Okay. Morning, everybody. My name is Julio Romero, and I cover building products, industrials, and engineering construction at Sidoti & Company. Really pleased to be able to host Gibraltar Industries. Their ticker is ROCK. With us today, we have Bill Bosway, Chief Executive Officer, and Joseph Lovechio, Chief Financial Officer. Gibraltar Industries is a leading provider of products and services for the residential, ag tech, and infrastructure markets. Their sales are 100% North American-based, and the company is fresh off of the transformational acquisition of OmniMax, which they bought about six weeks ago, very timely and very pleased to have them here today. The format of this is gonna be a fireside chat. For those in the audience who have questions, feel free to type them into the Q&A section. Happy to ask on your behalf if time allows.
With that, Bill and Joe, appreciate you being here. We'll jump right in with just, you know, a quick high-level overview, if you could provide, of your business for those that are a little newer to the story.
Sure. Thanks, Julio. Thanks for having us, and welcome everybody. We'll have a fresh investor deck for everyone to take a look at here later today. I may show a couple slides to help illustrate some of the points. Let's just start with if you think about the business, there's really three segments that now we operate in. Our residential segment is our largest, and in 2026 it's gonna represent over 80% of what we do. Then we have Agtech, which is about 13%, then we have infrastructure is about 5%. Residential in 2024, without the acquisition of OmniMax, represented about 60% of what we do.
We have made it pretty well known that we're moving in the direction of more building products focus, particularly on residential and some light commercial opportunities that come with the move as well. We're excited about that for a lot of reasons. I think it's gonna be easier for people to understand the portfolio. We're simplifying in terms of how we operate, which will, we think, create a lot more value. Having the acquisition of OmniMax, which we'll talk more about, I'm sure, you're really bringing two leaders in this space that live in the same world. When I mean live in the same world, we're talking about the same channel, the same customers, very similar product lines.
A complement of geography presence or geographic presence that creates a supplier to an industry like no other that exists today. We're excited about being involved in that and obviously, you know, playing a big role in structuring the future of this industry as our customers are requiring us to be different than we've had in the past. Pretty excited about the direction we're going in for a lot of reasons, and we'll talk more about that as we get some questions. Let me stop there, Julio. I know you have a lot of questions around residential and OmniMax, so why don't we jump in?
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks so much for the overview. You know, wanna hop into OmniMax. One more overall question is just, you know, overall, what are you seeing on the demand front across your end markets? To your point earlier, the expected 2026 mix is gonna be 80%+ residential now. Followed by commercial and then infrastructure. You know, across those end markets, you know, just talk about what you're seeing on the demand front.
Yeah. When we put our guide out, which, we just had that call not long ago, we talked about, starting out relatively conservative in our view of Q1. That's gonna be the, you know, the toughest quarter, if you will, year-over-year. We've got deal costs. We have a whole host of things that weren't in last year and in this year. We're also coming off of a demand cycle the second half of last year in the roofing world that took a pretty large downturn the second half, specifically in Q4, where there was a lot of inventory correction. As you flow into Q1, you know, I would say we're a little more cautious about how we build the plan and then how we build it out Q2, Q3, and Q4.
In general, we've not assumed that, 2026, from an end market perspective, would be any different than 2025. Everything that we're driving in the business is around driving participation gains and executing on our integration plans, driving our synergies, as you'd expect in year one. There's a pretty intense effort going on there. You know, we're arguably almost through the first quarter. As those that are in this space know, towards the end of March is when you start to see the season start to materialize. January's always your slowest. February's picks up a little bit. I would say in January, that looked like there was an overcorrection in Q4, and so orders got off to a decent start relative to last year.
We had that big snow storm event that covered a large portion of the U.S. Now, we don't tend to blame weather for things, if you will. But in that scenario, I think NOAA had said, you know, up to maybe a third of all rooftops in the U.S. were covered in snow, which is an extraordinary amount. My point there is simply, we saw orders shift down because contractors couldn't get on roofs. Then things warm back up, and so you start to see orders kinda start to materialize again. It's been very choppy, is my point. Then, of course, you throw in a Middle East crisis that we're in the middle of.
Not that that's a direct impact on our industry as much as it is just, does it cause any anxiety for people to hold off or wait or pause? I think everyone's dealing with that. March will be a good indicator from last week to the end of March as to the cadence that we would expect to see. We took an approach for Q1 to be more conservative than not until we get clarity on some of these things. Ultimately, at the end of the day, it's still gonna come down to us, you know, winning more of the market. In the world of residential and light commercial, we serve a $9 billion TAM inside the U.S.
We do a little bit in Canada, but effectively that's all the U.S. Our residential business is, you know, about $1 billion-$3 billion of that. There's a lot of runway in front of us that we can go out and attack and get more aggressive with and hopefully win more. I'd say the first 30 or 40 days, what's been interesting about the integration work is the amount of commercial synergies that are popping up sooner than we anticipated. Part of that's a structural shift in the industry, which is one of the reasons we did this in the first place.
When you have people like Home Depot buying SRS, which is a large wholesaler, and you have QXO coming in and buying up wholesalers, the expectations around what they expect and how they expect to run a business change, and we knew that going into this. If you think about how this industry grew up, and you go to Home Depot and go, "Well, how many metals suppliers do you have?" They'll tell you over 100. Well, that's not necessarily overly efficient. The cost of doing business with 100 different folks around common product lines is not the best way to move through life. Same with QXO had the same recognition.
When we announced the deal in November, I think the customer response was quite interesting and positive in the sense that they're looking for somebody that has a more national presence, but that can help them at the local level because of codes and specs being somewhat unique. I think not that people are gonna roll over and we win the business. That's not my point. My point is we're in a position to where we can help structure what this industry looks like, which will be different than it has the last 5 or 10 years. Being at the forefront of that with the right partners makes a difference. It's not just about speed and service and having the right price, it's actually about changing the way you can do business.
To be in a position as a supplier to be that impactful with a customer base that is new, I think is advantageous for us. That all being said, I think that's gonna lend itself more towards how do you gain more share or participation in 2026 than you would otherwise. We built our plan assuming the market doesn't help, but it's built on that. We're excited about what we've learned in the first 30 days or so. We're seeing some of the commercial opportunities show themselves. They'll start flowing through in the second half. The cost synergies are flowing as we had hoped, maybe a little bit faster. Those are being implemented as we speak and will continue to be implemented as we go through the year.
Effectively, we've taken up our synergy implementation number for the year by about $4 million on a base of $20 million. You know, I'd say off to a relatively good start. It's gonna be whatever the market's gonna be. I do believe that there's still fundamental benefits out in front of us with the structure of the industry. I think, you know, this recent conflict took rates back above the emotional 6% line. We saw existing home sales kick in when it went below 6%. I think getting back in the 5s will happen at some point, not predicting what's gonna go on in the Middle East, but fundamentally, affordability is getting a little bit better.
We're in the middle of a three-week calm right now that people are trying to understand inflation and what that's gonna mean and so forth, and I can't predict that for you. I do think over the next year or two, you're gonna see the market cooperate a little bit better than it has the last two years. When it does, we'll be in a much better position to deal with that and take advantage of that than we would have if we would have stayed kinda independent, if you will, or on our own. That's the residential piece. No change is our plan from an end market. It's just go win more. You know, that's the game plan. If the market comes back or gets a little bit stronger, great. We'll take advantage of that.
From an Agtech perspective, I mentioned in our Q4 call, there's a piece of the business that is really made up of large projects, and if they move, then it moves the entire business, unfortunately. That's a frustration for us. I'm sure it is for our shareholders as well. One of the projects that moved a lot in 2025 was, we call our Arizona project. We've taken that out of the backlog. We've taken it out of the plan. And it's we had about $80 million in the backlog associated with that. Even taking that out, our backlog was still up over 40%, going into 2026. You'll see. We took it out of the plan in Q1. You'll see Q2, Q3, and Q4 really accelerate.
We expect a pretty positive year from Agtech. We have the backlog. There's more projects that'll be entering the backlog. I'd say the Arizona project is still breathing, if you will. If it happens, then great. If not, it's not gonna be detrimental to our plan. I'd say the investments going into land and the things on the design board right now are pretty robust. We're excited about not just 2026, but how it feeds into 2027 as well. Finally, infrastructure really good business for us. You know, 25% EBITDA margin performance the last three years. It's solid. It's doing the right things. Really have some big opportunities in front of us that hopefully will get across the finish line soon.
We have some new technology we've talked about that continues to grow for us. So that's feel good about that. People ask about you know, the infrastructure bill, what happens when it expires. I think what a lot of people may not realize is the way it really works is, you know, you get half your funding from the federal government and half from state. When you don't have a bill in place, there's just continuing resolutions that get passed. Right now, the states are in a much better position, particularly, certain states are at a pretty solid position to continue funding the activities they have ongoing. So what's being penciled, our engineering backlog is probably at a record high. That usually translates into a really good production backlog, but we'll see how that evolves.
I do think there's a lot of work going on, a bipartisan effort, we hear coming to the floor in May will be the first discussion around extending the bill and making it much larger. We'll see what happens. I am not predicting anything on the political front, so don't take that as gospel. I don't anticipate any major issues on the infrastructure end market. That's a quick overview of the end markets.
Very helpful color, and I appreciate you going across the portfolio. Really insightful about the customer response that you've received with regards to OmniMax and you're someone who can respond both on a national and a local level. Also you talk about how, you know, one of the benefits is you participating and how the industry is shaped over the near to medium term.
Yeah.
Is that an example of how OmniMax, and you've said this, Bill, how OmniMax accelerates Gibraltar's building product strategy by at least two years? Maybe asked another way, could you have maybe built out the benefits of OmniMax, you know, organically, over a two- to three- or four-year period, but maybe missed out on the need to, you know, of this dynamic opportunity of being a participant in the evolving industry dynamics of today?
Yeah, great question, Julio. You know, if you think about it, we sat in front of our board in January. After six months, we had outside advisors come in and do some independent work, and we said, "Look, this is the roadmap that we see playing out in our building product space and residential, and here's what we'd like to do." You know, we've known OmniMax for a long time, 15 years or plus, and kept track of them and all that good stuff, and had discussions with them over, you know, periods of time as well. We had them actually in year three of that coming to market. Obviously it came to market in year one much sooner than we anticipated.
It being a competitive process, given the brands they have and locations they have and the complement they are, effectively, you know, you would've said, "Well, I'd love to buy those individual pieces over a period of time." That's how we've been building our business the last five or six years. Just keep doing that, bolt on, bolt on, and made a lot of sense for us. Use you know, cash generation to pay for the acquisitions as you go and keep your leverage very low and buy back stock. That was the plan going in. OmniMax pulls itself forward. Competitive process. Yeah, we were the natural owner in a sense of synergy and the complements and all that good stuff. It came as a package.
Instead of buying six companies individually, we bought them together and because of competitive process, you know, people are concerned with what we spent and the amount of leverage we took on, and I appreciate that. I really do. We would not have done that if we didn't have a clear path to driving our leverage down in a very short period of time, just based on the core performance of the business in this market environment, because the amount of cash both of these businesses generate and the performance levels they were at when we bought, you know, when we bought OmniMax. Collectively, we're not buying a fixer-upper.
You know, we're in some cases buying something better than we are, and there are many examples where they're better than us in a number of areas, and there are some examples where we're better than them. The reality is it's already one team run by one organization, and everything's collapsed in that way, which is a good thing. The intensity with how we're approaching this is kind of interesting with an internal management office set up, which has been set up inside OmniMax for two and a half years, with a leader and a full-time team. We've kept that in place, and we've kind of supplemented that with Gibraltar people. You've got, you know, an IMO office that's responsible for the 20 work streams every day, seven days a week.
We'll start implementing our organizational synergies this month through June. That'll be done. The leadership team down through the third level of the organization will be finalized and in place here shortly. That's a big piece of our synergy that we'll start with. That gives us. You know, we wanted the opportunity to take two, three months to make sure we get the organizational structure right, and then you put the right folks in the right seats, and you have this opportunity to pick the best of the best talent, but you're also trying to make sure the culture works the way that you want it to. If you get that right, the rest of it gets a lot easier.
That's been a lot of our focus, and second to that has been the supply chain stuff, which we're working simultaneously. That all being said, what's interesting is, when we filed with the DOJ, we got approval in record time. The only reason I bring that up isn't that you get a ribbon for that, but you guys know how that process works. Those guys, first thing they do is call your customer base. For them to come back and approve sooner than we ever anticipated without any question tells you that there's pretty good response from our customers about, now there's somebody that can help us do some things differently than we've done in the past. I felt good about that from that perspective.
Secondly, what we've seen in the relatively short period of time is opportunities, you know, presenting themselves, which we didn't put in the plan. That's why we took our synergies up in terms of implementing synergies this year because some of the commercial things came sooner than we expected. That's a good sign. It's not that, you know, everything we're doing is perfect. You know, that's not how these things actually work. If you get a large percentage of it correct, you know, that's an important thing. Then if you go to the street and tell them you have $35 million of synergy, you better have identified at least one and a half times more than that, 'cause they don't all happen exactly like you think, until you get in and you start digging in.
We feel really good about the fact that we were able to take up our synergies within 30 days. [That] is a good indicator for us that there's some really positive opportunities out there. I do think at the end of the day, can't emphasize more, if you think about somebody that does have 100 suppliers of metal products or 50 or 25, whatever the number is, think about the frictional cost inside your organization of placing every order, paying every bill, organizing every delivery across, you know, thousands and hundreds of locations. Think of that differently when you have a partner that can actually do that for you now on a national and local basis. The cost of doing business with us and for them will go down.
Once you simplify inside that interaction, now you can start applying some tools that are kind of interesting that people talk about every day, whether you want to call it AI or machine learning, that really changes the game. We want to be at the forefront of that in this industry. We believe if we do that well, we will grow at a faster rate than the industry. Our goal is always to exceed what the industry grows, and which tends to flow with GDP. We do believe this is a, you know, high single digit type of growth opportunity for us. The margin profile obviously is significantly different when we weigh more towards or mix more towards residential and light commercial, and we generate a lot of cash. We're not CapEx heavy.
You know, the difference between operating cash flow and free cash flow is not dramatic and, you know, putting that capital to work going forward is we'll have a lot of options, and we're pretty excited about that. To really get down to it at the end of the day, if you look at where we're trading today, what are people nervous about? They're concerned about our leverage. I get that. We told everyone it would be between two and 2.5 and within two years. I just remind people we have other levers outside the quality of the business itself with the portfolio, and we'll continue to simplify that. You can imagine if we do anything on that front, any proceeds will go towards driving that down even quicker.
That's important to us and we are doing that. We will work that really hard. You know, a lot going on, but it's really ultimately end of day very laser-focused on the things that we're gonna do. We're not gonna go out and acquire anything this year. We're gonna focus on leverage, focus on integration, driving our synergies. As we talked in our earnings call, if you think about what drives that today, you know, we've got tax benefits, we've got synergies flowing through, we've got inherent performance of the business. There's a lot of things that we have levers that we, you know, at our disposal that we will use.
If the market doesn't cooperate as much as we would like, we're gonna plow through it and be in really good shape when it does return. Sorry, went off the beaten path there.
No. You touched a lot of the even the balance sheet cash flow questions I had there, so I appreciate that. I'll skip those. Important that you highlighted the revenue synergies being pulled forward a little bit earlier than expected, you know, as you talked about on your Q4 call a couple of weeks ago. Part of the moving pieces of the synergy pie, there were some logistics initiatives that were planned for 2026 that were moved out to a 2027 start date. I think you cited some of the 80/20 and SKU harmonization initiatives. They're gonna make it easier to optimize logistics in the future. Can you maybe unpack that a little bit? Is that related to?
Yeah
your commentary about maybe leveraging AI tools and being the leader on that front, on a-
Yeah, that's a good question. Let me start with 80/20 because there's 80/20 goes across the business. There are 80/20 initiatives going on in 2026 that are staying, and that's really around facility optimization and making sure we have the right capacity in the right locations for some of these commercial synergies that we're talking about. And so that won't stop. That's going forward as is. There's 80/20 around, you know, when you think about product line simplification that does actually benefit you in a couple of areas. One is it streamlines a bit on your supply chain, but it helps you on logistics. Let me bridge for you what I mean by that.
I mentioned in our call also. I showed the organization and we're hiring a head of product innovation and engineering, which neither organization had. We had a nice group of engineers, probably early in their career, really talented, folks that have done some really good new product stuff. Now, what we really wanna attack is this is building the watch, and I apologize, but it's part of how we think about this. When you look at the spectrum of products that we have, there are certain product lines that are more national in their nature relative to local code and spec, and there's certain, on the other end of the spectrum, very unique to local code and spec. There's a bucket in between.
Over time, that has driven these various businesses that are now coming under one roof to make certain things in certain areas and just assume that that's the spec that has to be. We believe inherently there's opportunity to actually optimize specifications and local codes in a different way because of our size and scale and our presence. We wanna do that surgically because we do want certain things to be unique because that's a moat, and we want other things to be less unique because that creates a different supply chain logistics opportunity as well.
What I mean by that is, if you were able to take some SKUs and manage proliferation down a bit and change codes and spec and get people to kinda get their heads wrapped around that, and these are probably on more common type of products, your ability to set up how you operate and where therefore, where you ship from gets much different. That's where logistics becomes a savings opportunity for us in a bigger way. When you're talking about a lot of SKUs and a lot of shipments that are going through various channels, and so we need time. It's a collective effort to take that data and understand, and this is where AI, to your point, can help us accelerate. Where are we shipping and across every single product line, across each of these channels, and why?
Are we shipping because that's where we started from years ago, or are we shipping because that makes most sense? That work has got to be done. Parallel to that, how much of what we're doing on shipping has to do with the specs around the products we've engineered in the first place, and can you change that simultaneously and benefit on both? That's where we said, "Look, that's a bigger lift. It's important to us, but that's a change the game kind of thing that's gonna take a little more time." We're gonna focus on the lower hanging fruit, get that in place, which is still gonna keep us ahead of the plan. In parallel, we'll bring some resources in to help us with the other piece.
That's what I meant by moving that out a year. It's not. It's a little bit more complex, but it's a bigger opportunity than we probably realized, but there's some work that has to be done. I think being together as one business now puts us in a position to have those discussions, though. You'd be surprised how often our customers, not for anything they do wrong, but they just may not exactly have the right products and the right MSAs because of codes and specs. A lot of work that we can do will not only help ourselves, but we can help them be optimal in terms of what they need in each of these locations.
We had an example. It was two years ago, three years ago in a hurricane where, you know, we filled up with one retailer based on what they ordered. We said, "Hey, we think you have the wrong stuff here. Here's why." They said, "Ship it anyway." Didn't sell out, and they figured out that they did have the wrong spec. It still happens. As sophisticated as people are and systems are, it still happens. When you think about value creation for our customers, it's lowering the cost of doing business. It's optimizing how they get product to their store and make sure that they're selling out with the right stuff and right place.
If we can do more on codes and specs, then I think that's something a lot of local or regional guys just will not be able to step up and do, and that's our view.
Got it. Two quick questions I'm gonna try to squeeze in here. Just any, do you have any progress update on maybe the remaining portion of renewables that is still?
Yeah
discontinued ops basis? I have one more after that.
Yeah. We're still anticipating we'll get that done in Q2, and we're, I'd say, in the later stages of that. What I think I mentioned in the earnings call, what took us the length of time it did, we were hoping to get things done end of last year. I know people were disappointed. What I couldn't say at the time was we had two different parties interested in two different pieces of the business that were strategically important to them, so we had to split things apart, which obviously creates a lot of extra work relative to creating P&Ls and balance sheets and so forth, and then the diligence that goes with that. We should be, you know, our hope is that we get done here relatively soon.
Great. My last one here is, you know, the business and the portfolio have dramatically changed over the last nine months, both from, you know, exiting of certain businesses and additions of certain businesses and potential more simplification to come. You know, as you look out, you know, from a longer term perspective, you know, what do you think is most underappreciated from an investor perspective about Gibraltar in your view at this point?
Well, you know, the residential segment for us has been a pretty decent segment the last seven years. I mean, we've done some decent things there. We didn't get a lot of credit for that, and I understand why, because we had other parts of the portfolio that have struggled and, you know, if you're looking to try to figure us out, I mean, that's a tough task. I think so the more simple we get, people will see and appreciate the type of performance that we've demonstrated in residential. You know, we've never really gotten credit through multiple expansion associated with the performance we have relative to others that traded higher multiples with similar, if not, in some cases, even lower performance. I do think as we get simpler, one, we'll be easy to understand.
That'll probably attract more people. We've executed relatively well. OmniMax has as well, and I think combined structurally in this industry, we'll be in a position no one else can be. I do think with the performance we expect, you know, we should see some multiple expansion, and hopefully that'll help investors make a lot of money in the process. You know, just wanna be judged on what we're actually delivering at the end of the day and as residential becomes a bigger piece of what we're doing and, you know, it should flow that way, and that's what we're excited about. I had someone ask me earlier, "Well, listen, but you're going into a marketplace that isn't as high growth." I'm not suggesting that's the case.
I think we will grow this business in, you know, high single digits% because of what I just described. Yeah, we, you know, we'd like to have the market come back and help us a little bit, and I do think at some point in time that's the case. Just remind people every day, there's a $9 billion TAM inside the U.S. We're $1.3 billion. Gosh, there's a lot of runway. Let's go take a bigger piece and, you know, the market comes, it comes. I feel like there's a lot of runway. We don't have to jump into a bunch of adjacencies. We don't have to go buy doors and windows and all that other stuff. That's not our game.
Our game is stay in our swim lane, do what we do really well, and just get a bigger piece of that pie. That's what we're gonna do, and we're gonna hopefully help our new customers that are now into the space have a good experience in doing that as well. That's the thought process.
Makes sense. Thanks, Bill. Thanks, Joe. Everybody at Gibraltar and the Alliance Advisors team as well, really appreciate you all taking the time.
Thanks, Julio. Appreciate it. Thanks, everyone. Take care.
Thanks.
Bye-bye.