is Tom Mangus. So I've got the McGraw Hill data. Education and healthcare in 2012 and 2013 on starts were both down. So we agreed that we live off those on a lag basis. And so on the new component of education and healthcare, we are living through those negative years in 2014.
I think the important point is on where it is favorable on retail and office. It's just on the proportion of the total business. It's only probably 20% of the total volume there. So we really are much more dependent on the prepared model side to pull that through.
Thank you. And our next question comes from Will Randell from Citigroup. Your line is open.
Regarding
the European resilient business, I apologize if you touched on this. Can you talk about what a drag it's been in regards
to EBITDA as well as when do
you think you'll come to the decision on what to do with that business?
Sure. We've been fairly transparent on this and I think we went into some detail at the Investor Meeting. It's been a negative EBITDA performer for the last decade. Just some context, four years ago, we decided and executed a plan to exit the a significantly underperforming portion of our business resilient business in resilient flooring business in Europe, that being the residential business. And we also exited our business in France, the home of our two largest European competitors.
So what we had was a focus kind of number four position commercial business. That business has further been pressured primarily due to a lack of recovery in the European markets. We are focused on the Germanic markets, Scandinavian, the Feneloch primarily. And the volume has not come back, particularly in government related investment as we anticipated three or four years ago. So we shared this I'll let Tom comment on it here in a second.
We shared this with increased transparency during the investor meeting in May and we've reached the decision to start reviewing strategic alternatives. We're not in a position to comment. We would say that everything is on the table as we said in our remarks. We're really not positioned to comment on timing yet, but we wanted you to know that we've begun the work. Work.
And so Tom?
Yes, Will. So it the business the European business has been running in the low single digit EBITDA margins negative EBITDA margins really since we emerged. And that was through significant restructuring and of course European crisis. We've not been able to get above breakeven which has been a long term goal of ours. And I think as a JAKS are better to open point of view.
We certainly want to make it a our aspiration has been to make it a ROIC accretive business and it's just increasingly difficult to do that since we started the strategic options review. Timing wise, we're going to move with haste. It is an important structural building block on our assessment how we improve the overall attractiveness of the Resilience segment. And I think we put in the queue that we hope to have a decision. It's likely we could have a decision by the end of this calendar year.
Thank you. And our next question comes from Eli Hackel from Goldman and Sachs. Your line is open.
Thanks. Just sorry again, just wanted to touch on the commercial R and R side. Are you seeing R and R growth decelerate or turn negative? Is it getting worse as the year goes on? I'm just trying to understand the different drivers from May 21 to today that obviously impacted the guidance.
Are things getting better slowly? Or are they actually starting to go the other direction? Thank you.
Yes. Hi. It's Dave Schulz. So let me just provide a little bit of context on that. And you referenced back to our Investor Day.
What we saw was a relatively a good April consistent with what we had guided towards back during our call on the Q1 results. We saw towards the tail May, things really started to look much different than what we had discussed during our Investor Day. May came in much softer than we had anticipated. June did recover very nicely, but not enough to offset what we saw during the month of May from an overall sales perspective primarily here in The Americas. So what we would anticipate is continued acceleration, but still when we take a look at the full year on both The U.
S. Commercial R and R in both businesses, we don't see that being better than flat to slightly down versus the prior year. But what I would say is that we really saw a deceleration during the month of May. June recovered. We anticipate based on our input from all of our contacts through the industry, what we're seeing through our discussions with our management teams, with our sales force is we do see some of that recovering in the back half, but not enough to make the full year better than flat year over year.
I could just add some additional color. Just to provide some context for how we outlook our remodel. Our visibility to the remodel business is sort of sixty to ninety days at best. I mean, so these are largely jobs. There's some exceptions to this, but these are largely projects and jobs served by our independent distribution in the local marketplace.
We wouldn't track these as projects as we would a new office building or a new Target store for instance. But we would but we see these as restocking and replenishment orders from our distribution channel. So it's this is not a segment that we have a lot of visibility to. It's a segment that we can model fairly confidently as it relates to GDP. So when we take a look at the outlook, it's a combination of what we're experiencing currently, but also forecasting based on our model knowing that we don't have a lot of visibility beyond thirty to sort of sixty to ninety days.
Hey Eli, you asked about commercial. I think it's worthwhile for residential take its pound of flesh donated here because it's not all a commercial story on the guidance change. So we are seeing weaker consumer repair remodel trends. I think you've seen it in other consumer flooring companies that have starts that were anticipated in June from May decelerating June year over year decelerating on single family starts. The deceleration in total starts from May to June.
So that's a piece that's impacting our residential business, which again is $850,000,000 to the company. And similarly, you see it just track through in some of the key regions. We continue to see a couple key regions like the Northeast and the Mid Atlantic struggle on a year versus prior year basis across the product categories. We're not sure why that is, but it is seems to be pretty specific. And we're pretty convinced that it's not a share related issue.
It is simply a consumer dynamic in these markets in the Northeast and the Mid Atlantic. So that's what's also influencing some of the sales decline in our guidance.
Thank you. And our next question comes from Michael Rehund from JPMorgan. Your line is open.
Thanks. Good morning, everyone. Just wanted to hit on wood flooring for a moment. Appreciate all the detail as always. And I guess looking at the top line and then the margins from the top line perspective with the volumes down continuing from 1Q into 2Q, just wanted to get a sense of how much of that is the continued new direction of the company in terms of not chasing volume or going after more profitable segments rather than the industry itself and if that's going to play out for the rest of the year?
And then on the margin side, margins were down sequentially, I think, as you had pointed to last quarter. You said that the input costs have stabilized, albeit at very high levels. And given the timing of price increases, I mean, a quarter ago, we were thinking about a rebound perhaps back to 1Q margin levels, if not higher, in the back half of the year. Just wanted to know if that's the right way to think about things at this point given your updated comments on inflation?
I'll just quick comment and then hand over to Tom. Clearly have as one of the cornerstones of our new approach of the wood business capping volume at our drying capacity and the team has executed extremely well on that. They've executed extremely well on productivity and on price and mix over inflation. So I think on the things under our control in the Wood Flooring business, we've done a great job. The primary driver for the relative volume weakness in the Wood business is not necessarily our containment strategy on production volume and we're executing that.
But again it is as Tom pointed out a weaker than outlook market opportunity particularly again repeat in remodel and repair and we've seen that evidence to other retail channels. And also in the mix of new construction, again, multifamily over single family starts. Tom? All right. Thank you.
To tackle
the question and revert to the question. Thank you, Mike, for that. Appreciate those questions. They're very good questions. Let me try to dive into that a bit.
First, as Matt said, we are the market is a driver of our volumes. It's not 100%. Clearly, the weather impacted us in the first quarter, affected consumer demand and that is part of what I just described affecting I don't know if it's weather or the GDP or the spill on effects, but the high wood markets like the Northeast and Mid Atlantic continue to struggle across all product lines not just wood. So we do think there is a market element there. Clearly, we're being scraped by competition and that's costing us some share and we think it's the appropriate share to give back as we try to give a much more aggressive pricing and mix up approach and that's providing some opportunities at the opening price point level for some of our competitors to scrape along.
I mean, they're certainly feeling the same level of commodity increases that we've had to endure, but see it as an opportunity to scrape in and take some near term volume, volume that we don't think is particularly sticky as we experienced as a loss. We probably can get it back at the point where we think it's an attractive volume to get back. So there is a mix of market and our approach there to manage the business for better margins. We're very pleased that we were able to grow EBITDA. And I think EBITDA is the most important measure to look at here because we've had a lot of with Kunshan closure and some as you'll see in the Q some other asset impairments fixed asset impairments that we've tried to clean up a bit with Kunshan closure.
It gets a little bit lost in the operating income. But on EBITDA, we're up almost 50% in the second quarter on earnings, almost 90% year to date. So we're making progress. Now that's just prior to relative to last year. It's not nearly where we'd like to be.
And so we are continuing to push on our price and mix program. We've taken pricing in June, July. It has been sold through and continue to work our mix approach. The one thing on the commodities, as I anticipated and we called out in either the quarterly call or the investor call, our inflation cost relative to the first quarter, so second quarter versus first quarter were up 50%. And that is what's putting pressure there.
Our price achievement is still equal to or better price mix achievement equal to or better than what we achieved in the first quarter. So I mean really that is the story there. And when we guided the $30,000,000 to $40,000,000 of commodity costs at the company level, we had forecasted a trajectory of wood and that trajectory is about what's playing out. That is the leveling out at this point, which is still embedded in our guidance for commodity costs. But yet that still is the bulk of the company's $30,000,000 to $40,000,000 commodity increase as evidenced by the $17,000,000 absorbed year to date.
So we think we've got the hopefully commodities stabilize. I think we've got that called right. We priced to recover at current level of commodity inflation. And
then the challenge
is your last part of the question was how do I exit the year? We're still not in a position to guide on that because it's volatile given what you've seen in commodity and commodities go up or down. Also the volume is a big wild card as Matt mentioned. And we are simply less optimistic on the back half. Plus we're anniversarying go back to Q3, Q4 last year relative to the first half.
You recall we had all sorts of service issues in the first half of the year. We weren't able to get the volume out. We crude up massively, started buying PKD at Chase It and that volume flushed out in the third and fourth quarter. And you'll see back then we were growing sales at a clip of 20 plus percent mostly volume driven. And so clearly that surge of backlog to orders isn't going to flow through this year because we're not sitting on a backlog.
We've been able to ship what we've been promising. And so that's a little bit of the year over year comparison that you want to factor through. But we feel very confident that we're on the right track with Wood. We wish we weren't being scraped, but we're going to continue to be aggressive on addressing the cost profile of this business as such with our Coonchan closure and onshoring a significant product line that I think will be very exciting for consumers to be able to have a made in America engineered scraped product. And I think it will be a margin and a share builder for us.
Thank you, Mike.
Thank you. And our next question comes from Catherine Thompson from Thompson and Research Group. Your line is now open.
Hi. Thanks for taking my questions today. Focusing on ceilings, so the 2.3% growth in the quarter, how much was volume versus price? And fall along with that, how much of the spring price do you think is accepted? We have another price increase that is going to be flowing through the market.
So how much of the spring price increase do you think is accepted? The thought process for the second price increase. And more broadly speaking, in terms of price, are you seeing any type of change and conviction level with the end market in terms of accepting price? Thank you.
Yes. I'd be happy to say that. Hi, Catherine. This is Vic Grisel. Yes.
In the second quarter, your first question around price mix and volume, really it was mostly price mix for the most part driving the top line growth. Again, the Americas volume was soft and slightly down. So that was the that's the dynamics really of the second quarter. On the pricing, our pricing actions are continuing to be driven by raw material increases both energy and transportation contributing as well. These are industry wide and very public, so they're not specific to Armstrong.
And those discussions with customers are going very well. So we remain confident that the price increase that we have in the fall will be realized as we realize the expected price that we had in February. So we don't see any change in that. I think those discussions continue to go well with our customers. And again, they understand this is an industry wide raw material and price cost increase that we're seeing.
Thank you. And our next question comes from Mike Wood from Macquarie. Your line is now open.
Thank you. You mentioned several times the better new construction versus the weaker repair remodel across your various end markets. How significant was that on the margin mix, particularly in hardwood where you reported an 18% sequential sales improvement, but you barely moved the EBITDA performance. So was that meeting your expectations? Thanks.
Well, in terms of new construction, we saw the benefit of new construction in terms more in commercial and again in office and retail than residential. The residential new construction is hampered somewhat by the mix. Again, multifamily over single family. But Tom, did you want to I would
say on the sequential progress on EBITDA with the sales, it's mostly a raw material commodity story. It's the increase of 50% higher commodities in the second quarter versus the first quarter driving that fundamentally. But yes, the builder business tends to be a lower price, lower mix product form for us. So that does create a drag in a high builder closing season where they're finishing their floor up and closing the building. And that has some drag.
But again, we have been working through those builder fixed pricing contracts. We continue to make progress on that. Builders about a third of our overall wood business, so it is a meaningful piece. There is a seasonality to it, but we have been able to take price and through the bulk of our builder contracts and think it's going to be a continued very important business for us when we're committed to winning. And our goal there is really to make sure we're bringing kind of product and product innovation through the builder channel that allows them to have an attractive opening price point, but then incentivize their customers their consumers to mix up with us.
Thank you. And our next question comes from David McGurr from Longbow Research. Your line is now open.
Yes. Good morning, everyone. You talked about Russia being down. And so I guess the question pertains to investments in emerging market SG and A. And I guess any changes to the rate at which you're making these investments?
And then presumably with the guidance revision today, you're going to begin 2015 at a slightly lower pace or slightly slower pace. Do you have the opportunity to flex up there if the fundamental story should improve? And maybe just update us on that whole emerging market growth story heading into 2015? Thanks. Sure.
In summary, we're finished investing in the emerging markets. So we are the three plants in China are up and operational. The plant in Russia is on schedule and on budget. We should complete construction at the end of the year and we should have products sellable out of the plant early next year. So no changes whatsoever.
We're not anticipating any additional investments in the emerging markets at this point. So in terms of rate of investment, consider the rate of investment slowing down significantly after these plants are built. The challenge we've had in both markets in both India I'm sorry, both China and Russia are the market conditions as outlook when we start building the plants are different than now the plants are constructed. More dramatic difference in Russia, hopefully a short term dramatic difference. A little bit just more broadly experienced market growth erosion in China, but we're still seeing a GDP in the seven percent to 7.5% range.
And we still see significant opportunities. Remember that China is the second largest suspended ceiling market in the world with penetration in the commercial office space of ceilings of kind of 10% to 15% as compared to a fully developed market where that penetration is close to 85%. So the macro opportunities in China for both ceilings and flooring continue to be extremely attractive. And we're seeing pretty solid revenue and volume growth in both of our businesses in China and India as a result of the investments in the new plants. And investments in the new plant in China give us a stronger platform from which to enter Southeast Asia again in both of our businesses.
So we're still very bullish on those investments. Even though the market outlook extends to payback a little bit, we think it still makes fundamental good sense to be there and we're glad we made the investment. Russia is the third largest suspended ceiling market in the world, one where we have significant share position, arguably, demonstrably the share leader. And again, the investment in Russia is a significant improvement when completed to our margins there as we're able to move production inside of Russia. That's allowed us to going local there has provided the opportunity to expand our geographic coverage.
We've expanded our distribution footprint and again experiencing very significant performance there in light of a hopefully near term pressured environment. We expect that to kind of move through. So we think that both of these investments make long term, mid term sense. We certainly wish the markets were a little bit more stable, but I think long term, we'll be glad we made both investments. No further investments anticipated at this point.
And when it comes to 2015 and how we'd inflect up or bounce up, it's a little premature for that. We'll save comments on 2015 until we get a little closer to that. We still believe that in a mid cycle recovery, the fundamental position we're in provides real opportunities to gain leverage. This business and our company, both of our businesses, have tremendous earnings leverage over volume and broad based volume that would be new construction and remodel that comes with the mid cycle recovery.
Thank you. And our next question comes from Jim Barnett from C. L. King and Associates. Your line is now open.
Barrett, Matt, a question for you. Are the outside consultants, are they focused just on the European flooring business? Or are they also can you share with us what else they're studying in other parts of the business that they are?
Most of the work that's being done virtually all the work that's being done is to help us develop options for the European Flooring business.
Okay. Okay. Well, thank you very much.
You're welcome. Thanks for asking.
Thank you. And our next question comes from Keith Hughes from SunTrust. Your line is now open.
Yes. To build on that last question, you report in resilient segments or revenues that are Europe and East. Are all of those part of this review? Or is it just a subsection of them? And if so, how much?
Keith, at this point, let's just say that all options for the European business are on the table. Tom?
Yes. So you're correct. Middle East is included in the sub segment for revenue that's broken out there. We as Matt had in his opening script, The Middle East is a very important business for us and really their strategic review really is focusing primarily on Western Europe.
Thank you. And our next question comes from Ken Zinner from KeyBanc. Your line is now open.
Good morning, gentlemen.
Good morning, Ken.
So you guys continue to have, I think the best some of the best disclosure in the industry in your filing. So I appreciate that, but no good deed goes unpunished. So I have a compound question as it relates to ceiling. Given the changing outlook driven largely it sounds by The U. S.
Market, you've kind of talked about 2% to 3% positive volume before. If I do a 3% volume change on roughly $7.5 of sales at about $25,000,000 or at 40% leverage we think about $0.1 which will be a quarter of your guidance provision. So could you kind of talk about how much in The U. S. Is changing?
And the second part of that is in the filing you highlighted $5,000,000 of increased cost versus last year, which is an increase from the first quarter '1 million dollars headwind. What costs are going up? And how is that not impacting I guess the annual guidance? Thank you very much.
So Ken, let me it's Dave Schells. Let me address that. So obviously, we never came out specifically with what we were assuming The U. S. Market would recover.
I think that you were implying that there was a 2% to 3% volume opportunity in The U. S. Ceilings business. So we never provided that specific of a guidance, particularly by segment. What I would say is that relative to the outlook we're seeing overall in The U.
S. Residential and commercial markets, primarily on repair and recovery, that has been the majority of the reduction in our guidance range. One of the things that we've also mentioned that you can see in our results year to date is that we would anticipate that we would have a little bit of a mix drag as the market opportunity is lessened. And so the combination of that volume plus mix is what makes up the majority of our guidance range coming down. As you also mentioned the increase in cost about $5,000,000 Obviously, we have not only some increase in cost, but we also have productivity programs.
And based on the timing of when those productivity programs offset some of those cost increases, it's informed our guidance for the balance of the year.
Thank you. And our next question comes from George Stifelz from Bank of America. Leerink Lynch. Your line is now open.
Thank you. Thanks for taking my follow on question. A question for Vic Grisel. Vic on pricing within ceilings, you mentioned that there are some very well understood raw material cost increases that are driving it. Could you comment as to what actually is driving it?
Because it sounds like most of the commodity pressure is really in, as you mentioned, in wood. And then the related question, obviously, you've got a great track record when we look back at history and passing along costs ultimately to your customer and getting paid for the value you provide. If we look back in the past, have there been ever times where you haven't been able to get that accomplished? And what kind of economic environment was associated with that kind of misstep on pricing? Thank you.
And again, good luck in the
quarter. Yes. Thanks, George. With regards to the cost input drivers, I would reframe and say energy and transportation are the largest impact. There are some raw material increases along there, but the major drivers are higher gas and transportation expenses.
Again, that's this is why we believe this is an industry wide and not very specific to Armstrong. To go back many to your second part of the question on when we've not been able to recover our inflationary cost with price, we'd have to go back many years. And so again, we remain confident that the discussions we're having with customers around these increases are going very well. We remain confident in this current environment that we'll be able to realize and recover the inflationary impact on our business.
Thank you. And our next question comes from Michael Rehund from JPMorgan. Your line is now open.
Yes, thanks. Thanks for taking my follow-up. Just wanted to go back to and certainly don't mean to beat a dead horse too much on this topic. But back six weeks, eight weeks ago when we came out to visit, There's really two company specific comments that kind of anchored your optimism for the back half and certainly appreciate the month by month commentary and how things have come along. But just want to understand when we met you talked about optimism across the distributor network as well as positive backlog trends.
So I was just curious when you think about those two drivers to your back half outlook then how those two areas how you're seeing both of those two areas in terms of the distributor network and the positive backlog trends? Have either of those changed and this is just or is have they remained the same and the revised downward guidance is actually just what you're seeing in the marketplace notwithstanding? Yes.
Michael, great question. The channel remains optimistic, particularly as it relates to new construction. They are active in bidding and closing new construction work. That's coming through in our expanded backlogs, again particularly in commercial office and retail. That would boost our ceilings business a little bit more than resilient flooring business just because of the relative position of those applications.
I mean, we'd really like to see for resilient flooring come through as stronger health care, stronger education. So that I would say if you talk to our distributors today, they would still be guardedly optimistic, particularly when looking at new construction. The largest change in forming our outlook and again, I'm it sounds like I'm beating the dead horse now is a significant reduction in the outlook for GDP for the year coming at the end of the second quarter. And as Dave said, we had a relatively weak first quarter. We had an acceptably strong April, a very weak May and a respectable June, although as Dave said not strong enough to offset the weakness in May.
So we came out of the second quarter with this kind of lumpy choppy demand along with a revision downward in GDP. And again that drives the remodel
business.
So I think as I said in my remarks, we would love to share everybody's optimism and we do as it relates to a couple of segments in new construction, but we also feel responsible to sort of report an outlook what we're experiencing. And there's been a full percentage point reduction or 1.5 in some cases reduction in the outlook for the GDP this year. And that applies a tremendous amount of headwind to the remodel business.
Thank you. And I don't see any questions in the queue at this time.
Okay. Well, thank you very much for your interest and great questions. Everybody will certainly understand the nature of the questions. And thank you very much and have a good day.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating in today's conference. This does conclude today's program. You may all disconnect. Everyone have a wonderful day.