MasterBrand, Inc.

Executive Officer, and Andy Simon, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. We issued a press release earlier this afternoon disclosing our third quarter 2024 financial results. If you do not have this document, it is available on the investor section of our website at masterbrand.com. I'd like to remind you that this call will include forward-looking statements in either our prepared remarks or the associated question and answer session. These forward-looking statements are based on current expectations and market outlook. and are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from those currently anticipated. Additional information regarding these factors appears in the section entitled Forward-Looking Statements in the press release we issued today. More information about risks can be found in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including under the heading Risk Factors in our full year 2023 Form 10-K and updated as necessary in our subsequent 2024 Form 10-Qs. which will be available once filed at scc.gov and at mastergrant.com. The forward-looking statements in this call speak only as of today, and the company does not undertake any obligation to update or revise any of these statements except as required by law. Today's discussion includes certain non-GAAP financial measures. Please refer to the reconciliation tables, which are in the press release issued earlier this afternoon, and are also available at scc.gov and at mastergrant.com. Our prepared remarks today will include a business update from Dave, followed by a discussion of our third quarter 2024 financial results, along with our 2024 financial outlook from Andy. Finally, Dave will make some closing remarks before we host a question and answer session.

With that, let me turn the call over to Dave. Thanks, Barron. Good afternoon, everyone. We appreciate you joining us for our third quarter 2024 earnings conference call. We released our third quarter financial performance earlier today, and I'm pleased to say that we continued to perform in line with our expectations. Net sales in the third quarter of 2024 were $718 million, a 6% increase over the same period last year, driven by our acquisition of Supreme Cabinetry Grants earlier in the quarter. I'll provide more detail on the acquisition integration shortly, but suffice to say, it's going well. The growth from our acquisition was partially offset by lower net average selling price in our core business. It's worth noting, while we still see a year-over-year headwind from this, the sequential impact is relatively stable. Volume was flat in the third quarter as compared with the same period of 2023, as continued strength with our customers servicing new construction was offset by soft demand in the repair and remodel end market. We delivered adjusted EBITDA of $105 million in the third quarter and a related margin of 14.6%, 160 basis points lower than the same period last year. This anticipated margin contraction was due to the timing of price realization compared to sequential inflation in our cost of goods, further investment in our strategic initiatives, and a $6 million benefit in the third quarter of the prior year that did not repeat. If you remember from our last earnings call, we began seeing sequential inflation in some materials and inbound freight. Accordingly, we implemented pricing actions in an effort to maintain a favorable price-cost relationship, but we only started seeing the benefit of these increases in the fourth quarter. This dynamic, as anticipated, is impacting the typical seasonal cadence of our net sales and margins. While the third quarter saw seasonally lower than normal adjusted EBITDA margins, the fourth quarter is expected to have seasonally higher than normal adjusted EBITDA margins. resulting in more normalized decremental margin performance for the second half of the year. Shifting to cash generation, we delivered another strong quarter of free cash flow at $65 million, bringing our year-to-date total to $142 million. While this is lower than last year, it's important to remember that 2023 benefited from the release of a 2022 strategic inventory build meant to ensure service and delivery through various supply chain constraints at that time. Given our performance year to date, we feel confident in our ability to deliver on our stated goal of free cash flow and access of net income for the full year of 2024. Achieving these results is a testament to the hard work and skill of our associates, as end market demand remained choppy throughout the quarter. I'd like to provide a brief overview of what we saw in end market demand and our expectations for the remainder of the year. Market demand in the third quarter was largely in line with our expectations. Customers focused on the U.S. single-family new construction market continue to perform well, with year-over-year market growth of mid-single digits. This growth is moderated slightly from prior quarters, as anticipated, as we have begun to lap increasingly stronger comparables from the prior year. With only the fourth quarter left, we see no change to our full-year market expectations. We still expect this market to grow mid-single digits year-over-year for 2020. With that said, we have seen signals of moderating demand from our builder direct customers. Pockets of spec home inventory caused production builders to slow start activity for a short period, which is in line with the trend of softer single family housing starts reported by the US Census Bureau during the third quarter. While these numbers have begun to trend up again, we expect the gap between higher completion seen in the third quarter and softer starts will most likely create a future pocket of soft demand in this market. We believe recent new customer wins, which I'll discuss shortly, will help us mitigate potential choppy end market demand and allow us to deliver continued growth in this portion of the market in the fourth quarter and beyond. Shifting to the repair and remodel market, serviced by our dealer and retail customers, demand remained relatively soft through the quarter as consumers continued to be hesitant about committing to large purchases. General economic and political uncertainty, specifically today's general election, appear to have consumers staying on the sideline when it comes to big ticket items, resulting in our customers continuing to see slow foot traffic and extended decision times. This, coupled with low housing turnover, remains a near term challenge to a repair and remodel recovery. We believe this choppiness will continue through the end of the year and in line with our prior expectations, resulting in repair and remodel demand at the low end of mid single digit declines for the full year 2024. Looking briefly at the Canadian end markets, both the new construction and repair and remodel markets remain soft year over year, as expected. Similar to the U.S., housing affordability remains a challenge, and new housing remains weak, despite the multiple rate reductions in Canada. We expect soft end market demand to continue in the fourth quarter, in line with our previous outlook. As you can see, end market demand has largely played out as anticipated. and we see no meaningful change for the remainder of the year. Accordingly, we are reiterating our full year 2024 outlook, which Andy will speak to in greater detail shortly. While we are not discussing 2025 outlook, I think it's worth touching on some of the macroeconomic indicators we are watching to get a sense of future demand. Since our last earnings call, the Federal Reserve reduced its target interest rate by 50 basis points and is signaling future rate reductions. This has not yet resulted in sustained lower mortgage rates in the near term, and therefore has not stimulated more housing turnover and the related repair and remodel activity to date. While further actions by the Federal Reserve could stimulate demand, we expect the benefit would not be seen in our business until sometime in 2025. Accordingly, we expect to enter next year in a similar end market demand environment as the one we see now. With this market backdrop in mind, we continue to focus our efforts on how we can drive growth and profitability in any market condition. I'd like to briefly touch on how we're doing this through our strategic initiatives and our legacy master brand business and how we're accelerating that through acquisitions like Supreme. As I mentioned, our performance was only possible because of the dedication of our associates. Their disciplined use of the master brand way has allowed us to make meaningful progress across all three of our strategic initiatives, Align to Grow, Lead Through Lean, and Tech Enabled. We continue to execute on these initiatives in an effort to drive efficiency and grow the business in targeted areas. As recently as our first quarter earnings call, I discussed how our Align to Grow initiative was driving growth through new product and channel-specific packages launched for our large builder partners. We saw excellent results from those efforts, with many of these top builders awarding us new business. While it takes some time for these projects to go into production, we have now begun to see the financial benefit of these previous efforts in our third quarter performance and into the fourth quarter. We believe similar Align to Grow efforts currently underway will produce the future growth we need to outperform the market conditions and ultimately ensure we're well positioned to achieve our long-term financial targets. Our lead through lean initiative continues to drive a culture of problem solving at all levels of the organization. Our associates equipped with the tools of the master brand way are driving continuous improvement throughout the company with some of the greatest savings being realized in quality processes. The quality team continues to leverage near real time data provided by our enhanced digital infrastructure to improve and lower the cost of quality. Collectively, Our continuous improvement efforts this year have positioned us to achieve our goal of delivering an incremental $50 million in savings, and we believe we have more opportunity in future periods. I just mentioned how our digital infrastructure is providing better insights to our quality team. This is just one example of how our tech-enabled initiative is helping our associates to perform their jobs more efficiently and enhancing our products. Beyond our four walls, we continue to focus on improving our connection with channel partners through the rollout of MasterBrand Connect, our improved customer portal. Additionally, we're developing tools to provide consumer insights directly to our channel partners. Better positioning our customers to win business is a key focus for us, and we believe improving their ability to focus on the end consumer will enable our customers and ourselves to gain share and outgrow the market. As you can see, there are a variety of ways we are investing in the business for growth, regardless of market conditions. Now let me provide you with an update on the Supreme integration and how we're creating value through operational and commercial synergies in this acquisition. As I've mentioned before, we believe the combination of the two companies' operations presents compelling and identifiable synergies. We have already begun to make progress. Following the close of the transaction, our supply chain and operations teams began to solidify plans and act. Since our last call, we've announced targeted consolidation within our two Waterloo, Iowa facilities, creating a center of excellence. Given these facilities are within 15 minutes of each other, it provided an obvious opportunity to bring elements of these two industry-leading teams together. Through this center of excellence, we plan to begin realizing our targeted savings, offering our customers enhanced levels of service and reestablishing our commitment to staying a fixture in the local community. In addition to the cost synergies we previously identified, we now have a better understanding of the potential commercial opportunities from this transaction. With our dealer integration well underway, we're quickly working on equipping both MasterBrand and Legacy Supreme dealers with new product offerings. While the full benefit of this commercial opportunity will take some time to realize, we know many of our dealer partners are excited by it. Overall, I remain extremely pleased with the progress our combined teams have made on the integration. Their professionalism and performance to date gives me further confidence in our ability to identify and act on other value creating acquisitions in the future. With that, I'll turn the call over to Andy.

Thanks, Dave. I'll begin with an overview of our third quarter financial results. Then I'll provide our thoughts around the final quarter of 2024 and our full year outlook. Third quarter net sales were $718.1 million, a 6% increase compared to $677.3 million in the same period last year. Our year-over-year top line growth was driven by the inclusion of Supreme, which contributed 9% to net sales in the quarter. This growth was partially offset by a 3% decrease in our legacy master brand business due to lower net ASP from the anticipated impact of normal seasonal promotion activity on price and product mix. Volume and foreign exchange were roughly flat compared to the same period last year. Gross profit was $238 million in the third quarter compared to $237.5 million in the same period last year. Gross profit margin was 33.1% compared to 35.1% in the third quarter of last year. driven primarily by lower net ASP product mix, personnel and freight inflation, and two discrete items in the prior year period attributable to medical insurance rebates and insurance proceeds related to tornado damage sustained at our Jackson, Georgia facility that did not repeat. We also recorded a $2.2 million purchase accounting inventory adjustment as required by GAAP under cost of product sold in the quarter. These gross margin headwinds were partially offset by additional cost savings from our strategic initiatives and continuous improvement efforts and lower variable compensation compared to the prior year. As a reminder, we expect the benefits of our previously announced price actions will start to take effect in the fourth quarter. This is reflected in our current guidance, which I will speak to in a moment. Selling general administrative expenses were $166.3 million, an 18.5% increase compared to the same period last year, primarily driven by $15 million of acquisition-related costs, $12.1 million of incremental SG&A from Supreme, and personnel and distribution-related inflation, partially offset by lower variable compensation expense. Net income was $29.1 million in the third quarter a 51.3% decrease compared to $59.7 million in the same period last year. This decline was primarily driven by acquisition-related costs, the previously discussed gross margin performance, restructuring charges, and higher interest and amortization expense, partially offset by lower variable compensation and positive net income contribution from Supreme. Income tax expense was $10.3 million. representing a 26.1% effective tax rate compared to $18.2 million or a 23.4% effective tax rate in the third quarter of 2023. The higher rate relates to non-deductible expenses from the Supreme Acquisition in 2024 and favorable state and local income tax items and the mix of earnings in different jurisdictions in 2023. Diluted earnings per share were 22 cents in the third quarter of 2024 based on 130.8 million diluted shares outstanding, a decrease from diluted earnings per share of 46 cents in the third quarter of last year based on 130.3 million diluted shares outstanding. Adjusted diluted earnings per share were 40 cents compared to 49 cents in the prior year quarter. Adjusted EBITDA was $104.5 million compared to $109.8 million in the same period last year, with both the legacy master brand and supreme businesses performing as expected. Adjusted EBITDA margin contracted 160 basis points to 14.6% compared to 16.2% in the comparable period of the prior year, driven primarily by the decrease in our gross profit margin as discussed earlier. Turning to the balance sheet, net debt at quarter end was $953.9 million, resulting in a trailing 12-month net debt to adjusted EBITDA leverage ratio of 2.5 times at the end of the third quarter, up from 1.5 times in the third quarter of 2023. On a pro forma basis, the trailing 12-month net debt to adjusted EBITDA leverage ratio was 2.3 times. which includes a full year of Supreme adjusted EBITDA. These ratios were in line with our expectations. Total liquidity was $458.8 million at quarter end, with $350.4 million available under our revolving credit facility and $108.4 million in cash. We continue to anticipate lowering our net leverage to less than two times within two years of the Supreme transaction date, assuming no additional M&A activity. Operating cash flow was $176.9 million for the 39 weeks ended September 29th, 2024, compared to $336.5 million in the comparable period last year in line with our expectations. As a reminder, 2023 reflected a planned non-recurring release of our 2022 strategic inventory build to address various supply chain constraints at that time. The impact of this inventory release Mass incremental working capital improvements made in 2024 and our shared services ability to collect and pay invoices and negotiate improved terms, which again benefited both our days payable outstanding and our days sales outstanding year over year. Capital expenditures for the 39 weeks ended September 29, 2024 were $34.6 million compared to $21.4 million in the prior year period. The year-over-year increase relates primarily to timing of projects. Free cash flow was $142.3 million for the 39 weeks ended September 29, 2024, compared to $315.1 million in the comparable period last year. Similar to operating cash flow, the year-over-year decline was primarily due to the planned inventory reduction from our 2022 strategic build, partially offset by working capital improvements both discussed earlier. Given our primary capital allocation priorities are investing in the business and reducing our net leverage, we did not repurchase any additional shares of our common stock in the third quarter. This leaves our total share repurchases unchanged year to date at 371,000 shares and $21.5 million left under our existing repurchase authorization. Turning to our outlook. As Dave mentioned, end market demand is playing out as we anticipated. And we still expect our full year 2024 end market demand to be down low single digits year over year as stated last quarter. Despite these soft conditions, we expect to benefit from our past and current strategic initiatives and investments for growth, as well as our previously announced pricing actions. This gives us confidence in our ability to outperform the underlying market in the fourth quarter and deliver our anticipated organic full year net sales outlook of low single digit declines. As stated last quarter, we expect our quarterly net sales to be relatively consistent across the third and fourth quarter, a departure from normal seasonality. Trade downs and promotional activity are anticipated to continue at a similar pace, but we expect the impact to moderate from a year-over-year perspective as we continue to lap the onset of these in 2023. Additionally, we expect fourth quarter net sales to benefit from recently implemented price actions. We also anticipate the traction we're getting with new products and channel specific offerings will allow the fourth quarter to outperform normal seasonality in what is typically a lower quarter within the year. We anticipate Supreme and our integration efforts to continue to perform in line with our expectations in the fourth quarter, contributing mid single digits to our net sales growth percentage for the full year. On a combined basis, we are reiterating our full-year 2024 net sales outlook, a year-over-year increase of low single digits. We are also reiterating our expected adjusted EBITDA range of $385 to $405 million and related adjusted EBITDA margins of 14% to 14.5%, flat year-over-year to slightly up compared to full-year 2023. Our expected interest expense remains unchanged at approximately $73 to $76 million. Similarly, our anticipated tax rate of 24% to 25% remains consistent with our prior guidance. We continue to expect our full year adjusted diluted earnings per share to be in the range of $1.50 to $1.62, which includes the favorable impact of Supreme. It's worth noting again that absent the exclusion for amortization, the supreme acquisition would still be accretive to adjusted diluted earnings per share in fiscal year 2024. We are raising and tightening our range for capital expenditures from $65 to $75 million to a range of $80 to $85 million, inclusive of one-time integration CapEx of approximately $9 million, driven by the timing of projects and the availability of certain equipment. This combined investment at the midpoint remains modest at approximately 1.5 times depreciation, though slightly above our stated long-term goal of 1.3 times. Despite our revised capital investment range, we continue to expect free cash flow to be in excess of net income in 2024, which includes the impact of Supreme. Now I'd like to turn the call back to Dave.