Welcome to the Watsco Third Quarter 2018 Earnings Conference Call. All participants will be in a listen only mode. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Please note this event is being recorded. And I would now like to turn the conference over to Albert Lamad, CEO and Chairman of the Board.
Please go ahead, sir.
Cheerio. Good morning, and welcome to Watsco's 3rd quarter earnings call. This is Al Named, Chairman and CEO and with me is A. J. Nahmad, President Paul Johnson, Executive Vice President and Barry Logan, Senior Vice President.
As we always do, before we start, the usual cautionary statement, this call has forward looking statements as defined by SEC laws and regulations that are made pursuant to the Safe Harbor provisions of these various laws. Ultimate results may differ materially from the forward looking statements. Now on to our performance. Watsco achieved record 3rd quarter results. This includes record sales, profits, net income and earnings per share.
Sales growth was driven by increased unit demand, price and mix for replacement HVAC systems. We also announced a 10% raise to our annual dividends to $6.40 per share effectively in January of next year. 2018 marks the 44th consecutive year that we have paid dividends. In addition, adoption and use of our various technology platforms continues to grow and our run rate for e commerce sales now exceeds 30% of total sales. Now that our selling season is concluded, we are on a mission to accelerate the pace of adoption and customers with customers as well as within our own organization.
Further investment in technology was made during the quarter as we completed the acquisition of Alert Labs, a technology company in Canada. This is a terrific team of entrepreneurs that has talent and products to help our customers grow and become more profitable. This morning's press release also mentions a company wide initiative to leverage our technology investment, improve productivity and reduce costs. Watsco's culture is to challenge our leaders and provide necessary support. To that end, unprecedented investments to remain in technology in our organization to support the launch of our many innovations.
Given the results this year, we are now challenging our leaders to use our business intelligence platform to find and execute on opportunities. Progress was made in the Q3 and there's more to come over the next several months. Our balance sheet remains conservative with a debt to total capitalization ratio of 7%. The Q4 is a strong period for cash flow and we expect to close the year with very little debt. This positions us to take advantage of almost any size investment opportunity.
Now the detailed 3rd quarter results. Revenues grew 5%, including a 7% increase in HVAC equipment sales. Gross FAFSA increased 8% with a gross margin improvement of 50 basis points. Operating income increased 7%. Operating margins expanded 10 basis points to 9 point 4%.
EPS increased 16% to a record $2.11 on net income of $79,000,000 including the benefit of long term I'm sorry, of lower income taxes. Looking at our 3rd quarter results a little closer. Profits in our Florida locations were down $3,000,000 after growing during the first half of the year. Margins and mix were all positive, but unit growth was offset single digit during the Q3. And in Mexico, profits declined $2,000,000 on lower sales.
More importantly, all of our other operations had a terrific quarter, achieving an 8% sales increase, including its increase in including an 11% increase in HVAC equipment sales along with 18% higher operating profit and expanded margins. Now results for the 9 months. Revenues grew 5%, driven by 7% increase in residential HVAC equipment. Gross profits increased 6% with a gross margin improvement of 10 basis points. Operating income increased 7% to a record $314,000,000 Our operating margins expanded 10 basis points to 8.8 percent and EPS increased 18% to record $5.43 on net income of $203,000,000 including the benefits of lower income taxes.
Now in terms of our outlook for the full for next I'm sorry, let me start that again. In terms of our outlook for this year, we estimate annual EPS in 2018 to be in the range of $6.40 to $6.50 per share versus to 20 seventeen's adjusted EPS of $5.54 This represents a growth for 2018 of 16% to 17%. Finally, let me highlight important fundamentals that differentiate our business from others. Watsco's primary markets are large, fragmented and replacement driven and provide opportunity for steady growth over the long term. In addition, conservative mindset towards debt and maintaining a powerful balance sheet provides us safety and the flexibility to take advantage of any size opportunity, especially during periods of economic volatility.
And given the large amount of long term equity held by our leaders, Watsco's culture remains risk adverse with a focus on the long term. We believe our culture in actions will continue to serve well all of our stakeholders, our customers, our fellow employees and their families and our shareholders for many years to come. With that, A. J, Paul, Barry and I are happy to answer your questions.
The first question comes from the line of Brett Linzey with Vertical Research Partners. Please go ahead.
Good morning.
Hi, good morning. Just wanted to focus on the incremental costs on investments. You did indicate they're approaching $25,000,000 this year. How much does that need to step up next year to achieve the fulfillment and continued rollout of the technology strategy?
Sure. Let me ask Ajay Naved, who is running the technology program.
Yes. That number has been relatively consistent for some time now. And as I've said on previous calls, it's more about what we see as opportunities and for long term returns. So there may be some fluctuation in those numbers, but probably more likely pretty consistent.
Okay. And then just shifting to the top line. So I think Carrier realized about 2 to 3 points of price in the quarter. Your equipment growth was up 7%. That does imply kind of low single digit volume growth for Watsco.
Just looking at shipments for the industry, July was up 8%, July up 14%, and then September sounded pretty strong. I'm just trying to understand what Watsco needs to do from a resource or positioning perspective to help lift that volume number going forward?
Well, I'm glad you asked the question because as you saw us in our press release, we're not losing share, we're gaining share. And maybe we should explain the fundamental idea about what markets we serve. And why don't we go to our data guru, Paul Johnston?
Yes. Brett, we're seeing the markets kind of split into 2 buckets. 1 is where the marketplace is very weather sensitive. And the weather sensitive parts of the U. S.
Is outside of the Sunbelt. It's up in the Midwest, New England, Northeast, Central Plains. About 40% of the U. S. Market, 60% of the U.
S. Market is really not weather dependent. And what we saw in the summer, the entire summer, not just the quarter, but we saw it incredibly warm compared to prior year in the weather sensitive states. Degree cooling days were up 30% to 33% in those areas. And so what we're looking at right now is that the growth in the weather sensitive states where Watchkill frankly doesn't play, were up materially.
I would say mid teens, low 20s, Whereas the Sunbelt states, when you look at the replacement demand, it was fairly flat to up slightly.
Yes. It's important for us to explain that in addition to that, that these are manufacturers that you're reading the data of, not distribution data. And in the markets that we serve, which are primarily replacing markets in Sunbelt, we're doing great. It's not you should not compare us to the markets that we don't serve where they're experiencing double digit growth rates because of weather in those markets. Our markets don't react to weather.
It always gets hot. Now sometimes we show a little faster growth than others, but we're okay. We're doing well. We're gaining share in what we serve.
Okay. And then maybe just a follow-up on my first question on investments. How did operating margins perform relative to your expectations? I guess, another quarter of little or no leverage. And I'm just trying to understand where you're seeing pressure on that cost equation?
Thanks.
Well, again, we try to explain the concept of what we've done. We designed software programs to enhance our customers' business. We did the same thing internally with our business intelligence. We told our leadership when we first introduced the technology, do what you need to do, hire whoever you need to go, just do just go at it, because it's going to be brand new to our customers. And these customers are not used to change.
Many of them have been doing the same thing for a long time, very successfully, I might add. So a lot of people were at it and that's fine. We supported all that. But now that the platforms are pretty much proven, they should and will produce efficiencies that you'll see the return coming as time goes on. So we knew what we were doing.
We said go at it with anything you need. They did. And now we're going to say go at it, but do it with increased productivity. And that's what we expect. And we're starting to see it in the Q3.
Okay, great. I'll pass it. Thank you.
Next question comes from the line of Jeff Hammond with KeyBanc Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Good morning.
Hey, morning. This is Brad on for Jeff. Just a follow-up on the demand question. You called out some flattish sales in Florida. I guess just with the Irma comp from last year and you called out some meaningful disruptions last year.
I guess I would think that would be a little bit better. But just curious if there's any kind of dynamics underpinning that?
Great question. Let's go to our Data Guru.
Yes. We're probing into that. We had a very strong front half of the year in Florida. And then during the peak replacement year period, we actually saw a flattening and even a slight downturn obviously in single family replacement demand. A lot of theories out there right now.
We're interviewing a lot of contractors and obviously looking at the marketplace in total. But I would say right now the jury is a little bit out on exactly what was driving that and whether it's a trend or just a bump in the road.
But were manufacturer shipments into that Florida also down?
Yes. Manufacturer shipments in Florida are down through September. Even though new construction, which we're somewhat of a player in, but new construction demand is up and total industry shipments into the state are down.
I guess
it's industry wide, it's not just Watsco.
Have you seen any normalization thus far through 4Q that you could speak of? Or do you think it's, like you said, a continuation of this industry wide dynamic?
Too early to tell right now. October is starting out good, but whether or not it's a summer phenomenon, we look at this season, the primary season, which is from approximately April through September. And that's really where we saw some softness in demand.
Okay, great. Thanks for the color there. And then just on pricing, what's your view on receptivity in the market? It seems like after a year of kind of really unprecedented number of increases from the OEMs, are we starting to hit at that threshold where you're getting a little bit more kickback than you normally would or just kind of
broader thoughts around price? Thanks. Go ahead, Paul.
Yes, it is unprecedented. I've been in this industry for, I guess, since Willis Carrier, but I've never seen this many price increases. The first two, very smooth. The third one, probably a little bit of pushback, but pretty much universal among all the OEMs that we're seeing price increases. Whether or not we're going to see any elasticity changes as far as market demand because of those, I think that's a far stretch because the price increases generally have been cumulative about 7% to 10% so far.
And one of the OEMs already announced the price increase next year?
Correct.
All right. I'll pass it on. Thanks for the time, guys.
Sure.
Next question comes from the line of David Manthey with Baird. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Hey, good morning, Al.
First question, based on the data that you gave us that sales were pretty flattish, I assume that sales dollars in Florida for you this quarter. Is it safe to assume that pricing was up low to mid single digits? In Florida? In Florida, nationwide HVAC equipment, anything you're willing to give us?
Well, our overall sales increase includes both a mix of units increases as well as price increases. In Florida specifically, our revenues included in price increase, but in the 3rd quarter unit sales went down slightly.
Right.
Okay. So in
terms Dave, I'll just add to that. And obviously, margin for the quarter is up 50 basis points. That's driven by the equipment business. And we should also tell you in a market like Florida, margins were also higher. So in terms of price realization and capture in the market, that's the evidence.
Okay.
So given the Q3, if you look at the state of Florida, precipitation was pretty normal and we had record heat. I'm still trying to get to the why here in terms of why replacement revenues and unit volumes would have been lower. Do you put any credence in the thought that we're 13 years out from the industry peak back in 2,005 that was followed by 4 years of decline, who would be hitting that part of the curve? Do you think about that at this point?
Well, let's go to our data guru. Paul?
That's certainly something that's built into our econometric model as far as looking at demand. Yes, I do think that has some impact. Actually, it was not record heat in Florida. It was actually cooler than normal, but it was hot. It doesn't
matter. Florida is always hot. It's always hot. And it's always going to always going to create demand for replacements. What we're trying to say is outside of the Sunbelt, higher temperatures does improve the demand for HVAC equipment.
But in the Sunbelt, it's steady. It doesn't act like the northern markets do. So when you hear these great increases, you're hearing them because they participate in those northern markets that we don't have a position in of any size anyhow. So it's on we're trying to explain this so that you understand the fundamentals that the markets we serve, we're doing well and gaining share. In the markets that we don't serve there this particular year, they did really great.
The hot weather did drive double digit increases in those market areas. But long term, we like the markets that we're in. That doesn't mean eventually we won't go north. At the moment, we like the consistency of demand for replacements in the Sunbelt areas that we richly serve.
Right. Okay. Yes, I'm intimately familiar with the weather in Florida. But as you're thinking about these trends and Paul you mentioned it, is it possible that when you look at these unit shipment trends that we could see slower growth, even flatness for years in the equipment business. I'm just wondering how worried should we be about this cycle?
Trust me, whatever is going to sell in Florida, we'll be doing it. But go ahead and answer that, Paul.
Yes. We're going to be gaining share. Plus there's other market segments within Florida, which we're entering. We really have been the stars of the single family replacement. We're moving steadily into other market segments now, particular on the commercial side, the multifamily side.
There's a lot of other segments besides single family homes.
But I think you've identified well the Florida situation, which is a little unexplainable at the time, but Florida is the largest market for HVAC equipment in the United States. And this is our area. We have more locations here. What is it over 100? We are especially with the technology that we're offering our contractors, they will be able to gain share whatever business there is in Florida as they adopt it.
It. And it is a slow adoption, but as they do it, they'll gain share. Plus, we're going to enter other segments of this market. So I think your observations are very well taken, but don't count us out in Florida. We're the powerhouse that will continue to be.
Very good. All right. Thanks very much guys. Appreciate it.
The next question comes from the line of Ryan Merkel with William Blair. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Hey, morning. So why don't I ask about Mexico.
This year. Yes, it does. Especially since we bought it from Carrier, it's been a winning combination. Paul?
Yes. As you know, this was the year of the election down in Mexico where they elected a new President. He's very far left. I think there was some concern about added investment during the election cycle that probably slowed the market down that now that we're past the election and the new President's in office, I think he's moving further to the right. And I think we'll start seeing some activity down there picking up again.
For example, I have a major renovation at the airport. And we're a supplier to that renovation. Well, that was put on hold by the incoming President. So we'll see how that develops. But it's still a very healthy business.
It just had softer sales and that caused a decline in profitability. Long term, I don't think it's going to be an issue at all.
100,000,000 people. That's helpful.
What?
There's 100,000,000 people down there in the developing country. It's a great market.
Okay. Thanks for that. And then I want to ask about the maturing investments that we've been talking about on these calls for a little while now. But I guess I want to come at it a little differently. Operating profit growth has been growing mid single digits.
What do you think operating profit growth will be once these initiatives mature? Should it be growing 9% to 10% I guess is my question?
Yes. I wish we had precision on that. We just don't. We just are leading the innovation in the industry. We're spending more money as we should because we are the largest.
We just think it's a very positive thing to do even sacrificing growth rates in the short term. As long as we explain ourselves, as long as we explain that our goal is long term, which it is, What is it going to amount to in numbers? Well, it's hard to figure out. We have 90,000 contractor customers. Now they employ many technicians.
So we're probably talking 300,000, 400,000 or 500,000 technicians. How long will it take them to adopt the mobile apps that we have, the e commerce? All those questions, we'd like to have answers. We just don't know. We just think it's a slow moving adoption, although we're going to try to do better with it.
But will I think it will materially improve our performance? Absolutely. And will I think do I think it would give us a competitive advantage over anybody else that distributes product in the industry? Absolutely. So I wish I gave you with precision what numbers we're talking about, but we just don't know the for the reasons I just stated.
We just can't give you precision.
Fair enough. And just quickly lastly, you mentioned launching productivity initiatives. Any more details
you can provide or maybe Yes. What we mean by that is, as for example, the order fulfillment tools that are now in the hands of our locations, that improves the tools that we provide allows our branches to do more with less. And so the increase in productivity will hopefully reduce our employment costs as we introduce these tools.
Which is particularly important right now given that there's all this buzz about labor shortages and labor demand. I think it's appropriate that we put these in place for that, so that we can do more with less.
Okay. Very good. Thank you.
Next question comes from the line of Robert Barry with Buckingham. Please go ahead.
Hey guys, good morning. Good morning. I guess I wanted to follow-up on the productivity and just see if you could maybe detail what you think the size of that nut is over the next 12 to 18 months or so?
Well, another estimate. Barry?
Yes, Robert. Good morning. I think the press release gives a little bit of color on what we're talking about. About 250 people were added over a few years. And what Al said earlier was important.
What he said was we went through our leaders, we're going through this monumental change, monumental transformation in our business and asking them go do it and figure out how to do it protect our business and protect your customer and protect the supplier relationships and so on. So around 250 people were hired, which is about a 5% increase in workforce at the time. And that's one of the principal things that's being addressed in productivity is now to go back to those leaders and say 2, 3 years later, now what? How do we find the productivity that we know is being gained? Let's rationalize what we should be doing in the marketplace and let's make sense of all these investments and how it's played out 2 or 3 years later.
So that's the challenge that went out earlier this summer. Some of those plans were drawn. We're not ready to say here's what it means. There were reductions by the end of Q3. There'll be more to come as the year plays out.
So that's the brackets I would put around it is around 250 headcount additions that were made during that period. The 2nd bucket obviously is our 2nd biggest SG and A item is our facilities. How much square feet do we need in this new paradigm of operations versus what we had 3 or 4 or 5 years ago? That's been reduced, it's been tweaked, it's been made smaller and actually we have more locations today than we had 3 years ago with less overall square feet. But that's again a slow grind to produce less space and save some money.
So that's in the discussion also. And the third is freight and delivery. We are the last mile delivery company for our company. It's about 1,000 trucks across 5.60 locations. They all have drivers.
They all have resources tied up and largely fixed costs. And that's again another third layer that is part of this productivity initiative to rationalize over time. So it's early stage. It's we're not ready to throw out a bunch of numbers and wish list, but that's the nature of what we're doing.
I can tell you what my goal is from an operating margin perspective, it's at least 10%, at least we'd like to move our operating margins, EBIT margin to at least 10% and beyond.
And do you have line of sight too? No.
I like your persistence, but we really don't. But we see progress even now. I mean, we've reported progress. But that's never been done in distribution. I think we have the capability of doing that.
Got it. Just to clarify, when you talk about 250 people, are you the plan to actually have a reduction in force or are you just able to grow without adding people?
Both. Obviously, I'm sorry, go ahead, Barry. Go ahead.
Obviously, there's attrition in every business and that's how we always want to intend to kind of carry out that type of program. And it's a brand specific, location specific, entrepreneur driven specific local market thing. This is not a broad stroke of Watsco. This is asking and challenging local markets, local leaders to look at this every day, give them data that they now have that they didn't necessarily have a couple of years ago to look at those decisions and make them.
Not only that, if we have attrition, our culture is very much a proponent of fill it with existing employees. If they are unfamiliar with the technology, train them. We rather look inside before we look outside to fill the opportunities that are providing by the new technology. That's a cultural thing. We want to give our employees long term careers.
All of this is long term thinking. So as Barry says, attrition is hopefully our goal is to replace by promotions with training.
Got it. Maybe just a question on gross margin, very nice gain there. Just maybe some comments around how sustainable that kind of year over year performance might be going forward. It does sound like the price increases continue to come through and environment generally inflationary. But it's a little bit of a large gain versus what typically I think for Elatsoe, it's kind of very stable gross margin performance.
Yes. I mean,
I would say the rate of change needs continued price increases to see the same kind of results. So you're right, it's outsized increase in gross profit because of price increases. There's more to come this year, next year, which seems to be in the cards. I would hope there would be improvement. But then that flattens out and as price increases work their way through the inventory cycle.
Got it. So maybe just lastly for me a question on cash flow and expectations for the year, in particular just how you've been managing inventory levels. I think you've been maybe holding a little more inventory through the season than is typical.
So any color there? Yes. We have our technology is geared towards improving turns, which would contribute to cash flow. Now pricing, of course, the increases in pricing that you've mentioned and we are aware of does increase the value of our inventories. So that the turns don't show up because there's more investment inventory.
And every year we sometimes do pre buys, but that's consistent. So I'm not sure that's part of it. So our inventory turns this year did not show much of an improvement. However, it's not adopted across the board yet, particularly at Kari Enterprises, which is our big player. And we expect that as the technology is adopted there, I'm talking about the inventory software that we've adopted at JEM Air and that's really producing some great inventory turns.
But more importantly, it's improving the ability to provide a contractor customer that comes in whatever he wants are, I think our ratio is like 98% of the time when a contractor comes into our location, we have what he needs at that moment. That software is particularly designed to do that as well as to let us plan the inventory levels better.
All right. Thank you. I'll pass it on.
You bet.
Next question comes from the line of Chris Dankert with Longbow Research. Please go ahead. Hello.
Good morning. Hey, good
morning, Al. Thanks for taking the questions. I guess I should kind of move the conversation to A. J. Here.
The Alert Labs acquisition interesting technology, I guess, is there any kind of plan or timing on the rollout getting that to actual customers, any SG and A impact? Anything else that you really point to as far as app adoption, contractor feedback, just kind of update on technology here?
Sure. Specifically on Alert Labs, it's very exciting. As They are just a bunch of really smart entrepreneurs. Their culture is unique and impressive and their skill sets are complementary to ours. As far as the products, they have 2 products in market today that measure water flow and seek out flood and leak protection and help mitigate those costs.
The device that we are developing together, which is Sentry, which is the air conditioning measuring and monitoring device is in beta today and we expect to launch in full force in Q1. And it will be a sort of a surgical launch. It won't be available to everybody at the same time. But as far as we do talk show with the contractors all the time. I think just about every contractor who sees it, his jaw drops with excitement because there's a lot of potential here.
It's very early days though, so I don't want to get too ahead of ourselves in speculating what it might mean in terms of dollars or in a business plan. But we're excited about it and I think we've got the right team now both to design it, manufacture it and continue to enhance it over time. As far as the other technologies, we showed that the e commerce continues to tick up in usage as far as percentage of our sales. And the early results of people using our technology, e commerce and the mobile apps and some of the Watsco Ventures technologies, and it is early results still, but it's very positive for our customer base. The customers like it.
They continue to use it. Attrition rate of those customers is very low and the growth rate of those customers that are using it is very high relative to customers that are using as heavily. So that's why we are very encouraged by the long term prospects of these technology investments. But like was said earlier, it's a matter of doing this at scale, which is just going to take time because it's new and it's different and then we're introducing enhanced tools into an industry that's been doing things very much the same way for a very long time and like we said and very profitably. So it's a matter of scale now.
Got it. And I guess the initial reaction I have to the product will be, is there also kind of a cross usage of this product to add preventative maintenance information, analytics type of thing even further down the road?
Yes. That is the intention of the Sentry device is that we designed it as a pro product, meaning that we'll sell it to contractors, not directly to homeowners. And contractors, they can choose how to sell it on to their customer base, which are homeowners and building owners. But what we hear a lot from them is that they would embed this in service plans that they have with homeowners as sort of a connected service plan or enhanced service plan. And what the device does is real time measuring and monitoring, but also predictive diagnostics using machine learning algorithms.
Got it. Got it. Well, you guys really hit everything else. So I'll leave it there. Thanks again.
I would add that that's why we keep saying long term adoption. That's why we have a very young president to see it long term, see it through.
I was going to say something for That's
a little funny. That's supposed to be a joke there.
No, I said I just would I'm just going to have some fun and add to that. The 55 year old guy on the phone here is the customer engagement that's going on really over the next 6 months is seems to be very powerful stuff. About 9 feet from where we're speaking this morning is about 15, 20 folks from the Northeast getting the full treatment on every contract we're up to and really listening and learning and this is we're all gaining £10 because we've had mountains of food out here while customers are doing this over the last several weeks. So we're trying to resist that temptation, but the customer engagement going on is really extraordinary right now.
Got it. Glad to hear that.
And sorry, just one moment. It's because they see the value in it for their business. Our message to them is that we want to help you grow because when you win, we win, right? If you grow, you're going to pull along us with you guys. So that's our mission and that's how we say to these contractors is we're in business to help you guys grow.
Any other questions? We'll take it from
the line of Steve Tusa with JPMorgan.
Hello, Steve. Hey, guys. Good morning.
Good morning. Good morning.
I'm glad to hear you're chipper. There's nobody out there that's excited as you are. It's good to hear. Everybody's so depressed these days.
We're absolutely not depressed. We're excited.
Yes. You got the life down there
in Florida, no doubt about it. Beautiful place.
Come visit Steve, especially in January.
I'll try. I'll try. So just on the gross margins, I think just remind me, so you guys have some inventory and I know there was this unusual cadence of price increases from the OEMs. Are you guys able to leverage that? So for example, if you bought some product from Carrier in June or July or something and they raised price in August that you can kind of you get a little bit of a spread
benefit on that? We do. Okay, got it.
Got it. Are you see what would you I think at a high level, there's a lot of discussion around the consolidation potential in this industry. Lenox talked about Carrier a bit on their call. What would be your take on kind of a Carrier and Lennox tie up? They said they wouldn't want to impact the front end of the business, but those guys like to control more of distribution.
Have you guys thought kind of about the game theory on that at all?
Yes. Well, let me ask you this, Steve, related to that particular issue. Is Lennox saying they're going to acquire Carrier or be acquired?
No. It was basically just consolidation. So would it be like a reverse Morris Trust or a merger of some sort, more of a combination. I mean, I think Carrier is obviously too big for Lennox to go out and kind of acquire specifically. But whether it's them or Yes, everybody else.
Anybody else getting it. What's your kind of take on that? You've been around for
a while. From a distribution perspective, we think it's healthy. Okay. Because think about it, if 2 manufacturers get together wherever they are, that removes a competitor. It's just 1 now.
And OEMs, whoever are the survivors, we'll be in a game of distribution because we have the largest distribution network actually in the world, certainly in North America. We can't control those kinds of things as you know, the consolidation. If I were to guess, I would say that difficult because of the antitrust. Yes. But on the other hand, I suggested air conditioning is a global market now.
I mean, there's Asian manufacturers already in the United States. So if somebody were to say, why don't we merge, but the worry about antitrust wouldn't be so great because if they added all the other manufacturers that exist in the world that are serving the U. S. Market, that may not be such an issue. That's my thesis.
Right. I'm not sure that it is.
No, that makes sense.
And then lastly, Trane has actually talked about in their filings now that they're kind of going out and acquiring independent distributors. It's unclear whether it's commercial or residential. I think it kind of sounds as though it's residential. Have you seen them get a little more aggressive strategically and around stuff that maybe you guys have been trying to go after?
Well, let Barry answer that because he's in the market constantly for that sort of thing. Got it. Got it.
Steve, you broke it for a second. Who did you say?
In Ingersoll's filing, they mentioned that they kind of acquired distributors. And it's not even they didn't take from time to time. It was kind of seemed like more of a consistent run rate. And I don't recall I know they churned their distribution a little bit, but it's I don't recall them kind of talking about it that specifically. So just wondering if there's any kind of change in the marketplace for these types of assets and whether they're kind of more involved or not?
Just again, I'm not them, but in my experience on the commercial industrial side, commercial applied side, commercial service side, they've been very active for most of my career. Bringing those types of services and relationships in house and acquiring essentially accumulating those assets.
Yes.
On the residential light commercial side, we've seen very little acquisitions in really a 20 year period. And in the recent period, I can't think of any. As with all OEMs, they are active in making distribution decisions within local markets. That's not new. I would say they have been more active than they had been maybe 5 or 10 years ago, but certainly not competing for M and A type activities in our neck of the woods.
Yes. Steve, you have to remember from an OEM perspective, it's not once you acquire, then you have to carry the inventory into receivables. That's enormous. You need the cash first to acquire and then the cash second to support it. The independent distributor takes over all that.
Right. If they operate through independent distributors, that investment all goes to the independent distributor, not only the acquisitions price, but as well as the working capital that follows. So these are significant investments. Well, you know our record, we've invested 1,000,000,000 of dollars in acquisitions. So of course, we believe in the independent distributor model for many reasons.
And I hope that we have continued opportunity and we see no lack of opportunity. It's just right way to see what happens. One last quick one for you.
Are you seeing any signs of there's a lot of debate around the housing market and direction of the housing markets. Obviously, you guys are more replacement and stuff like that. And any kind of signs that things are turning down when it comes to your more kind of direct read into the new home building kind of sector all across your footprint?
Yes. As you know, that's not a big piece of our business. It's fairly small on the residential side. This year has been great and it continues to be great to the Q3 as far as increase. Looking at the permits through September, it came out yesterday, it appears appears at least from a permitting standpoint, they continue to grow.
Right.
If new construction for us is, like I say, more on the supply side than it is on the equipment side. And to date, we've been able to hang on to that.
No, he's referring to the industry in general. Yes. We have realized about the industry in general.
I really wouldn't.
I can give you some specifics to Watsco, not just the whole market, but Watsco. There's 3 things that kind of are important in gauging that. And one is margin. Passing through price increases at a higher margin is a good indication of the health of the end market. The other is bad debts.
We float customers $500,000,000 in accounts receivable every month and it gives us a lot of insight into how they are doing if they pay us. And year to date, I mean, year to date, our bad debt write offs are around 3 basis points.
Yes.
And I've done this job when it's 20 basis points. Right. Very healthy credit market, so to speak, within our customer group. And the third is mix. If contractors have the faith and confidence to walk into a homeowner and say, here spend 10% more on a higher efficiency system, and they're accomplishing that, mix is a good indicator of health.
And again, we saw an increase in mix this quarter.
So what you're saying is our contractors are saying was it served in new construction and you don't see our contractors' financial condition getting any weaker? Yes.
Got it. Great color guys. I really appreciate it.
Thanks, Steve.
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Albert Namad for any closing remarks.
By the way, are you going to be our operator from this point on? The gentleman, is he all right, the one that was here before? This is to you, operator. All right. She didn't Emma didn't hear me.
She tuned me off. All right. Many thanks for your interest in our company. I hope you stay with us long term. That's our methodology always, what benefits we accrue to all the stakeholders here long term.
So I hope you'll be with us long term. Thanks for your attention today. Bye.
Ladies and gentlemen, the conference has been recorded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.