Griffon Corporation

Greetings. Welcome to the Griffin Corporation Fiscal First Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. Please note this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Brian Harris, Chief Financial Officer. Thank you. You may begin.

Thank you, Daryl. Good morning. It's my pleasure to welcome everybody to Griffin Corporation's first quarter fiscal 2024 earnings call. Joining me for this morning's call is Ron Kramer, Griffin's chairman and chief executive officer. Our press release was issued earlier this morning and is available on our website. Today's call is being recorded and replay instructions are included in our earnings release. Our comments will include forward-looking statements about Griffin's performance, These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that can change as the world changes. Preceded questionary statements in today's press release and in our SEC filing. Finally, some of today's remarks will adjust for items that affect comparability between periods. These items are explained in our non-DAP reconciliations, including today in our press release. With that, I'll turn the call over to Rob.

Thanks, Brian. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us. Fiscal 2024 is off to a good start with the first quarter highlighted by strong free cash flow of $133 million, continued solid operating performance at home and building products, and improved profitability at consumer and professional products. We are well positioned to meet our financial targets for the year. For the quarter, home and building products, or HBP, revenue and EBITDA were consistent with the prior year. Revenue benefited from favorable price and mix and increased customer orders, offset by reduced year-over-year volume due to the elevated sectional door backlog we had in the prior year. Turning to the consumer and professional product segment, or CPP, first quarter revenue decreased 2 percent primarily due to decreased volume driven by reduced customer demand in North America. CPP improved EBITDA by $7 million in the quarter, driven by decreased North American production costs. I'm very pleased to tell you that our previously announced initiative to expand CPP's global sourcing strategy remains on schedule and within budget. Since May 2023, when we announced the initiative, operations have ceased at the four identified wood mills and all of the affected U.S. manufacturing facilities except one. We expect operations at the remaining affected manufacturing facility in Grantsville, Maryland, to conclude by March 2024. These actions will reduce our manufacturing footprint by over 1.2 million square feet. As we've emphasized before, the global sourcing expansion at Ames is a key element of our strategy to improve the margins of CPP. We will continue to provide updates throughout the year as we achieve additional milestones. Turning to our capital allocation, in November, we announced the $200 million increase to our share repurchase authorization, bringing the total authorization to $262 million at that time. During the first quarter, we repurchased 1.6 million shares, totaling $70 million, or an average of $42.61 per share. At December 31, $238 million remained under the repurchase authorization. Since April 2023 and through December, we've repurchased 5.8 million shares at an average price of $38.15 for a total of $220 million. These repurchases have reduced Griffin's outstanding shares by 10.1% relative to total shares outstanding at the end of the second quarter of fiscal 2023. Also yesterday, the Griffin Board authorized a regularly quarterly dividend of 15 cents per share, payable on March 21st to shareholders of record on February 29th, marking the 50th consecutive quarterly dividend to our shareholders. Our dividend has grown in an annualized compounded rate of 18% since we initiated dividends in 2012. These actions reflect the strength and the resiliency of our businesses, as well as continued confidence in our strategic plan and outlook. I'll turn it over to Brian for more details on the financials.