UFP Industries, Inc.

Good day and welcome to the Q3 2025 UFP Industries, Inc. Earnings Conference Call and Webcast. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1-1 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, press star 1-1 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker, Mr. Stanley Elliott, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us to discuss our third quarter results. With me on the call are Will Schwartz, our President and Chief Executive Officer, and Mike Cole, our Chief Financial Officer. Will and Mike will offer prepared remarks, and then we will open the call for questions. This conference call is available to all interested investors and news media through the investor relations section of our company's website, ufpi.com, where we will also post a replay of this call. Before I turn the call over, let me remind you that yesterday's press release and presentation include forward-looking statements as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are subject to risk and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations. These statements also include, but are not limited to, those factors identified in the press release and in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. I will now turn the call over to Will.

Welcome everyone and thank you for joining today's call to discuss our financial results for the third quarter of fiscal year 2025. Share our thoughts on what we are seeing in the marketplace and provide some preliminary thoughts on how we see the business heading into 2026. Net sales remain steady at $1.56 billion on a 4% decline in units and 1% decline in price. We saw encouraging traction in new product sales, which totaled 7.2% of total sales. Our profitability remains pressured when compared to a year ago, but on a trailing 12-month basis, we continue to flatten out. Much of the market dynamics that we've seen early in the year have continued. We're seeing cyclically soft demand, ongoing trade uncertainty, and competitive pricing pressures, creating a difficult operating environment. Despite the ongoing market headwinds, we continue to see a number of our business units finding a level of unit and profit stabilization. While it might be early to identify what we are seeing as green shoots, it does leave us cautiously optimistic heading into 2026. I couldn't be more proud of the team and how they've managed through a difficult 2025. I think it's important for investors to understand we are not sitting idly by in managing through what this cycle dictates to us. We have and will continue to take the necessary steps to emerge from this market a much stronger, leaner, and profitable company. Across all of our businesses, we target above-market growth, but with an overarching focus on returns. How we get there will vary by business, and it speaks to the balanced nature of our portfolio. We continue to introduce value-added products across our portfolio that will improve mix and drive higher margins. And we continue to address underperforming operations, primarily through active restructuring efforts, but in some cases, divestitures. We continue to make the necessary investments to upgrade our capital base and capabilities, as we've discussed with our $1 billion CapEx program. Within this framework, we have earmarked $200 million towards automation to improve throughput and lower our cost structure. We are making select greenfield investments for certain products to expand geographically or expand capacity. In addition to what we are doing organically to drive outcomes, we remain very active on the M&A front and continue to explore transactions of various sizes. M&A has always been a key part of the UFP growth story and will be an important part of the story and a great complement to the other actions we're taking to win in the marketplace. We have completed three bolt-on acquisitions this year, all smaller in nature, but all are great fits from both a cultural and products perspective. The first, a wood packaging manufacturer located in Mexico that allows us to strengthen our business with certain multinational customers. Two, a supplier to the manufactured housing, RV, and cargo markets whose location is complementary to our existing footprint and allows us to execute strategies to reduce our operating costs while providing additional capacity for growth. And lastly, a distributor to the RV market that complements our existing locations and product lines. We have taken steps to become more intentional, more strategic, and focused in our deal evaluation. Our process around M&A targeting continues to mature. Centered around this is how an asset aligns with our core business while delivering on growth, margins, and return targets. While the pace has improved, we will remain patient and disciplined. And to that point, we have been able to pivot to share repurchases this year, given the market conditions and market volatility, and have bought back roughly $350 million, or 6% of our market cap, through October. As we look ahead, the opportunities for our business are positive across the board, and we are using this period of softer demand to strengthen the core of our business. We believe we have the right team in place to weather the current climate and capitalize aggressively on opportunities when the market recovers to deliver on our long-term targets. Now, turning to the individual segments. In our retail segment, let's start with ProWood, which has performed well even in a tougher market. We continue to work on our cost positions and improving our manufacturing process. ProWood recently introduced TruFrame, a proprietary kiln-dried and factory-planed joist product. The value we add on the front end helps the structure resist warping and twisting, which reduces build time and improves product quality and aesthetics. Along those lines, SureStone is another area of focus. We continue to see strong demand for our SureStone products, and efforts to raise brand awareness are beginning to yield results. Consumers and contractors understand we collectively have something that they can't get anywhere else. While we're waiting for these investments to fully scale, we're confident in its potential once capacity is in place. That includes expansion efforts in Selma and our new plant in Buffalo, New York. Both expansion efforts are progressing well and will be fully operational and realized in first quarter 2026. These expansion plans are consistent with our plans to double market share over the next five years. Throughput improved every month of the quarter and into October. We remain on track to be fully stocked for the 2026 selling season as a part of our big box program, as well as positioned to service our expanding relationships with two-step distributors. ProWood also continues to serve as an important distribution partner for our Shearstone products, and we see distribution as a competitive advantage for our ProWood business. I strongly believe our ability to self-distribute product, both pressure-treated lumber and composite decking products, at the same location are true differentiators versus our market peers. The leveraging of these two strong brands allows us to provide a very high level of service in order of fulfillment. To support the launch of this product, we have invested $30 million to support the brand, and we are pleased with the initial success. All of the metrics we are tracking to determine a successful return on our investment, including unaided brand awareness, product sample questions, and website traffic, to name a few, have exceeded our expectations. We will continue to build on this platform to increase exposure, and we like our position looking ahead to 2026. Moving on to our packaging segment, it was the first to feel the impacts of a down cycle, and based on performance for the past several quarters, we feel it is among the first to begin to stabilize from a sales and margin perspective. We like the long-term trends in these businesses and the complementary nature of packaging to other parts of our portfolio. We're well positioned to aggressively grow market share across the business given our engineering and design capabilities in structural packaging, geographic expansion on our protective packaging business, and leveraging our low-cost position in our pallet business. Like other parts of our portfolio, we continue to invest and drive cost out of the business while developing new solutions to help customers reduce labor while improving safety in their packaging operations. We are working through patent process approval for our ULOT 200 product and received an award for one of our structural packaging solutions this October. Now, wrapping up with construction. Markets remain pretty consistent to our last quarter, where we reported a very competitive site-built business. Builders look to manage home inventories, while consumer confidence and affordability remain challenged. And while we don't have a national footprint yet, We do overlap with some of the markets that have been more pressured. We continue to position this business for longer-term success with investments in automation to improve our cost position and throughput. Our factory-built business continues to outperform our end markets as we develop new products that add content and expand our addressable market. We continue to believe our factory-built business addresses the affordability issues impacting the residential marketplace. and we believe our site-built offerings address these challenges as well. In both cases, we are working to bring solutions to the market that can help improve build times and reduce labor content at the job site. We also bring solutions to the non-residential and public construction markets with our concrete farming business where we provide solutions that reduce job site labor. We have had great success in this fragmented marketplace and appreciate that our products are fungible across all types of concrete construction work. Looking ahead, we remain focused on driving innovation across the portfolio and making strategic investments to create shareholder value. We believe we're in a position of strength when it comes to M&A given our $2.3 billion in liquidity. As we've said before, our focus remains on the most attractive opportunities that enhance our core business. We have identified targets across each of our business units that complement our core strengths. We continue to refine the business, and we are looking to put capital deployment strategies toward the places with the greatest opportunities for shareholder return. Our balance sheet is ready for transaction that strengthen these areas, and we have the right team in place. We'll be patient and discerning, and we're prepared to act when the right opportunity matures. We continue to be committed to our long-term targets and believe the steps we're taking today will position us to achieve these results in the future. As a reminder, we are driving towards a 12.5% EBITDA margin to achieve 7% to 10% unit sales growth, some of which will come from M&A and new products. We will focus on driving ROIC in excess of 15%, which is well ahead of our cost of capital. And all of this while maintaining a conservative capital structure. We are making progress even in this down cycle and performing 200 basis points better than we did in 2019. That's a testament to the strength of our business model, which as previously stated, we continue to refine. In closing, I believe in the work UFP Industries is doing for the benefit of our shareholders, our customers, and our communities. We will continue to bring to market value-added solutions that strengthen all three. Thank you again for joining us today. We're proud of the progress we've made and confident in our path forward. With that, I'll hand it over to Mike Cole, our Chief Financial Officer.

Thank you, Will. Net sales for the quarter were $1.56 billion, reflecting a 5% decline from $1.65 billion last year because of modest declines in overall volumes and pricing. Share gains and recent acquisitions helped offset some of the volume pressure from softer demand, and more competitive pricing was primarily isolated to our site-built unit. These headwinds resulted in a 15% decline in our adjusted EBITDA to $140 million. while adjusted EBITDA margin fell to 9% from 10% a year ago. Importantly, the structural improvements we've made in the business since 2019 have resulted in a nearly 200 basis point improvement in overall margins since that time. It's worth noting that 75% of the decline in our consolidated gross profit was due to lower volume and pricing in our site-built business as affordability and confidence levels continue to weigh on residential construction activity. Even in this environment, our trailing 12-month return on invested capital stands at 14.5%, well above our weighted average cost of capital, clear evidence of the strength of our balanced business model. Operating cash flow is $399 million, and we maintain a robust cash position of over $1 billion, giving us the flexibility to pursue our strategic objectives. As we remain patient for the right M&A opportunities to materialize, we've returned significant capital to shareholders, repurchasing nearly 6% of our total outstanding shares through October. Moving to our segments. Sales to customers in our retail segment were $594 million, a 7% decline compared to last year, driven by softer repair and remodel demand and our strategic exit from lower margin product lines. Within our business units, Pro-wood volumes declined 5%, reflecting higher interest rates and weaker consumer sentiment. Deck raiders delivered 5% unit growth and 8% net sales growth, including a 31% increase in surestone decking and 9% growth in wood plastic composite decking. These gains were partially offset by a 13% decline in railing sales. As we discussed last quarter, our railing sales declined due to the loss of placement with a large retail customer, which to a lesser extent offsets some of our wood plastic composite decking growth. Positively, we gained share with another major retailer through the launch of our Summit Surestone decking, positioning us for a net market share gain as we expand capacity to supply approximately 1,500 stores. We expect to capture the full benefit of this share gain in 2026, an important step toward our goal of doubling our composite decking and railing market share over the next five years. While our year-over-year gross profits in retail declined by $13 million, we consider the causes to be temporary. Falling lumber prices weighed on the profitability of our pro-wood pressure-treated products. Inefficiencies associated with implementing and running our new composite decking capacity will be overcome as the lines reach optimal efficiency shortly. And lower volumes and inefficiencies resulting from the wind-down activities at our edge manufacturing locations will be eliminated as we move production to other plants. Adjusted EBITDA and retail declined by $11 million because of the decline in gross profit and foreign exchange gains last year offset by a decrease in SG&A expenses, despite significant investments we've made in building the SureStone brand. As we indicated last quarter, the closure of the two edge manufacturing facilities is expected to improve adjusted EBITDA by $16 million in 2026. Looking ahead, we believe the continued improvement and resiliency of our pro-wood business, growth and margin potential of our decorators unit, restructuring of edge, and SG&A improvements position us well for stronger results ahead. Packaging sales were 395 million, down 2%, with a 3% organic unit decline offset by 1% growth from recent acquisitions. Pricing remained stable, and we continued to gain share with key customers. Protective packaging volumes grew 15%, driven by geographic expansion. While gross profit declined by $4 million due to price competition in Pallet 1, overall sequential trends in this segment are stabilizing, providing cautious optimism for 2026. Adjusted EBITDA in this segment was flat year-over-year, supported by SG&A reductions. Construction sales were $496 million, down 7%, primarily due to volume and pricing pressure in site build as we protect our share. Positively, volumes grew significantly in factory-built, commercial, and concrete forming, highlighting the strength of our diversified portfolio. Gross profit declined 20 million year-over-year, entirely due to site build, but it's important to note profitability remains above 2019 levels, reflecting structural improvements. Adjusted EBITDA declined 9 million as we've reduced SG&E by 10 million and aligned costs with current demand. In this environment, we remain focused on balancing cost discipline with long-term growth investments, expanding market share, driving innovation, strengthening our brands, and improving efficiency through technology. Consolidated SG&A declined $13 million this quarter, even though we invested significantly in advertising for SureStone, driven by a $7 million decline in incentive compensation and a $12 million reduction in our core SG&A. Looking ahead, we've targeted an annual run rate of EBITDA improvements from cost and capacity reductions of $60 million by 2026. Our plan for SG&A expenses in 2025, excluding highly variable sales and bonus incentives, is $137 million for Q4 and $553 million for the year. The annual target is $11 million lower compared to 2024, and it's comprised of $31 million of anticipated cost reductions, offset by a $20 million increase in decorators' advertising costs. Additionally, our Q4 targets are 3% of gross profit for sales incentives, 18% of pre-bonus operating profit for current year bonuses, and $7 million of investing expense associated with prior year share grants under our bonus plan. In addition to SG&A reductions, we've taken actions to reduce and consolidate capacity at locations that don't meet our profitability targets. We anticipate these actions will have a favorable impact on gross profits, totaling nearly $14 million in 2025. And as I previously mentioned, the closure of our Bonner facilities is expected to eliminate operating losses totaling $16 million in 2026. Based on the actions we've taken to date and opportunities for continued improvement, we're confident in our ability to meet or exceed our goal of $60 million in cost out by the end of 2026. Moving on to our cash flow statement. Our operating cash flow was $399 million for the year, supported by strong working capital management. The strength of our free cash flow generation has allowed us to continue to invest in growing and improving key parts of our business. while also more aggressively pursuing share repurchases at an attractive price. For the year, our investing activities include $206 million in capital expenditures, comprising $81 million in maintenance capex and $124 million of expansionary capex. Our expansionary investments are primarily focused on capacity expansion for manufacturing new and value-added products, geographic growth in our core higher-margin businesses, and efficiency gains through automation. Our investing activities also include three small acquisitions. Finally, our financing activities primarily consisted of returning capital to shareholders through almost 62 million in dividends and 291 million in share repurchases. Turning to our capital structure and resources, we continue to have a strong balance sheet with over $1 billion in cash and total liquidity of $2.3 billion. Our capital allocation priorities remain unchanged. Invest in organic and inorganic growth, grow dividends in line with long-term free cash flow, and repurchase our stock to offset dilution from share-based compensation plans and opportunistically buy back more stock when we believe it's trading at a discounted value. With these points in mind, Our board approved a quarterly dividend of 35 cents a share to be paid in December, representing a 6% increase from the rate paid a year ago. Last July, our board of directors approved a new $300 million share repurchase authorization that's effective through the end of July 2026. We were active in the quarter and repurchased almost 840,000 shares for nearly $78 million through October under this authorization. This brings our total repurchases in 2025 to $347 million, or roughly 6.5% of our market capitalization. We currently plan to spend approximately $275 to $300 million for CapEx for the year, slightly lower than previously anticipated due to longer lead times for launching and completing certain projects. Finally, we continue to pursue a healthy pipeline of M&A opportunities across our portfolio that are a strong strategic fit and provide higher margin, return, and growth potential. We'll remain patient and disciplined on valuation as we pursue these opportunities. Finally, our outlook remains consistent. Low single-digit unit declines across each of our segments through year end, reflecting soft demand and pricing pressure. SiteBuilt faces the most pronounced headwinds, while our other businesses show signs of stabilization or modest growth. We're confident that our actions, cost reductions, capacity optimization, and strategic investments position us well for above-market growth and margin expansion as business conditions normalize. With that, we'll open it up for questions.

Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star 1-1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, press star 1-1 again. One moment while we compile the Q&A roster. And our first question will come from the line of Kurt Yinger with DA Davidson. Your line is open.

Hey, good morning, Kurt. Thanks, and good morning, everyone. Morning. Just wanted to start on decorators and was hoping you could talk about kind of where we stand with the Surestone retail rollout and whether it's kind of the pace of store expansion, service, sell-through, how that's generally performed relative to yours and your customers' expectations kind of coming into the year.

Yeah, good question there, Kurt. And what I would tell you is we remain on pace. We've talked about it openly. We're really targeting that 2026 selling season and we'll be on shelf and ready to go for that season. We're still working through the capacity expansions that we've talked about, the CapEx expansions, and that's on pace. We'll see that really kind of kick in at the end of Q4 and into Q1 will be fully operational. I would tell you sell-through is good. I think everyone's happy. It kind of shows in the results, especially in a market when you consider that the consumers, it's a very difficult market to upsell, looking for a value proposition. And so we're outsizing the market in results. And for that, I think all of us are really happy.

Okay. That's helpful. And it's probably difficult to parse out, but, you know, With the Surestone growth that we're seeing, is there any way to kind of ballpark, you know, what the impact of kind of the new retail shelf space is as compared to maybe what you're seeing in the pro channel? And relatedly, I mean, would plastic composite grow at 9% is very impressive considering the emphasis around Surestone. Maybe talk about some of the success there, you know, even with some of the shelf space losses last year.

Yeah, we're very pleased and continue to gain share. We're happy. We're excited about where we're heading. And we're winning in all those places. You know, SureStone is obviously something no one else can get their hands on. It's not produced by anyone else. It's a new technology. We continue to invest in that branding and that strategy. And with more awareness, I think it'll continue to take market share. But we're very committed. We're very excited. And our teams continue to innovate and develop a great product to match up to all the price points.

Okay. All right. That's helpful. Just lastly on lumber, kind of a two-parter, I guess first, given the current demand and competitive environment, if we were to see lumber prices start to inflate, Is that a risk to profitability just given the demand environment? And then secondly, recognizing you guys don't want to be big speculators on lumber, but just given where prices are, I guess, how do you think about the opportunity to perhaps lean into inventory here kind of in the winter months ahead of spring and summer of next year? Thank you.

Yeah, good question there. And we always try to balance that. We're looking at what we believe the market will do. We try to use that in our strategies for building inventories for the following season. You know, right now, I think pricing is indicative of kind of the end takeaway. And, you know, we continue to look at that. We focus on it. You know, your first question getting back to is there pressure in a reduced demand environment? Certainly passing along those things are difficult, but we feel like we're positioned and employees well to handle it. And in a lot of our business, you know, our strategies, the way we're priced, you know, for Texas and that. So it's kind of a balanced model.

Okay, perfect. Appreciate the color.

Thank you.

And one moment for our next question. That will come from the line of Keaton Mamtoro with BMO Capital Markets. Your line is open.

Good morning, Keaton. First of all, I just want to kind of acknowledge and applaud the improved disclosures and just the way the information is laid out in the release this quarter. So nice job on that. Maybe to start with just continuing with composite decking and decorators, one of the competitors with recent consolidation is talking about more bundling of products. Given the size and scale, You know, I'm curious kind of, you know, from your standpoint, you know, what are you doing to sort of, you know, continue on this path where you talked about sort of doubling market share? Can you talk about sort of the puts and takes there?

You kind of cut out the last part of your question.

Oh, I'm sorry. I'm just curious from your standpoint, kind of what are you doing so that, you know, you kind of laid out the path to doubling share in that business. So from your standpoint, can you talk about sort of what you are doing?

Yeah. So I think there's a couple of things there. One, that technology that we continue to talk about and there's a reason we talk about it. It is next generation material and technology that applies past decking too. But secondarily, and something that's not traditional for us, is that branding exercise. You know, we're really leaning into it because there's a great story to tell, and we believe that's going to drive those market share gains that we're talking about. You know, we're building momentum every single day. And right now, we're at a capacity constraint that's about to be fixed, and you'll really start to see that capitalized on.

I think also the... investments made to make sure the pro-wood plants can distribute the surestone product has been something that makes us unique and a key part of the growth strategy. Great point. Got it. Now that's helpful.

And then switching to the cycle side, I'm curious kind of what recent trends you are seeing. And as you sort of start to think about 2026, given sort of there is a lag involved, what Any perspective on, you know, kind of what you are hearing from your customers and the competitive price pressures that businesses are seeing? Are you kind of seeing signs of stabilization and then it is more often sort of just kind of an exit rate kind of a thing? Curious kind of what latest you're seeing there.

Yeah, I wouldn't tell you. I think that's the area of the business that's the most murky and lacks clarity. You know, there's a lot of things out there. you know, interest rate cuts, consumer confidence has to grow. But I think some of the, just the uncertainty, the affordability piece leaves it a lot more cloudy in trying to project what 2026 holds. We're cautiously optimistic. Most of our businesses, we see stabilization. That one, we just don't have enough clarity at this point to put a bow on it. Mike, do you want to add anything there?

Yeah, I would just, I think part of your question too is pricing trends sequentially, Keaton. And in From Q2 to Q3, we did see additional pricing pressures. So we can see costs coming down mostly because of material costs, but pricing was off more than material costs. So clearly a little more pressure there, which probably extends on into Q4 as well, given the environment.

That's helpful. And then just one last one from me. From a capital allocation standpoint, I mean clearly the balance sheet is very strong and it seems like you're leaning more into kind of share repurchases. As we sit here today, how are you thinking about any opportunities that may come up from an M&A standpoint given sort of the weak environment right now versus, you know, kind of continuing to lean in on share repurchases. How are you sort of thinking about that balance? And within that inorganic piece, what is it that is sort of the most interesting to you from a growth standpoint right now? Mike, you want to hit on that a little bit?

Yeah, I guess, Keaton, the way we're thinking about it right now, our cash flow generation is really good. And what we're looking at is allocating more of our free cash flow towards share buybacks. And you can see we've accumulated a lot this year. In trying to preserve the balance sheet, the cash, the unused debt capacity for more meaningful M&A transactions. And very focused on our strategies. And so trying to be really disciplined on making sure larger transactions that fit into strengthening the core is where we're focused.

Yeah, the last thing I'll add there, Keaton, is I'm really impressed and Appreciate the work our team has done. We're really starting to refine the opportunities and really hone in on the spaces we're going to invest. And we believe we're going to have some opportunities there.

Perfect. That's very helpful. I've done it over. Good luck. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. One moment for our next question. And that will come from the line of Jay McCandless with Wedbush. Your line is open.

Hey, Jay. Good morning, everyone. Hey, guys. And definitely want to echo what Keaton said about the disclosure. We really appreciate the heightened disclosure. It makes our job easier. So thank you all for doing that. The first question I had, and I know I'm nitpicking here, but kind of the language in the outlook where you all were talking about construction site built versus factory built. You guys changed that language up a little bit. Maybe it looks like you backed off how strong factory build is. Could you talk about that and talk about where the strength of that business is now versus a quarter ago? And what are you hearing from customers as we're heading into the spring season? Well, almost there in a couple of months.

Yeah, I don't think it's really a huge shift. I think everything right now, consumer confidence, affordability is just challenging in the marketplace and just trying to temper that a little bit. But we're still excited about where that goes and the affordability challenges. That market, we believe, has a lot of legs and will continue to grow. But just tempering that just around the current environment and housing total.

Yeah, I think in Q3, Jay, that you Industry production looked like it was a little more challenged than in not showing the types of increases that had been earlier in the year. So I think it's just a reflection of what we're seeing more recently.

And then there's been a lot of noise about tariffs, et cetera, lumber tariffs especially, I guess. What are you all kind of thinking about potential tariff impacts? for 4Q as we look ahead to 26? What should we be building in or thinking on our models?

Yeah, what I would tell you is look at the pricing today. You know, that's been hanging out there for a while. We've talked about it openly, and yet we sit at some really low points in the marketplace. So, you know, I would continue to reiterate, you know, we're well positioned. Majority of our purchases are domestic purchases already, and I think there's opportunity for shifts if we see Big changes, we're prepared and ready to act as needed, but I think it'll be reflective of the market in total.

That's great. And then the last question I had is, we've seen some articles out there talking about how data center builds are going to start flexing higher in 26. I guess, are you all seeing anything on the leading edge of that from your customers that would support that view? And I guess, is there anything else you all could do to expand on concrete forming to take advantage of if there is this really big data center build that's going to start next year? If you guys are doing anything or can do anything to expand your capacity or ability to take share in that market?

Yeah, I'll know that. Certainly, we're excited about that, and it's reflective in the numbers for concrete forming, you know, meeting where the customers are at, and that opportunity certainly continues to present itself, and the value-added solutions we can put there. You know, we continue to try to grab more share of the wallet in the spend, and I believe we're excited about it.

Okay, that sounds great. Thanks, guys.

Thank you.

One moment for our next question. And that will come from the line of Andrew Carter with Stiefel. Your line is open.

Hey, thank you. Good morning. Morning. So, hey, I realize that I'm kind of mixing a little bit of apples and oranges, but when I look at your site-built units down 15%, and then I take builders, which is, I guess, a good national proxy average, single-family, multifamily, core organic, they're down 13%. They said content. All those things are a headwind, so you can assume that units are a little better than that. I guess what I'm asking is past 10 quarters, your site build has consistently outperformed theirs, which I would call kind of a national metric. So what I'm getting at is as you look at your specific geographic footprint and site build, I think you've kind of been a little bit immune to the challenges during this kind of post-22 right sizing. Are things getting worse and deviating from the national average, anything material you see, or would you just not make too much out of that 3Q number? Thanks.

Yeah, I think, and we've described it in the past, we've tried to remain, we haven't invested in some of the boom and bust markets, and so we don't have that full geography of the U.S. in footprint, but I would tell you some of the western markets that have been really good for us over the past couple of years, we've seen some declines in a bigger way, and I think that's probably more representative of what you're reading into those numbers.

Fair enough. Second question I would ask is, you did say stabilization in some of your markets. In the last quarter, I think you said that the challenges, you know, where you called out three businesses, structural pallet, and of course, site built. I guess, as you think about stabilization, is there a path to, I guess, reclaiming some of the margin? Or do you have to, are we stabilizing it kind of, or are you stabilizing it's a sort of a trough that we should think of and carry on into the next couple years?

Yeah, so we kind of, we feel like we found the trough in some of the businesses. And we see that sequentially in margin pressure and pricing. And so specifically in the in the structural business, you know, I'll call that out. And, you know, our when you hear me talk about optimism, it's not necessarily we're projecting the market changes drastically in 2026. It's really more of a result of the work we've done in cost out automation, a lot of the investment that we've made and a lot of the work, the hard work that our employees have made And that's really what drives it more than anything.

And the share gain opportunities that we have. We've had, in addition to SureStone, we've had other areas of the business where we've accomplished market share gains. And so that gives us good optimism in the 026. Sure.

Last question I'll ask. It's been asked a little bit about the SureStone and kind of all in on kind of your decking railing business. But could you give us a cadence of kind of when you hit your full potential from a revenue perspective? And then also the flip side, there's a profitability perspective. I mean, you mentioned some items that were headwinds in the quarter. When do those become kind of fully tailwinds? And then you, of course, invested $20 million in incremental advertising this year. Do you sustain that next year? Do you increase from that? And I will stop there.

Yeah, I'll kind of start there and then Mike jump in. First and foremost, go back to the operations. We'll be fully operational in both sites Q1. So a lot of those challenges that come along with capital investment, the disruption that takes place when you're introducing a lot of that technology, new equipment, et cetera. So we'll be operational in Q1. So some of that falls off. You asked about the brand driving the brand advertising. We do not plan to adjust our marketing efforts in 2026, up or down. So that's going to remain pretty similar. We continue to talk about market share gains. So we'll start to see the results of that in 2026. Mike, you want to add any additional color

Yeah, I would just say that we're expecting the most meaningful part of the sales growth to occur in 026. And maybe even more importantly, the margin, the contribution margins with the new capacity that tremendously helps us accelerate throughput through the plants, that really begins to have an impact in 026. There is inventory, I guess, to work through that would be at the higher cost. probably for the balance of the year. So really excited to get those new lines running optimally and start enjoying some of those cost benefits in 026.

Thanks. I'll pass it on.

One moment for our next question. And that will come from the line of Ruben Garner with Benchmark. Your line is open.

Morning, Ruben. Hi, Ruben. Morning, guys. Thanks for taking the questions. So to start on the packaging business, I think you referenced stabilization a couple times in your opening remarks, even discussed kind of a potentially aggressively growing in that market. I guess two-part question. One, would you go as far to say that you're seeing green shoots in the end market overall, or is it simply more of a bottoming and things have leveled off for long enough that you're a little less concerned about downside. And then secondarily, the growth part there, like what exactly is driving that potential aggressive growth or above market growth in that vertical?

All right. So the green shoots piece, the second part of your answer is right. We feel like we found the bottom. It at least feels that. Stabilization is feeling like we found the trough, feeling like we found the bottom. There's a couple of things that give us optimism. That's number one. A lot of the work we've done with national accounts and our strategic sales teams really focusing on big opportunities. And there's some nearshoring opportunities we believe will expose themselves both in 26, but really beyond. And so that's really the optimism that we have. And then some consolidations cost out some automation work and investment inside of our factories. That's where the optimism comes from. We're geared and ready to roll. as business starts to come back. So I wouldn't say it's green shoots yet, but certainly optimistic.

Okay, great. And then the lumber piece, so lumber prices are relatively consistent with a year ago, despite, you know, all the duty increases, the tariff talk and everything else that's gone on and supply coming out. So clearly demand is is much lower than a year ago broadly for wood. My question is, as we do see a recovery given the increased tariffs and duties and the supply that's come out, it would point to pretty substantial upside to lumber prices and probably well above what would have been considered normal five, six, seven, eight years ago. Does that impact the competitiveness of the wood in the packaging space? Are there alternatives that become an issue alternatives to wood that become an issue for you guys or did you kind of see through the pandemic spike that wood is you know necessary in a lot of these categories and they'll have to deal with it just like they do in housing where there's not really an alternative to wood framing yeah it's a really good question uh specifically as we talk about packaging material it's really the beauty of the balance of our business and so what i would tell you in us is

When you get into a more fiber-stricken market, less fiber availability, that's generally where we tend to win a little more because we're not just buying those low-grade products. We're buying the entire gamut of products. We're buying the uppers, and that gives us a little buying benefit. And so for us, we're kind of agnostic as to where the market is, but generally when the market gets tighter, that is also represented in pricing. It's generally a better market for us. We're able to put some pricing and purchasing strategies in play to take advantage of that. So that's the way I can describe it.

Great. And last one for me on SureStone. Can you remind us, is there any recycled component to that product? I know historically it's a higher end product and a little bit more costly maybe to produce than the wood plastic composites. Is there an opportunity to increase recycled or other ways to drive costs down besides just more volume and throughput in new facilities?

Yeah, there's certainly an element of recycled product in it today, and there's opportunity to grow that. And, you know, we'll continue to invest in taking advantage of that. So the answer is yes and yes.

Great. Thanks, guys, and good luck through the rest of the year.

Thank you. Thanks, Ruben.

And one moment for our next question. We do have a follow-up from Kurt Yinger with DA Davidson. Your line is open.

Great. Thanks for taking the follow-ups. Um, you know, there's a lot of moving pieces in retail with pro wood and edge and decorators this year. You know, last year was actually a really impressive gross margin performance at 15. Is that a reasonable bogey to get back to in 2026 or given the actions that you've taken, you know, is that perhaps even conservative?

Yeah, I, uh, Kurt, I think some of the challenges we've had this year with lower unit sales in the Perlwood side, falling lumber prices on the Perlwood side, challenges with introducing the new capacity and inefficiencies as a result, and the edge business this year. To me, those are all challenges that are temporary. So we see a path to those types of margins that we experienced last year. And not only that, we see a path to improving it. We believe there's even more upside to margin in the pro-wood area. There's a lot of things to be excited about in terms of cost-out and being more efficient. And then obviously the surestone in the mix benefits we get from the decorator side of things. A lot of reasons to be excited about margin expansion and above-market growth in the retail area in general.

There's one last piece there I'll tack on because Mike hit it absolutely spot on. We didn't get to fully realize the value of our internal distribution through our pro wood plants this year. So when you think about decorators flowing through that, that's also a margin expansion opportunity for the pro wood plants as well. So just kind of wanted to make sure I mentioned that.

And Will, when you say you didn't fully realize that, is that kind of based on the growth you expected next year or something else going on?

Yeah, absolutely. And that was just lack of capacity this year, and we weren't able to take full advantage of it because we didn't have the capacity. So we'll have that in 2026 and beyond, and we'll really be able to utilize that volume. It expands both the decorator side and the pro wood side. Right.

Okay. That makes sense. And then just going back to site built, I know you mentioned that margins are still, I think, better than pre-COVID levels. I guess if you take a step back, like, how would you kind of characterize your cost competitiveness there relative to what you see to peers? I mean, it feels like an area where the automation and efficiency opportunity is maybe greater than other parts of the portfolio. So I don't know if that's fair or not, but any color there would be really helpful.

Yeah, I think we're really focused on being a manufacturer of engineered wood components. I mean, that's all that we do. And the team, I think, has done a fabulous job of investing in automation and enhancing our processes in the plants in order to be able to be more efficient. I can't speak with respect to peers. We're kind of built differently just being a manufacturer of those product categories. But we feel really good about what the team has accomplished. I think that's one of the reasons why our margins, and I think I referenced in my comments that our margins this year are higher than what they were in 2019. And I think it's because the team has done a great job in investing in being more efficient in the plants.

Got it. Okay. Appreciate the call. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks, sir.

Thank you. I'm showing no further questions in the queue at this time. I would now like to turn the call back over to Mr. Schwartz for any closing remarks.

Thank you, everyone. As we continue to press forward and fine-tune our business, I'm confident in the strategy and the team we have in place to meet our long-term goals and to bring new high-value products to market. Thank you to those on the call for your interest, and have a great day.

This concludes today's program thank you all for participating you may now disconnect.