All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star, then one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw from the question queue, please press star, then two. Please note, this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Sandy Martin with Three Part Advisors. Please go ahead.
Thank you, operator. Good morning, and thank you for joining us today to review AZZ's financial results for the fiscal 2024 Q1 , ended May 31st, 2023. Joining the call today are Tom Ferguson, President and Chief Executive Officer, Philip Schlom, Chief Financial Officer, and David Nark, Senior Vice President, Marketing, Communications, and Investor Relations. After the conclusion of today's prepared remarks, we will open the call for questions. Please note there is a webcast and slide presentation for today's call, which can be found on AZZ's Investor Relations page under the Latest Earnings Presentation at azz.com. Before we begin, I would like to remind everyone that our discussion today will include forward-looking statements that are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements, by their nature, are uncertain and outside of the company's control.
Except for actual results, our comments containing forward-looking statements may involve risks and uncertainties, some of which are detailed from time to time in documents filed by AZZ with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the annual report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year. These statements are not guarantees of future performance, therefore, undue reliance should not be placed upon them. Actual results could differ materially from these expectations. In addition, today's call will include a discussion of non-GAAP financial measures. Non-GAAP measures should be considered as a supplement to and not substitute for GAAP financial measures. We refer you to the reconciliation of non-GAAP to the nearest GAAP measure included in today's earnings press release and investor presentation for further detail.
The earnings press release and Q1 presentation are posted on our website and have been included in the Form 8-K submitted to the SEC. I would now like to turn the call over to Tom Ferguson. Tom?
Thank you, Sandy. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us for a review of our fiscal 2024 Q1 results. Today, I will provide an overview of our Q1 performance, talk about progress made with our digital galvanizing system or DGS technology, and end with a discussion of what we are seeing in the demand environment this year, as well as our outlook for the rest of fiscal 2024. I'm quite pleased with the pride and passion of our employees as they kicked off fiscal year 2024 by continuing to provide outstanding customer service and drive operating performance. Please note that this quarter, we are focusing primarily on sequential comparisons due to only having Precoat for two weeks of the Q1 last year.
Turning to slide three, we are off to a strong start to the fiscal year with total sales of $391 million, up 16.2% on a sequential basis. Metal Coatings delivered a record-setting sales quarter of $169 million, up 3.3% versus last year. I'm also pleased to report that our Precoat Metals business delivered sequentially higher sales this quarter, totaling $222 million, up 18.7% compared to the Q4 . On a comparable basis, Precoat sales declined slightly versus a record Q1 in fiscal 2023. This is primarily attributable to last year's inventory ramp-up in reaction to supply chain disruptions and was not anticipated to repeat this year.
We improved our profitability in the Q1 by delivering adjusted earnings per share of $1.14 against a prior year EPS comparison of $1.10. Keeping in mind, these are on significantly different share counts, which Philip will cover in a minute. We generated strong adjusted EBITDA of $85.4 million, up 62.6% over the prior year or 21.8% of sales. Our total adjusted EBITDA margin increased sequentially by 480 basis points over the Q4 due to seasonally higher sales that drove our improved fixed cost leverage, coupled with the impact of certain production improvement initiatives implemented previously.
Our Q1 Metal Coatings EBITDA margin was 30.7%, up sequentially by 370 basis points, and our Precoat Metals EBITDA was 19.4%, up 560 basis points. The past two quarters, we discussed the disruption caused by excessive customer-owned inventories at most Precoat plants. In the Q1, we successfully resolved these issues and achieved margins for Precoat that fell comfortably within our intended targets. Precoat did see softer demand in HVAC, transportation, and some construction markets in Q1, but we remain confident that the full year will be in line with projections as they continue to focus on converting customers to more environmentally friendly pre-painted solutions. Like the Metal Coatings business, Precoat has a highly variable cost structure that allows them to protect margins when volume fluctuations do occur for any extended period.
I will cover this more in our outlook discussion in a few moments. However, we anticipated this current demand environment, which was built into our annual guidance, and we are pleased that Q1 results met our expectations. Kurt and the team will continue to drive growth through their supply chain solution strategies, focusing on market expansion through post-paint conversions and strategic long-term supply agreements with blue-chip customers. In a few minutes, Philip will provide more details of our Q1 results and speak to our current year capital allocation priorities. We continue to carefully manage cash and capital deployments to ensure that we invest in high return investments well above our cost of capital, pay down debt, and delever the company in a disciplined way. For the balance of this year, we have taken acquisitions off the table as we focus on reducing debt.
In addition to high value investments and meaningful debt reduction, we are laser focused on value creation and high ROI projects and initiatives to drive incremental shareholder value. I will turn now to our digital galvanizing system, or DGS technology. For the past seven years, we have been digitizing our galvanizing operations to improve productivity, efficiencies, and energy consumption. Approximately 18 months ago, we enhanced our proprietary state-of-the-art technology on the customer side to allow us to have a more integrated relationship with our customers. This was an important pivot away from an off-the-shelf CRM tool to full utilization of an internally built tool, linking AZZ's important customer relationship management system to our enterprise-wide Oracle ERP system. We are excited to report that this technology has successfully eliminated nearly all paper in our shops and dramatically improved the quality and speed of our customer interactions.
When combined with our outstanding servant leader leadership team, deep management bench, and intense focus on service and quality, we believe AZZ has built a sustainably differentiated hot-dip galvanizing business. Precoat, which operates predominantly more continuous flow automated processes, has also developed primary proprietary applications such as CoilZone, that provide them similar productivity and enhanced customer engagement. Broadly, we are very excited about the power and scale of the transformed AZZ. We are working collaboratively with our people, processes, and technology to deliver services and solutions to customers from both our Metal Coatings and coil coatings businesses. Based on our transformative actions over the last 12 months, we have effectively added more than $100 million of incremental EBITDA annually between the sale of our majority interest in AIS and the acquisition of Precoat.
This strategic pure play shift in the coating segments that command industry-leading market positions, accompanied by a broad portfolio of galvanizing and coil coating services and solutions, allow us to deliver an exceptional customer experience. With that, I will turn it over to Philip.
Thanks, Tom. Turning to slide four. As Tom mentioned, we reported fiscal year 2024 Q1 sales from continuing operations of $390.9 million, or 88.7% above the $207.1 million reported in last year's Q1. Current year results include Precoat Metals for the entire quarter, while the prior results include Precoat for only the last two weeks following the acquisition on May 13th. Sequentially, total sales increased by 16.2%, which reflects typical seasonality, moving from Q4 to Q1 for both segments. Gross profit increased to $97 million from $60.1 million in the prior year same period. Gross margins were 24.8% in the Q1, primarily reflecting the impact of labor and material costs between years.
Selling, general and administration expenses were thirty-one and a half million in this year's Q1, compared to $32.1 million in the prior year Q1. Recall that we recorded $12.6 million in acquisition and transaction-related costs, as well as incremental Precoat amortization and tangible assets in fiscal year 2023. The SG&A expenses in the Q1 of fiscal year 2024 are closer to a run rate number that can fluctuate over time. First year adjusted EBITDA of $85.4 million exceeded the prior year's $52.5 million by a strong $32.9 million. This was an increase of 62.6%, which reflects good earnings traction and the impact of incremental earnings of the Precoat business.
Adjusted EBITDA margins for the Q1 were 21.8%, which trailed the prior year of 25.4%. This was primarily due to the labor and commodity pricing that flowed through the cost of sales in the quarter. If you reference our earnings release tables, EBITDA margin comparisons for both segments reflect sequential improvements for the quarter. Adjusted net income was $33.4 million, compared to $28.2 million in the prior year's Q1, up 18.4%. Adjusted diluted earnings per share of $1.14 was well, 3.6% above the adjusted EPS of $1.10 in the prior year Q1. Since the preferred convertible shares are dilutive in both periods presented on slide four, the preferred dividends are added back to earnings for the EPS computation.
Shares are adjusted for a full conversion of the preferred convertible, which resulted in 29.2 million weighted average shares this year, compared with last year's shares of 25.7 million. The prior year's share computations reflected the convertible debt outstanding for two weeks versus an entire quarter. Moving to slide five, we reported strong net cash provided by operating activities of $46.9 million and free cash flow of $29.9 million in the Q1, almost double compared to the prior year amounts. This was a result of prudent working capital management and excellent operational performance. Capital expenditures for the period were $17 million and included normal safety, maintenance, and growth spending, as well as approximately $5.3 million incurred on the new coil coating build in Washington, Missouri.
We are slightly ahead of schedule on the new build as a result of favorable weather to plan. Spending on the new facility is in line with our expectations during the quarter and compared with our full-year CapEx budget. During the quarter, we paid dividends to our common shareholders of $4.2 million and also paid $3.6 million to our Series A preferred shareholders. I will discuss debt paydown, interest expense, and taxes in a few moments. Turning to slide six. We continue to invest in organic growth, strategic customer partnerships, high return projects, and productivity projects that meet our criteria for our high ROI projects. Our focus on debt paydown continues, and the board, as well as our leadership, believe that returning capital to shareholders through a quarterly cash dividend remains a priority.
As Tom mentioned, acquisitions are not a near-term focus for the company. Turning to slide seven. During the Q1, we paid down debt of $20 million in what is normally a seasonally high cash outflow quarter. As we had discussed last quarter, we plan to pay down a total of $75 million-$100 million of debt this fiscal year, with a near-term target leverage of three times trailing twelve months adjusted EBITDA. We recorded interest expense for the Q1 of $28.7 million, compared to $7.5 million in the prior year, due to acquisition-related borrowings, as well as the higher interest rate environment we operate in today. Last fall, we secured a cash flow hedge of half of our variable rate debt via a swap.
This fixed our rate at approximately 8.6%. We currently incur roughly 9.5% on the remaining variable rate debt. We have no maturities until 2027. We know that our strong cash flow generation will continue to support our plan to delever. Our current quarter tax expense was $9.7 million, which reflects an interim effective tax rate of 25.3%, consistent with prior year. We expect our full year effective tax rate to remain around 24% for fiscal year 2024. With that, I'd like to turn the call back to Tom.
Thank you, Philip. As you can see on slide eight, we are maintaining our full fiscal 2024 sales guidance of $1.4 billion-$1.55 billion, adjusted EBITDA guidance of $300 million-$325 million, and adjusted EPS guidance of $3.85-$4.35. Our minority ownership in the AIS joint venture is not included in the balance of the year guidance because we don't control it, and they are still in the purchasing price accounting period. Which makes predicting a specific equity income amount difficult for now. We believe Avail is progressing well on their business plan, and we will provide an outlook on equity income as soon as reasonably possible.
Our financial outlook for the Q2 on Metal Coatings is a repeat of the Q1, with many of our fabrication customers citing good backlogs as they benefit from increased infrastructure spending. Additionally, with improvements in labor availability and more predictable supply chain support, we are confident we can adjust our inventories of paints and ink to more normalized levels. Precoat continues to enjoy diverse end market activity and growing industries that directly relate to a broad range of construction markets and opportunities to convert customers from post-paint to pre-paint in sectors such as roofing and containers. As I mentioned, we did see some softening in HVAC, transportation, and certain construction markets, which is why we remain focused on expanding our supply chain solution offerings, including converting customers from their own internal painting. We will have a better view of this after our Q2 is complete.
We are also projecting a repeat of Q1 in the Q2 related to sales. As I noted earlier, customer inventories have normalized due to the actions we have taken, which allows us to benefit from process improvements and production efficiencies. Our corporate team continues to focus on cost initiatives, further debt reduction, customer credit metrics, governance and risk mitigation, and a disciplined method for allocating capital to the projects with the greatest return on investment. We are progressing with our greenfield plant construction that supports aluminum coatings, with a valuable, dedicated customer committed to filling a majority of our capacity in this new plant. As Philip mentioned, we are slightly ahead of schedule and continuing to track within budget. This is an exciting project for us, and we will keep you updated each quarter on the progress.
Finally, we are committed to growing sales and driving margins to our targeted ranges, which will generate significant cash flow and create shareholder value. I want to thank all of our shareholders and our board for their support. Again, want to thank our AZZ team for delivering strong Q1 results. With that, operator, can you please open up the call for questions?
Of course. Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. To ask a question, you may press star, then one on your telephone keypad. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw from the question queue, please press star, then two. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. Today's first question comes from John Franzreb with Sidoti & Company. Please go ahead.
Good morning, guys, thanks for taking the questions. I'd like to start with Precoat. Tom, you mentioned that the sales profile should be similar in Q2 versus Q1. I'm curious, normal seasonality on a historic basis, how would that quarter kind of line up? How would normal historical margins differ in Q2 versus Q1? It seems like you have those headwinds that you called out on HVAC and transportation. Just kind of get a better sense of the business.
Yeah, I think, you know, I mean, usually, as we've talked some, H1 is the strongest part of the year. Q2, I'd say, is usually slightly stronger than Q1, and we pretty much anticipate that. The only reason is that Q1 is, as the spring kind of gains traction, so there's always a couple of weeks to ramp that up, whereas during the summer months, it's pretty much, you know, we get that full 12 or 13 weeks of solid production efficiencies and demand. Margins probably slightly better in Q2, but it's close. You know, we're pretty close to that 20% target that we've talked about in the past. You know, we're at the margin on that. No, the outlook is good.
Just toured some of the plants. The excess customer inventory is now fully under control. We've gotten rid of almost all of the excess warehouses that we had, and which makes us more efficient, more productive. I'm looking for, you know, what I hope becomes a very typical Q2 for Precoat as we go forward.
Got it. Rising interest rates, has that had any impact on your order intake in any of the businesses?
You know, I think we may have seen some of that. It's hard to attribute it directly to it. I think we've seen some projects in both sides, Metal Coatings and Precoat, that have probably been deferred, not necessarily canceled.
Mm-hmm.
You know, deferrals just drag things out a little bit, but in some cases, for our plants that are really busy this time of season, that can be good. Yeah, I don't know that I can point to anything other than on the Precoat side, you know, recreational vehicles, RVs, that business is kind of in the... Let's just call it way off. You know, I'm guessing that's less affordable for people, post-COVID maybe.
Right.
Other than that, it's, you know, commercial construction is a little bit softer, but we're in regions and geographies that tend to be strong right now. You know, here in Texas, throughout the Southeast, Midwest corridor, which is a lot of the area that I've visited over the last month or so, you just see lots of activity, lots of infrastructure activity, a lot of construction, a lot of cranes, you know, new ballparks, ag, you know, spring, we saw docks going in. You know, it's actually fairly normal. W e're alluding to the areas that are softer, but on the other hand, there's areas that are actually stronger, so.
Oh, interesting. Just lastly, on input costs, can you talk a little bit about how it's impacting the P&L? I noticed that zinc continues to slide downwards. Maybe a little bit of thoughts on what your input costs are looking like company-wide and maybe zinc in specific, what we can talk about there.
I think as you look at our, particularly for Metal Coatings or our galvanizing business, specifically, Q1 versus Q1 last year, the margin, EBITDA margin, it's 30.7%. It's a really, really nice, you know, amount, but was off just a little bit as the higher zinc was continuing to flow through our kettles.
Mm-hmm.
We've done a great job with discipline, value-added pricing, and our customers recognize what we bring to the table. That's not to imply there hasn't been, you know, if things soft a little bit, there gets to be some price pressure. We pretty much disconnected the underlying zinc costs with our value-added pricing. Generally, labor's become more available while we had that inflationary impact last year, I'd say it's more normal now, and also labor's more accessible. You know, that helps us with our productivity. Not that we don't have significant overtime during this time of season, but it does allow us to keep our crews fully staffed. You know, hydration and safety is very important for us during the hot summer months.
We're feeling good right now. Zinc costs, they've peaked and should continue down in our kettles as the year goes on. Keeping in mind that the LME, while it's down, the premiums for this year were increased significantly. It's not a one-to-one comparison when you look at it year-over-year.
Got it. With that, I'll get back into queue. Thank you for taking the questions.
The next question comes from Adam Thalhimer with Thompson Davis. Please go ahead.
Hey, good morning, guys. Congrats on a solid start to the year.
Hey.
first question on DGS, is that something you can integrate with Precoat, or does Precoat already have a similar solution?
Yeah, Precoat's, you know, one, they, we're looking at automated lines running at, you know, up to 700 feet per minute, versus more the batch process, although we do have some more automated processes on the hot-dip side with our spin plants. Generally, they've got a lot of controls and automation already in place. They have their own proprietary software that allows them to manage those massive inventories and huge amounts of steel and aluminum going through their plants, called CoilZone, and that, which is also something that integrates them with their customers. Different proprietary software structures, but both allow the businesses to accomplish the same kind of things from a productivity, efficiency, and customer integration perspective.
Okay. You alluded to this, but you said there were some stronger end markets that were offsetting weakness in HVAC, transportation, and construction. Can you elaborate on those?
Yeah, we've had strength in the solar market, particularly. When you look at infrastructure, bridge and highway, even ag for us have been some strong markets over the last few months, it looks like that's gonna continue. That's why I mentioned, you just look at the amount of work that has to go into our bridge, highway, water systems, there's airport construction and activity going on everywhere. You know, I'll keep it tied to transmission, distribution, renewable energy, including solar and bridge and highway, and general infrastructure. Those are strong and look to continue that way.
Great. Just a couple things for modeling purposes. Can you give us any help with corporate expenses and D&A going forward?
Corporate expenses should be fairly flat. We are just coming off the TSAs with AIS that we had, you'll see those remain pretty flat to where they were at the end of Q1. D&A, similarly, we finished all the purchase accounting at the end of the Q1 related to the Precoat acquisition after the first year, these should represent fairly good run rates.
Got it. Okay. Thank you, guys.
All right.
The next question comes from Brett Kearney with Gabelli Funds. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Hi, guys. Good morning.
Good morning.
Thanks for taking my question. Curious, Tom, particularly as you've, you know, recently, toured some of the Precoat plants. To the extent they have some capacity, maybe frees up later this year, you mentioned opportunities, expanding their supply chain solutions offering, and converting some customers, who, you know, run their own lines internally. Anything incrementally you guys are seeing in terms of maybe folks you already serve well on the galvanizing side, that could also benefit, in some area from Precoat solutions and kind of the cross-selling opportunity there?
Yeah, I think I'm encouraged. It's, you know, in some ways it's still early, but our sales teams from both sides have gotten together on a couple of occasions and are now working in their own geographies, identifying leads, making introductions. You know, I hesitate to point to anything real specific at this point, but we are finding, whether it's in trucking or just some of the customers that use a lot of sheet metal components and panels that, you know, there's opportunities, and I think our teams work well together, and, you know, they're making those introductions. I don't know that we've had any significant customers that have said, you know, it changes their mind about us.
Bill, you know, like, it's early, and we do look for more opportunities there, and that's gonna continue.
Yep, excellent. Great to hear, the new Precoat facility, you know, on track, even ahead of schedule a bit. I know it's early days, we can't, you know, predict the weather from here. To the extent that facility were to come online, you know, just even a bit early, does your agreement with the anchor customer there, allow for you to be providing volumes, like, as soon as the plant comes online, or is it more of a fixed calendar date in the contract you have there?
No, I think there will be opportunities. you know, the customer has, you know, existing demand. They're also, you know, building capacity, as well. No, there should be opportunities. That's something we probably need to probably check with Kurt and his team on the specifics, but I'd anticipate that. We just wanna keep it under control and, yeah, it'd be great to have it up and running faster.
Excellent. Thank you so much.
Sure.
Thanks.
This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the call back to Tom Ferguson for closing remarks.
Well, hopefully, as you heard, we're excited about the opportunities in front of us. We look forward to continuing on our path with Precoat and Metal Coatings, and finding opportunities to work more closely together, offer even more solutions to our customers. We're excited about the balance of this year and look forward to talking to everybody after the Q2. Thank you.
The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.