Martin Marietta Materials, Inc.

Hello, welcome to Martin Marietta's third quarter 2024 earnings conference call. All participants are now in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the company's prepared remarks. As a reminder, today's call is being recorded and will be available for replay on the company's website. I will now turn the call over to your host, Ms. Jacqueline Rooker, Martin Marietta's Director of Investor Relations. Jacqueline, you may begin.

Good morning. and thank you for joining Martin Marietta's Third Quarter 2024 Earnings Call. With me today are Ward Nye, Chair and Chief Executive Officer, and Jim Nicholas, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Today's discussion may include forward-looking statements as defined by United States securities laws in connection with future events, future operating results, or financial performance. Like other businesses, Martin Marietta is subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. We undertake no obligation, except as legally required, to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether resulting from new information, future developments, or otherwise. Please refer to the legal disclaimers contained in today's earnings release and other public filings. which are available on both our own and the Securities and Exchange Commission's websites. We have made available during this webcast and on the Investors section of our website supplemental information that summarizes our financial results and trends. As a reminder, all financial and operating results discussed today are for continuing operations. In addition, non-GAAP measures are defined and reconciled to the most directly comparable gap measure in the appendix to the supplemental information, as well as our filings with the SEC, and are also available on our website. Today's earnings call will begin with Ward Nye, who will discuss our third quarter operating performance, our preliminary view for 2025, and supporting market trends. Jim Nicholas will then review our financial results in capital allocation, after which Ward will provide closing comments. A question and answer session will follow. Please limit your Q&A participation to one question. I will now turn the call over to Ward.

Thank you, Jacqueline, and thank you all for joining this teleconference. During the third quarter, we experienced a series of well-chronicled extreme weather events including significant July precipitation together with Tropical Storm Debbie in North Carolina, Hurricane Beryl in Texas, and Hurricane Helene across much of our southeast footprint. First and foremost, we're grateful that our employees and their families are safe. Our thoughts, prayers, and ongoing support remain focused on those who have suffered so disproportionately during these natural disasters. We're particularly mindful of our neighbors in western North Carolina, as they begin the long process of rebuilding. Aside from the human cost of these events, we and a host of other businesses were affected by the storms. In our specific case, project delays and inefficiencies negatively impacted our financial results, and as a consequence, we revised our full-year 2024 adjusted EBITDA guidance to $2.07 billion at the midpoint. To help better demonstrate the severity of these weather events during the last two quarters to our upstream product shipments, we provided two case studies on page eight of our supplemental information. The first case study is particularly revealing relative to cement. As you'll recall, the second quarter's significant precipitation was particularly notable in Dallas-Fort Worth, our company's single largest market area. resulting in an 18% decline in our Midlothian cement shipments. Encouragingly, as the weather improved, so did Midlothian's third quarter shipments. Shifting now to aggregates, our implied fourth quarter shipment guide reflects a 5% increase in shipments, a notable improvement relative to the third quarter's 4% decline. Our fourth quarter view is primarily based on October's trends and reasonable expectations for the remainder of the year. These statistics demonstrate the important irony of disruptive and destructive weather. Planned shipments are not generally canceled. They're delayed. And depending on seasonality and severity, resumption of planned shipments usually occurs in the following months and or quarters. Despite these weather-related events, I'm pleased to highlight some of our team's accomplishments. We achieved the best year-to-date safety incident rates in our company's history, inclusive of our newly acquired businesses. Operationally, our teams achieved record quarterly aggregates gross profit per ton of $8.16, record third-quarter cash flows from operations, and record third-quarter revenues and gross profit in our magnesia specialties business. Given the totality of the quarter's uncontrollable and exigent circumstances, These are notable records upon which we intend to build. With respect to continuing to build, in October, we acquired pure aggregate assets in South Florida and Southern California, both attractive and growing Martin Marietta markets. Consistent with our strategic operating analysis and review or SOAR plan, these bolt-on acquisitions further enhance our gross profit contribution from the aggregates product line and improve the long-term durability of our business. Together, these accomplishments reflect our team's focus on matters we can control while underscoring the resiliency of our aggregates-led business, which is strategically positioned in the country's fastest-growing markets. Importantly, these results reinforce our expectation that our aggregates' price-cost spread will continue to expand over time, driving improvement in unit profitability through macroeconomic cycles. As we look toward 2025, we remain focused on the long-term aspects of our business that we can meaningfully impact. World-class safety, the consistent and disciplined execution of our strategic plan, resolute adherence to our leading commercial strategy, and prudent cost management through ongoing operational excellence efforts. Equally, we expect product shipments will recover due to more normal weather patterns and an expected improvement in warehouse and residential construction. Preliminarily, we expect that 2025 overall aggregate shipments will increase by low single digits and aggregates pricing will increase by mid to high single digits. Moving now to end market trends, regardless of the outcome of the upcoming elections, both rebuilding and maintaining our nation's infrastructure remains a bipartisan national strategic priority. Record levels of state and federal investment through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, or IIJA, continue to support attractive demand for highways and streets construction. And while growth rates in contract awards have predictably flattened, as reflected in the value of contract awards for the 12-month period ending August 31, 2024, the baseline for highway and street spending is well above historical levels. Looking ahead... Funding certainty at the state and federal level will provide volume stability and support a healthy pricing environment in this aggregates-intensive, often counter-cyclical, end market for years to come. Relative to heavy non-residential construction, the build out of artificial intelligence infrastructure supports emerging growth trends in both data centers and related energy requirements. Aggregates-intensive warehouse construction appears to be cyclically bottoming in select markets, as indicated by recent project announcements. For example, Amazon is planning to build one of its largest North American distribution centers in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex. With our leading aggregates position, strategic and large-capacity cement plant, and affiliated ReadyMix presence in this dynamic market, Martin Marietta is uniquely positioned to supply materials to this project which is expected to begin later this year. Shifting now to light non-residential and residential activity, housing availability and affordability remain key issues impacting single-family demand. While a correction of these issues will not be immediate, we believe that loosening monetary policy is an important first step. It passed its prologue, and we believe that to be the case. As residential construction recovers, light non-residential activity typically follows. In summary, we believe multi-year public construction activity, reshoring, the artificial intelligence infrastructure build-out, and the long-awaited single-family housing-led residential recovery all coalesce to support durable aggregate shipment growth and continued attractive pricing momentum for years ahead. I'll now turn the call over to Jim to discuss our third quarter financial results. Jim?