Good day, everyone, and welcome to the Eagle Materials second quarter of fiscal 2027 earnings conference call. This call is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Eagle's President and Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Michael Haack. Mr. Haack, please go ahead, sir.
Thanks, Dave. Good morning. Welcome to Eagle Materials conference call for our second quarter of fiscal year 2027. This is Michael Haack. Joining me today are Craig Kesler, our Chief Financial Officer, and Alex Haddock, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations, Strategy, and Corporate Development. There will be a slide presentation made in connection with this call. To access it, please go to eaglematerials.com and click on the link to the webcast. While you're accessing the slides, please note that the first slide covers our cautionary disclosure regarding forward-looking statements made during this call. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause results to differ from those discussed during the call. For further information, please refer to this disclosure, which is also included at the end of our press release.
Within this rapidly changing and challenging macroeconomic landscape, several, including elevated diesel fuel prices, our businesses performed well this quarter. Some highlights for the quarter are, second quarter revenue was a record $653 million. We generated solid EPS of $3.63, and we repurchased $62 million worth of shares while keeping our net leverage ratio at 2.1x . I'm consistently impressed by our team's operational focus. In this difficult operating environment, they stayed relentlessly focused on servicing customers and upholding our rigorous health and safety standards. In the second quarter, we saw continued progress across the organization with regards to safety. We achieved reductions in recordable incident and lost time incident rates versus the prior year. This was the result of a sustained effort by our personnel at the plants to look out for each other and to operate safely.
We continue to operate well below industry averages and will not stop until we meet our goal of zero incidents. Strategically, I'm also happy to report construction timelines for our Mountain Cement and Duke Wallboard plant modernizations and the realization of their benefits remain on track. By our next quarterly earnings call, construction of our modernized cement plant in Laramie, Wyoming should be substantially complete. Once construction is complete, commissioning of the new plant will take about two quarters. During the commissioning phase, we'll be getting the plant up and running to full operating efficiency. Commissioning is not an easy task, and it will be an all-hands-on-deck effort across Eagle Materials. We have extensive experience with plant startups, and we'll be drawing on the collective expertise of our plant operators across Eagle. I will continue to report on our progress over the coming quarters.
I did want to mention that the modernization of the Mountain Cement is critical and timely. The old plant continues to suffer from unplanned downtime given the age of its 1960s equipment. in October, our Mountain Cement plant experienced another disruption unrelated to the issues we resolved in July. We are addressing the current operational issues and have been shipping cement from our broader network to ensure that our customers are supported. Importantly, throughout construction and commissioning, even with some operational issues with our old plant, there will be no commercial disruption for our customers, and we look forward to continuing to serve their product needs. By the later part of fiscal 2028, many of the cost savings we've highlighted before will be accretive to the margin profile of our Mountain Cement plant.
Achieving the full 25% cost savings does require selling the full capacity of the new plant, which will take several years to complete. Our Duke Wallboard plant modernization will follow a similar cadence, with completion of both construction and commissioning occurring about one year after our Laramie, Wyoming cement plant is complete. Once we finish the construction at Laramie, we'll see a significant step-down in capital expenditures for fiscal year 2028, resulting in increased free cash flow. It is important to reiterate that our capital allocation priorities remain unchanged. Over several decades, we have maintained the same strategic clarity and consistency. Our balance sheet health is the crucial starting point. Our net leverage profile will keep us ready to execute on attractive growth opportunities that meet our financial and strategic criteria.
We'll continue to look at high-impact, high-return organic projects, although securing cement plant upgrade permits remains extremely difficult, and the rest of our wallboard plant footprint is in good health. On the M&A front, we remain active exploring opportunities with our core businesses, and the pipeline for deals remains robust, especially in aggregates. Fragmentation in the U.S. aggregate industry creates opportunity for us, as we can be patient and find differentiated value in the right deals at the right time and for the right price. Any investment we pursue must strengthen our footprint and low-cost position and meet our financial return threshold. When there is no compelling investment on the immediate horizon, we will continue to opportunistically buy our shares back. That's a good spot for me to quickly comment on the macro environment we are seeing for our products.
In our heavy materials sector, despite challenging weather conditions last quarter in some markets, volume held up, supported by public infrastructure and data center activity. Even with the continuing resolution between federal infrastructure bills and a higher public scrutiny of data centers, our customers believe the tailwinds for cement and aggregates will remain as we enter calendar year 2027. As a result, in cement and aggregates, we have communicated price increases to our customers for most of our markets effective January 1st, 2027. Wallboard demand will likely remain challenged in the near term since the current interest rate environment is keeping a low ceiling on residential construction. When the housing market does turn, we will have already lowered our low-cost position even more with the modernization of our oldest wallboard plant at Duke.
In the near term, we also face cost headwinds across all of our business lines given increased diesel prices and freight rates, which negatively affected our businesses both sequentially and year-over-year. Our low-cost position serves us well when we see cost spikes. We know what levers to pull to control costs, operate efficiently, and serve our customers. That is the Eagle way. We make the right investments regardless of where we are in the cycle, knowing that our commodity businesses are cyclical in nature. When we come out of the current trough, Eagle will be a stronger, better positioned, and more profitable company than we were in prior cycles. Craig, I'll pause here and turn it over to you for more specifics on our quarterly financial results.
Thank you, Michael. Second quarter revenue reached a record $653 million, an increase of 2% compared with the prior year. This strong performance was driven by record cement sales volume, along with higher sales volume in both wallboard and recycled paperboard. However, this revenue growth was offset by higher operating costs, namely transportation costs due to elevated diesel prices across all businesses, which contributed to a 14% decrease in second quarter EPS. This decline was partially mitigated by a 5% reduction in our fully diluted shares as a result of our share repurchase program. Turning now to segment performance highlighted on the next slide. In our heavy materials sector, which includes our cement and concrete and aggregates segments, revenue was up 2%, driven primarily by increased cement sales volume, which continued to be supported by strong infrastructure spending, as well as large private non-residential projects.
Operating earnings were down 12%, primarily because of higher freight costs from rising diesel fuel prices and raw material costs. Moving to the light materials sector on the next slide. Second quarter revenue in our light materials sector also increased 2% to $216 million, reflecting a higher wallboard and recycled paperboard sales volume, which was partially offset by a decline in wallboard sales prices. Operating earnings in the sector were down 13% to $68 million, primarily because of lower net wallboard sales prices, which were significantly impacted by higher freight costs. Looking now at our cash flow. We continue to generate strong cash flow and allocate capital in a disciplined manner, consistent with our long-term strategic priorities.
During the first six months of our fiscal year, operating cash flow increased 7% to $364 million, reflecting the strength of our businesses, the resilience of our operating model, and the expected tax benefits from our capital spending program. Capital expenditures totaled $250 million during the first half of the fiscal year, driven primarily by investments in the modernization and expansion of our Mountain Cement plant in Laramie, Wyoming, and the modernization of our Duke, Oklahoma wallboard facility. These are high-return projects that will enhance operating efficiency, improve reliability, and further strengthen our competitive position. Looking ahead, we continue to expect fiscal 2027 capital expenditures of between $490 million and $525 million to fund these strategic growth initiatives, as well as ongoing sustaining capital investments across the business segments.
Capital spending is expected to peak in fiscal 2027, with construction at Mountain Cement on track to be completed later this calendar year and at the Duke wallboard plant in mid-fiscal 2028. At the same time, we continued returning capital to shareholders, a goal enabled by our strong balance sheet. During the first half of our fiscal year, we returned a total of $162 million through our dividend and the repurchase of approximately 711,000 shares. We ended the quarter with approximately 2.2 million shares remaining under our current repurchase authorization. Let's look now at our capital structure. We remain committed to maintaining a prudent capital structure and preserving significant financial strength and flexibility. At September 30, 2026, our net debt-to-cap ratio was 50%, and our net debt to Adjusted EBITDA leverage ratio was 2.1x . We believe these levels are both prudent and supportive of our growth strategy.
We ended the quarter with $241 million of cash on hand and nearly $1 billion of total committed liquidity. Combined with no significant near-term debt maturities, this strong liquidity position gives us the flexibility to continue investing in our businesses, return capital to shareholders, and pursue growth opportunities while maintaining a disciplined approach to balance sheet management. With that, thank you for joining us on today's call. Dave will now open the line for questions.
We will now begin the question-and-answer session. To ask a question, you may press star, then one on your touch-tone phone. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. If at any time your question has been addressed and you would like to withdraw your question, please press star and then two. Our first question comes from Trey Grooms with Stephens. Please go ahead.
Hey, good morning, Craig and Michael. Thanks for taking my question. First off, maybe looking at cement, I know it's early, but could you give us maybe some thoughts on how you're thinking about the demand drivers for cement? So infrastructure, private non-res, and residential as we look into calendar 2027?
Yeah. Good question, Trey. As you know, the largest driver, about 50% of the demand for cement is driven by public infrastructure spending. That's both at a state level and at a federal level. Obviously, a lot of attention gets spent on the multi-year federal highway program. As Michael mentioned, we're in a continuing resolution post-IIJA, but we still have significant funds from IIJA to be spent. The continuing resolution will be supportive, and the state budgets are still in very good health. So, continue to see good strength there in public infrastructure. On the private non-residential side, we're not first to say this. I mean, data centers have been moving the needle very meaningfully there. They're very meaningful in our markets, and so we continue to see good strength and good backlog for those types of activities.
The third, obviously, is residential construction activity, and that continues to be a little slower given where interest rates are, but it's been at this low level for quite some time now. As we look into calendar 2027, we continue to see an opportunity for growth in our markets, and really the two drivers will be the public infrastructure and private non-res.
Got it. All right. Thanks for that. My second question is, clearly, your margins being impacted by higher costs. Everybody's facing these higher costs and higher freight. Can you talk about how you're looking to navigate these headwinds as we, again, kind of start looking into the new year, opportunities for pricing you might see on the horizon for both sides of the business? Just thoughts about cost, pricing, and how you're kind of looking at both of those as we look into next year.
Yeah. Again, we've commented on it in the release and in our prepared comments. We saw diesel prices impact our cost structure across every business line, from cement to wallboard, and even on paper side, on inbound freight for recycled fiber and other inbound raw materials. So, that was more than half of the increase in costs during this most recent quarter. Diesel prices remain elevated post the quarter. We're fortunate. The other kind of issues around costs, given our raw material structure, our long-term reserves that we have in place, we don't have significant headwinds there, but diesel has been the biggest mover, and obviously that can change depending upon world events. I think Michael mentioned we do have price increases in most of our cement markets that have been announced for early January. Those are anywhere between $10-$14, $15 a ton, depending upon the market.
Given the utilization rates that are pretty high, we will be moving forward with those increases as we get into the early calendar year.
Yep. Okay, got it. Thanks for that. I will pass it on. Best luck, guys.
The next question comes from Brian Brophy with Stifel. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thanks. Good morning. Appreciate you taking the question. Just one on the commissioning of this new cement plant. I am curious if that is production levels at the old plant at all. Bigger picture, I am just curious as to the moving pieces of how you expect to serve the customers through that commissioning phase, and if there is any margin implications we should keep in mind. Thanks.
Yeah. When we look at the old plant, to give you some background on the old plant, the old plant's 1960s. It has two kilns at the old plant. We're making this a very streamlined operation with a shorter single kiln that runs. We've also put in some. We understand bringing a new plant up is a big task. We have expertise in this area, so we feel confident we'll come up on a timely manner. However, that will take a couple quarters. To make sure that our customers are supported, we are able to run the two older kilns at any time, so we could actually switch to the newer kiln, run it, find if there's bugs, switch back to the older kilns if we had to, and continue to run.
We don't expect, between that and our network of cement plants, we don't expect any kind of disruption to our customers. Now, the question you had on cost, yes, when we do bring in additional tonnage to support those customers, which is what we're going to do, we're going to support our customers, that we do get a little bit of impact on the freight cost side with that side with it. So there will be a little bit elevated depending on how much tons we have to bring in and how quick that kiln comes up as we do our commissioning.
Appreciate it. That's really helpful. Then just kind of a follow-up to the cost question. You guys did call out purchased raw material costs as a margin headwind for cement in the press release. Just any more color on what those pressures were? Was that just a function of diesel as well? And how sustained should we think about some of those cost pressures being? Thanks.
Yeah. No, Brian, you're right. It's a combination. So, some of the outside raw materials that we do purchase, we purchased a little higher quantities of those this quarter. But also, the just freight for bringing those raw materials in is up as well. It's almost a pretty even split between those two. And again, diesel remains elevated. We'll see as that changes going forward or if it changes going forward. But I'd expect to see the purchased raw material costs remain at these more elevated levels just on the commodity of the purchased raw material.
Appreciate it. I'll pass it on.
The next question comes from Anthony Pettinari with Citi. Please go ahead.
Good morning.
Morning.
Hey, wallboard results were a bit better than we expected, and I'm just wondering if you could talk a little bit more about the market as you're kind of seeing it now. I guess, some of the home builders talked about kind of a step down from September to October with mortgage rates above 7%. Just wondering if you could talk a little bit more about kind of wallboard demand and as you kind of went through the three months of the quarter and into October, just sort of what you're seeing.
Yeah. Thanks, Anthony. Look, I mean, residential construction has been challenged for quite some time now and remains challenging. Trying to pick up trends is frankly a little more difficult today than it has been, and you pointed out, with higher interest rates. You do have this backdrop though of we are still undersupplied. And on a historical basis, we are way below trend from a housing and certainly wallboard consumption level.
So, we are pacing at levels that we have not seen in quite some time, going back to 2018 type of levels. We will head into the winter. We will see as we head into the spring selling season what happens to interest rates here. And we have seen a nice drop in the last 10 to 15 days in the 10-year. But certainly, to see a significant pickup in activity, we would need to see a much better improvement in affordability.
Got it. No, that is helpful. And then just switching gears on corporate expense, you noted costs around implementing ERP system, and I do not know if you could put any kind of finer point on where you are at in that process and maybe kind of any impacts we should expect going forward.
Yeah. We have rolled it out across about half the company, and our teams have done a very good job of doing that. It comes at some of these elevated costs. We also pointed out that healthcare costs, I think we have seen this across many enterprises over the last year or so, but our healthcare costs this quarter were also elevated versus the prior year. So I do not anticipate a significant change on either one of those items as we move forward, and I would expect it to remain at these levels.
Okay. That is helpful. I will turn it over.
This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Mr. Michael Haack for any closing remarks.
Thanks, Dave. We continue to make good progress across our strategic priorities, and we are performing well despite market choppiness. I am looking forward to providing an update on both of our capital projects and the commissioning of our Mountain Cement facility at our next quarterly call. Thanks for joining our call today.
The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.