All right. We're going to kick it off. I think some people are still finishing up lunch. I know my lunch ran over. Anyway, for anyone who doesn't know me, James Kayler, home building, building products, and rental analysts, as well as a bunch of other sectors as well. We're super happy for the first time to have MasterBrand Inc coming to the conference. Thank you very much. We have Andi Simon. I apologize for, and I don't know your title.
Vice President of Investor Relations.
Vice President of Investor Relations. Thank you, so thank you guys so much for coming, so I think maybe just to start, because we're not doing big formal presentations this year, but MasterBrand is new to the conference, relatively new to the markets. Maybe you can just start with kind of a little bit on the background of the company, Andi, and sort of where MasterBrand came from, and then we can start talking about where you guys are headed.
Thanks for having us. Appreciate it. MasterBrand, really over the decades, has been a combination of a lot of acquisitions. We did one. Just recently.
That continued the trend, which I'm sure we'll talk about with some great brands. And over time, that consolidation of various cabinet companies has basically formed MasterBrand, which is now the largest in the American conventional cabinet manufacturer. Has a very broad—I think we would say the broadest out there for an individual company. We have any type of styling, design, price point that anyone may want, we have.
And we cross basically all categories of cabinets down to stock, value, semi-custom, semi-custom, and premium and custom cabinetry. We basically—oh, sure. No worries. And that broad portfolio basically allows us to service the widest variety of customers, right? We service those customers through a variety of channels. We have over 6,000 customers, basically a lot of retailers, builders, large and small, which we serve direct and indirect, and then about close to 6,000 individual builders across the nation.
With that said, we have about 20,000 employees and about 20 manufacturing facilities in North America, a pretty large facility in Mexico. We now, after the spin, a little bit of background there, I think the two companies just started diverging with respect to their future. Fortune Brands spend a lot of time, effort, and resources into technology and technology in products that they're valued on, et cetera, which there's not a lot of technology in your wood cabinets. So we also needed technology, but it was a little bit different focus. It was more from an operational focus, from a data focus. As we improved the operations during those early years of Dave Banyard taking over, we realized that it was capable of a standalone entity, and we spun from there on our separate ways. So now it's a matter of our future focusing on profitable growth, right?
We spent a lot of time over the last three to four years focused internally on operational alignment, efficiencies, getting our capacity and our footprint right, commonizing products where we could, which really benefited us from a cost perspective, supply chain. It also has really benefited us as the market changes and there's challenges with trade downs and pricing. We're able to really move customers into a product category that fits their budget needs because of some of our internal efficiency improvements, and now that we have a lot of those behind us, there's still always more to go, but a lot of that's behind us. We're really, over the last 18 months now, focusing on growth and growth in products that we want to be in, right?
We've been very particular over the last couple of years on gaining share where we wanted to gain share and potentially let less profitable products go to someone else, let someone else use their capacity for less profitable products. Let's get the share we want. And now that we have that better defined, we're looking at each of those channels, retail, builders, big and small, and dealers to say, "Where do we really want to grow?" Which led into some of our acquisitions and other parts of our funnel where we can see certain products where we're still under-index, certain regions, certain technologies, so that we can continue to grow at the profitability pace that we have been doing.
Excellent. That's a fantastic overview. Maybe just circling back on a few things there. Can you break down your business a little bit more in terms of how much is repair and remodel versus new construction, and then sort of the channel breakdown? Because I think it's somewhat different than some other building products categories given the sort of dedicated dealer channel that so many cabinets are purchased through.
Yeah. So we're about one-third new construction and about two-thirds repair and remodel. And then from the perspective of channels, if I have it right, it's about 20% builders.
10 direct to builder.
Direct to builder, you're right.
And then the rest of that builder channel service through the dealer network. So the rest of the builders are serviced through the dealer network. So to get to that 33% that Andi's talking about, you've got about another 23% that goes to builders through the distribution and dealer network. The distribution and dealer network is about 55% in that range. And then the remaining portion is going to be through the retail channel.
And in terms of just the environment that we've been in, there's obviously been kind of a crazy few years, right? Coming out of COVID, there were massive shortages. Lead times got really extended. I think a combination of there was very high demand, and then also there was a decent amount of disruption in terms of on the production side. Now that we've sort of normalized, I think volumes, industry-wide volumes, you guys have been giving guidance, I think, for sort of a low single-digit decline, right? I think.
I think sales, yeah.
Yeah. Sort of, what are the various moving parts? Sort of, when you break down those channels, what segments are doing better, what segments are doing worse, and then what are the, I think there's a fair argument to be made that there's probably a lot of pent-up demand generally for repair and remodel in the U.S., just given the aging housing stock. What are the things that you're looking at or thinking about in terms of unlocking end market demand?
Yeah. So this year, we're basically seeing new construction is up mid-single digits year- on- year. And it was a steady growth throughout the year. I think now you're just seeing year-on-year comps kind of annualizing, but really throughout 2024, it was a nice steady growth for full year-on-year growth in mid-single digits. And then R&R basically offsetting it on the low end of being down low single digits. So from our perspective, our volume is relatively flat.
So it's been more of a trade down and price fluctuation this year. With respect to driving demand, there's a lot of speculation out there of what's going to happen, particularly in the second half. It's a matter of when the recovery happens because we know there is that pent-up demand, right? The U.S. homes, they're old. Let's face it, 38, 39 years old. They're due for R&R.
You have a new generation coming in that doesn't like the old style, right? There's been some surveys that it's a pretty staggering percentage of people who bought their home are unhappy with their kitchen. So there's just so many statistics out there that tell you that pent-up demand is there. But I think these, just general economic conditions, a lot of anxiety over the election, which is still in existence.
Credit card debt's high again, and things are just really expensive. So people are just still hesitant on big-ticket items. I did see a recent article that small-ticket R&R seems to be improving just ever so slightly. But to get that big-ticket moving, I think we just need some calmness in the world, quite frankly. Interest rates didn't do what we thought they would, or at least not yet.
But really for that R&R, I think what you're seeing is just that bottoming, kind of bouncing along the bottom of R&R of people who have been in their house, they're really unhappy with it, or the cabinets finally broke. So they had to go replace them. And what we're really missing from historical R&R is that turnover, right?
The housing turnover. So eventually, when things calm, maybe interest rates have to come down a little bit more. Maybe some of the election calmness has to happen. People will kind of bite again at a big-ticket item. But the timing of it for us internally, we're not ready to give guidance. I think we're still trying to figure it out.
Yeah. And I do want to sort of get into a little bit more sort of in this environment where MasterBrand strategy, before we get there, can we just talk? You touched on the sort of the pricing and trade down. Can you just sort of break down what's happening with the sort of absolute price, like catalog pricing? And then it seems like more of the sort of price headwind is really a trade down. We could just kind of walk through that. What the impact's been and where you're seeing that in the most significant areas.
We started seeing it probably in orders mid-year last year. So really in the Q3, we started seeing it come through. And they were more it was heavily almost all trade down versus price. And when we refer to trade down, it can be moving from a product category to a lower product category, or it could be within a product category, but just maybe doing a more standard color or doing less accessories, right?
They're both kind of trade down, so to speak. So we saw that happening. We quantified it at about 3% of net sales in the third quarter. And then it went to about 5% of net sales in the fourth. And then it's kind of stabilized. We're not really seeing it get worse, not necessarily seeing it get better either, but it's hanging in there.
But when you look at price, there's a couple price and trade downs. There's a couple dynamics. Last year, it was pretty much all trade down, not necessarily price. There was a little bit of promos. Now it's a little bit more price than trade downs. Like in the third quarter, it was probably two-thirds of the effect was more price and about a third was trade downs. And that price, though, isn't list price, which once you change the list price, that's hard to get back.
So what we've been doing in a much more disciplined way than I think we've done in previous years prior to Dave Banyard's years is we're much more disciplined that we do it via a promo or a particular discount because if it doesn't work in driving volume, we can stop it, right?
So we're just not giving away price to give away price. So we're much more disciplined, particularly with a builder or new community. If we have to give a point to get it, we'll get it or we'll give the price if we need to, but it's in a much more controlled manner. So I think what you're generally seeing is most quarters is a mix of that price and trade down effect and volumes just kind of hanging in there steady.
Very good. Just on going or hitting on one other channel, in terms of the home center channel, how big a part of your business is that? And I think the home centers are sort of notorious for coming back on price, always pushing for the best pricing. What does that part of the market look like? I think generally sort of that is a lower price point product typically.
It varies. So it's about 20%, right? Home centers?
It's higher. It's a 30-ish.
30-ish?
30-plus, yeah.
Sorry. So what's interesting with home centers is they do have that reputation, right? They just come after you with price, price, price. And what we noticed a few years ago is we wanted to change the conversation. We wanted to be a business partner with them, driving volume, driving products and price to the consumer. But the conversation was always just price. That's just what the home centers are trained to do.
And so several years ago, we worked with them pretty extensively on a quarterly process on pricing. It's partially index-based, and it's a function of our bill of materials. So it's become much more of a rational conversation with them. And we assess it quarterly, and they've stuck to it. And what that has allowed us to do is focus our efforts with the home centers on share that we want.
Those stock is a big part of the home centers. We also sell semi-custom and custom with them. We have been winning some shares in some of that product line because we've been able to focus our time in conversation on what are the trends, what should the displays look like, where our remodel is happening, what's the best regions, what should the consumer pricing be.
We've been giving them recommendations for that as well. I should mention we've even had one of the home centers in our facility helping us with a lean event and how they can improve their back office processing when it comes to returns with cabinets.
So it's become a much more productive conversation with them, and that's allowed us to focus where we want share because there are certain products in home centers that we weren't necessarily, it wasn't the most desired share. And we're like, "Let some of our competitors use up their capacity with some of that lower profit product and let us focus on the share we really want with the home centers." So it's been quite a journey over the last couple of years, but it's been, I think, very helpful for both parties.
Very good. And I think we kind of sort of touched on this, and I think maybe your answer is time will tell, but there are like so if you look at Harvard's LIRA and a few other things, people are now predicting that we are close to the bottom of repair and remodel, that things should start to turn. Is there anything that you're seeing? Is there anything that you're watching? Or do you think that some of this is just we've had a really bad stretch here? Demand has been very weak, and things are bouncing along. So realistically, the next move is to start at some point to get better. It's just a question of when.
Yeah. I think it's more of a question of when. I think we are completely sold on the fact that there is pent-up demand. So we're sold on it. It's a matter of timing. It's there. It's just when do people feel comfortable enough again for big-ticket items? So we'll start looking at vacation. We'll start looking at cruises. We'll start looking at car purchases. It's just that general feel of when are consumers again getting comfortable with big-ticket items.
And that's when you should see it break through. And then the other item you're looking at is when does the interest rate come down low enough or just settle so people can just calm so that people can understand their budget, their month-to-month cash outflow, that homes start turning again. And that will trigger additional push for R&R as well. So you kind of have both of those dynamics. It's homes turning, and it's just general comfort of big-ticket items.
Yep. I guess in terms of internally, I mean, I think there's a lot of one of your big competitors. There's been a lot of change happening with how they go to market, production. How much change has occurred at MasterBrand since the spin in terms of your manufacturing footprint, the manufacturing process, automation? Are those things that you're focused on? Is that a core part of the business, or is it more, as you said, focusing on winning the business that you want to win, focusing on the right products?
Yeah. I think a lot of. I mean, I know our competitors. Two of our main competitors are very focused on capacity and footprint right now. To Dave's credit, he did that right away when he came in, and what was that? In 2019 and 2020. Those footprint changes and capacity changes were done right away, so that was behind us. We had the capacity.
I think we've continued, and we still do today on our lean events and kind of leading through lean, the common box initiatives, the efficiency initiatives so that we can continue. We're always focused on moving that fixed cost base to variable, right? So how can we get the same capacity out of less footprint, so that journey, I would say, still continues. We're just, I think, quite a bit further along, and therefore, because of that, that gives us a lot of nimbleness.
When the market goes up or down, we have the capacity to produce more. But we also have the ability to quickly shut down variable costs with less fixed costs so that our decrementals, that's why you're seeing such great decrementals when our volume does come down over the last several quarters, because we have that nimbleness. Now we can start focusing on, okay, now how do we grow? How do we win share?
How do we use this breadth of product portfolio to get new customers? And quite frankly, how do we provide unique product packages to customers, particularly a builder who wants a lower price point, but yet they still want to be differentiated? They want a differentiated kitchen from their competitors to win a community, right?
So how can we use our common box and our product portfolio to generally, for example, give a certain product category a price, but still also provide a hood top or a refrigerator cover, which it seems very simple, but actually in the industry, it's quite hard because you're crossing brands, but because some of the things we've done internally, manufacturing-wise, supply chain-wise, we're able to combine some of those brands for customers to provide kind of a unique experience or a unique product for the price point they're looking for,
So we've been able to change that focus to growth and share, and then we're also focusing quite a bit on technology and consumer experience. I would say under Fortune, we already put in a lot of the true automation.
When you think of a stack of plywood coming in and being cut and the plywood piece being maximized, that type of automation has been done and already installed. Now we're looking at more advanced technologies for data processing, decision-making, vision systems, RFID for efficiency in the plant. So we're stepping into more advanced technologies.
And then on top of it, we're doing some piloting with use of technology to see if we can make it easier for designers and potentially the consumer to design that kitchen and get that process faster. Where right now, it takes an average American 12 to 18 months to design and pull the trigger on a kitchen. How can we make tools or develop tools to make that faster? So we've just been able to, I think, evolve our thought process and our strategies from that footprint, internal efficiency, and then using that to expand growth and profitability.
Very good. Super helpful. I guess just maybe getting a little more granular in terms of some of the revenue performance and sort of managing the balance sheet. But so when I was prepping the questions, in 3Q, I think gross margins were down about 200 basis points. And I guess I just wanted to sort of decompose that a little bit.
How much is volume deleverage? Are there other, at this point, it feels to me like most of the input cost headwinds should be gone. But how should we think about that? And I think that's a good segue and we can talk about tariffs after that.
So when you look at that 200 basis points, almost half, like 80-ish basis points of it, is really just due to year-on-year one-off. So Q3 last year, we got almost $6 million of insurance proceeds from a tornado and medical costs that were earlier in the year. They just happened from a gap accounting process come through in that quarter. So that didn't repeat.
So that's almost half of that difference. So the remaining about 120 basis points, quite frankly, was timing of inflation and price. So we've been very aggressive on price the last couple of years, really post-COVID. I would say we've been the leader in price in the industry, and people follow. This has been a tougher year, obviously, with everything going on to put through price. Inflation started creeping up in the summer, particularly in freight.
So we went out with a price increase in August to cover it. We saw it coming. However, at that time of the year, it's pretty hard to get pricing through, particularly retail, where we have a quarterly process. And then builders, they have this nine-month kind of build process. So we put the price through, but it actually doesn't come through for months later.
So really, that third quarter, the remainder of that difference is we had some inflation come through, primarily in wood and freight, freight in, ocean freight. And that pricing really doesn't start coming through into the Q4 and then really the first half of 2025. It just took time to get the price.
Year-on-year, we were flat from a volume standpoint. It was really 3% headwind related to the ASP that Andi's talking about.
Yeah, so it's actually Q3. Really, from a Q3 perspective, it's just a little bit of time lag on price. But we see it right side.
So you would expect the gross margin to stabilize. So I mean, I think that is a segue. I think, obviously, with the election and already some discussion around tariffs, you mentioned you do have one facility in Mexico. Maybe we can just, even at a higher level, sort of what is your exposure? I mean, obviously, it feels like China is probably relatively limited at this point, unless it's hardware and stuff. But what kind of exposure do you have in Mexico and Canada, either from production and/or just input costs?
Yeah. So really high level, you look at our cost of goods sold, 50% is materials. 20% of that is imported. The majority of our imports come from Vietnam. And we do very detailed audits there where we're providing a lot of value-add in Vietnam in the basically imports of our packed product. From a Mexico perspective, net sales are about 15%-ish of our sales. It primarily produces stock product for our retail business. That is set up in a Maquiladora. Generally, that has been kind of exempt from tariffs in the past. It has. So I'm assuming the Maquiladora structure will still remain intact.
I am not familiar. Can you explain just a little bit?
It's basically a tax protection loophole, maybe is the best way to say it, where you set up. You have to follow certain rules on documentation, but it allows you to manufacture in Mexico, basically bring in products to Mexico, manufacture their value-add, and then sell into the United States without a tariff.
Okay. Understood.
That structure is in place, well audited. I'm assuming that will be okay. Really, what we're looking at, assuming the Maquiladora structures still exist under the new tariff regime, when you really look at it from a high-level perspective, we think to recover, let's say, a 20% tariff, let's say he puts in 20% tariffs for everything else, we would need a low single-digit price increase, which we would plan on passing on. Our customers know that we would.
Yeah. Okay. Very good. Yeah. I guess I think we only have four minutes. So you mentioned at the start, the company has been, M&A has been a big part of the history and the growth. You just recently completed a not inconsequential acquisition with Supreme. Maybe we could talk first about sort of Supreme and the strategic rationale, what that brought, what was attractive about it, how the integration is going, and we can talk about.
Sure. So Supreme was top of our list on our funnel. It was a fantastic fit from many kind of strategic views. It had products that we were even though we're the largest manufacturer and we have the broadest product portfolio, we would still say we're under-indexed in certain regions. We're under-indexed in certain products. Supreme brought us, in particular, the Bertch Vanity. It is a because right now, what bathroom vanity? What we have is super custom and stock, but we don't have that in-between bath vanity.
We can produce it, but it actually is quite an effort to produce a product in the price book and train 6,000 dealers. So if you can get the product already established, it's super helpful. So that was a product we were going to develop anyway that they had, that we have obviously a much broader distribution network.
We're going to be able to take that product and move it through our distribution. That was a great synergy. It also had a lot of regional advantages for us, particularly in the north. There was only about 20% overlap with our dealers. We're able to reach a much broader customer base with them. Thirdly, a third synergy from them is we had facilities within 200 miles of each other.
One in particular was only like 10 miles from each other that both had excess capacity that were able to merge with similar products. Just a lot of cost efficiencies there on top of supply chain costs because as a smaller company, it was buying through distributors, right? There's a markup there where we go direct.
So when you look at all these synergies, Supreme was just a real easy strategic fit for us. And so far, so good on the integration. There hasn't been any surprises. The supply chain savings seem to be coming through. That was one of the first things we were going after. And then we've announced some of the plant consolidations. Those are going well. And then we mentioned that there was about $28 million of synergies in year three.
We're on track for that. And again, that does not include the sales synergies that we're seeing. And again, we'll be we've already well done the process of getting our dealers trained on that vanity. And then we're also a good surprise is a lot of their dealers, even though they're more custom, semi-custom, they're very interested in our Mantra product, which is basically our copycat of the Chinese imports.
It's a very easy-to-install product at a lower cost, and it wouldn't be a cannibalization product. It basically just allows us as Supreme dealers entry into a whole new market for them as well, so we see some synergies there too, so it was just really a great fit. There are more Supremes out there. We do have a funnel that we keep looking at. We're very cognizant of our leverage, and our goal is to always keep it below two. We will go above that as we did with Supreme for the right deal, but we'll be very disciplined. We're not in a hurry. We definitely want to make sure we prove ourselves with the Supreme deal first.
Very good. Well, you hit kind of my last one there in terms of the leverage and the balance sheet. So that's super helpful. We're right at time. I really appreciate you guys making the effort to come. Thank you so much.
Appreciate it.