This conference call transcript was computer generated and almost certianly contains errors. This transcript is provided for information purposes only.EarningsCall, LLC makes no representation about the accuracy of the aforementioned transcript, and you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the information provided by the transcript.
spk02: Hello and welcome to the Myers Industries first quarter 2024 earnings call. My name is Elliot and I'll be coordinating your call today. If you would like to register a question during today's events, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. I would now like to hand over to Megan Behringer. The floor is yours, please go ahead.
spk04: Thank you, Elliot. Good morning everyone and thank you for joining Myers Conference Call to review your 2024 first quarter results. I'm Megan Behringer, Senior Director of Investor Relations at Myers Industries. Joining me today is Mike McGaugh, our President and Chief Executive Officer and Grant Fitz, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Earlier this morning, we issued a press release outlining our financial results for the first quarter of 2024. We have also posted a presentation to accompany today's prepared remarks, which is available under the investor relations tab at .myersindustries.com. This call is being webcasted on our website and will be archived along with the transcript of the call shortly after this event. After the prepared remarks, we will host a question and answer session. Please turn to slide two of the presentation for our safe harbor disclosures. I would like to remind you that we may make some forward-looking statements during this call. These comments are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such statements are based on management's current expectations and involve risks, uncertainties and other factors, which may cause results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in these statements. Also, please be advised that certain non-GAAP financial measures, such as adjusted gross profit, adjusted operating income, adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EPS may be discussed on this call. Further information concerning these risks, uncertainties and other factors are set forth in the company's periodic SEC filings and may be found in the company's 10Q filings. With that, I'm now pleased to turn the call over to Mike McGaul.
spk06: Thank you, Megan. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our first quarter 2024 earnings call. Before I begin, I'd like to thank everyone who joined us, either in person or virtually, for our Investor Day event in New York City on March 19th. At this event, we rolled out our plans and strategy for the next five years, and we're able to have a great discussion with several current and prospective investors. If you have not already, I'd encourage you to view the webcast and the materials from this event as it provides great context and clarity on where we're headed. In today's call, I'll spend a few minutes discussing our progress over first quarter, and then I'll pass the call to Grant for his detailed review of our first quarter financials and our outlook. Please turn to slide three. Three Horizon strategy has served as an effective roadmap for the company over the last four years. At our Investor Day, we described how we've used Horizon One to strengthen our fundamentals, to learn and grow, and improve the quality of our company. Through Horizon One, we built a strong foundation of operational and commercial excellence. We gained experience and scale through small and bulk on acquisitions, and as a result, we were well positioned to enhance our acquisition of signature systems, largely accomplishing our Horizon One goals by our 2023 target date. We're now shifting into Horizon Two of our strategy and accelerating our transformation into a new Myers Industries. While our roadmap remains the same, the targets for Horizons Two and Three have now shifted from revenue targets to earnings per share targets. We feel that using EPS is more reflective of our focus on improving the quality of the company as we grow it. Turning to slide four, as we enter Horizon Two of our strategy, we're also shifting how we think about our company. Keeping it simple, we have two operating models. In the Grow model, our focus is to invest and expand our portfolio of branded differentiated products, both organically and through acquisitions. In the Maximize Value model, our focus is on driving efficiency and reducing costs while we maximize the value of these businesses. Aligned with these two operating models, we have a strategic lens through which we see three portfolios, storage, handling, and protection, engineered solutions, and automotive aftermarket. We continue to report our financial results as material handling and distribution. However, as we transition to Horizon Two and accelerate the transformation of Myers Industries, we believe the simple framework provides a clear roadmap with regard to how we will treat these different parts of the company. Turning to slide five, I'll walk through this framework in a bit more detail, just as I did at Investor Day. The portfolio that focuses on storage, handling, and protection contains branded, differentiated, high-performance products that move, store, and protect. This is an area where we will seek to grow the company. We believe we have a lot of runway to build and grow the company in this direction. This portfolio includes what we are calling our four power brands, Buckhorn, Acro Mills, Scepter, and our recently acquired Signature Systems. As I highlighted at Investor Day, the current markets for storage, handling, and protection include agriculture and food, consumer, industrial, infrastructure, and military. Moving to the right, we also have a portfolio of engineered solutions in which products are designed and tailored to meet our customers' unique needs. As we have discussed, this portfolio consists of some branded products, but mostly it's a contract manufacturing business, and as a result, the focus is to be lean and low cost, hence its placement in the Maximized Value Operating Model. This portfolio has exposure to RV and marine, as well as outdoor and leisure in markets, most of which are experiencing softer demand at this time. What we currently refer to as our distribution business, strategically, we now think of as our automotive aftermarket portfolio. This portfolio includes high-quality repair and replacement parts for passenger cars, for commercial vehicles, and for heavy equipment. Similar to engineered solutions, this business must also be operated for efficiency and low cost. As of the past few quarters, this business has faced some growing pains related to our recent acquisition and is also facing some demand headwinds. I'll talk later about the actions we're taking to improve the performance of the businesses in the Maximized Value Operating Model. Before we turn to a review of our first quarter highlights, slide six illustrates an additional key message that I want to share from our investor day. The four power brands I mentioned above in the storage, handling, and protection portfolio represent approximately 80% of our pro-former profits. Within this portfolio and across these power brands, we see a number of attractive platforms for future growth. In particular, the signature acquisition represents an important pivot point in our growth story and will help accelerate our transformation into a faster growing, higher margin company. Now please turn to slide seven for a summary of our first quarter highlights. Our acquisition of signature systems closed on February 8th and has delivered strong results. We had roughly nine weeks of signatures contributions and our reported results for the quarter, which equated to $19.3 million in revenue. We were pleased to see Signature's business drive strong gross margin and EBITDA margin expansion during the first quarter due to tailwinds in the infrastructure end market. The high quality results from Signature helped offset first quarter sales declines in other parts of our material handling segment. At investor day, we discussed anticipated near-term challenges in key end markets. We discussed that we are seeing trough levels of demand in some of our end markets, particularly in RV, marine and in consumer discretionary. And as I said, where the consumer can defer the purchase of a product or a discretionary item, they are indeed deferring that purchase. As quarter one wound to a close, we were also seeing some slowing in the automotive aftermarket as well. We can demand in these end markets resulted in sales declines in both material handling and distribution. In total, our first quarter performance was below our expectations, and we are taking immediate actions with additional self-help initiatives to further reduce costs and improve performance. Although we started the year slow, we are maintaining guidance for the full year of $1.30 to $1.45 adjusted earnings per share, though we are guiding to the lower end of the range. With three quarters remaining in the year, we plan to take additional action in the near term to improve EBITDA while executing our five-year roadmap as outlined in investor day. I will now speak to our action plans and progress using the lens of our two operating models, the Maximized Value Model and the Grow Model. Turning to slide eight, I will start with the portfolios under the Maximized Value Model where our focus is on efficiency improvement and cost reduction. In our automotive aftermarket portfolio, we continue to integrate the Mohawk acquisition into Myers Tire Supply. I've communicated that this integration has been tougher than anticipated. In our fourth quarter call, as well as at our investor day, I described these challenges, and I shared the actions we are taking to improve, such as merging the ERP systems into a single system to provide better data and visibility. I've also talked about the work we are doing with key personnel and with customers to regain ourselves momentum that declined during the transition. We are making progress, but this work is still underway. As you recall, a key part of our Horizon 1 strategy was a deliberate effort to make small, bolt-on acquisitions so that while we build scale and create value, we also learn and build our capabilities before advancing to larger, more impactful acquisitions. The Mohawk acquisition was one of those small bolt-ons. When we acquired Mohawk, the business had approximately $60 million in revenue and $3 million in EBITDA. We bought the business for approximately $25 million. It was a small tuck-in acquisition designed to give our distribution business scale. Over the past two years, we've experienced many of the challenges that often occur when acquiring a lower-performing business and rapidly attempting to convert it into a higher-performing one. We're still confident that the acquisition will bear fruit. It's just taking longer and requiring more work than we had expected. We have an experienced team deployed into the business, and they are making the right improvements as we speak. This journey will continue throughout the year, and we expect continued improvement in EBITDA margins. Unfortunately, compounded the challenges of bringing together Mohawk into Myers Tire Supply, we are also now seeing a slowdown in spending in the automotive aftermarket. Please see slide nine. With inflation, the consumer has less disposable income. Purchases across the board that can be deferred are indeed being deferred. This is also true for tires and tire supply products, both at the retail level as well as at the commercial level. I expect this slower pace of consumption to continue through the year. Please turn to slide 10. We are taking action. At Myers, we say managers must manage. We operate our businesses with efficiency. We are improving year over year and quarter over quarter. These gains in efficiency allow us to reduce cost while we maintain our service level. We believe we can achieve an additional $7 to $9 million of annualized cost reduction as a result of our efficiency improvements. In the coming months, I will have more to say about the specific actions we are currently evaluating. This targeted $7 to $9 million in cost reduction is in addition to the $8 million of cost synergies we expect to deliver with the integration of signature systems. In total, we expect $15 to $17 million in annual cost reduction and margin improvement from these combined initiatives. Now, turning to slide 11, moving on to the storage handling and protection portfolio that aligns with our GROW operating model. In this model, we also focus on efficiency and cost improvements. However, the overarching focus here is to grow, through new product development and through acquisition. I have several recent and significant examples that I would like to highlight. First, on slide 12, on February 8, we closed on the acquisition of Signature Systems, a leading manufacturer of ground protection and turf protection solutions. This business has performed well. The integration into Myers has progressed smoothly, and we continue to be impressed with the quality and caliber of the people in the leadership team. Indeed, the learnings we made on our Horizon 1 bolt-ons enabled us to successfully transition to more impactful deals, like the acquisition of Signature Systems, where we acquired strong companies with great growth potential, strong brands, differentiated technology, and excellent leadership, all at an attractive price. We continue to believe that Signature will be a pivot point in an accelerator in Myers' transformation. And while we will continue to pursue growth through acquisition, we also have a number of promising new product development innovations in our existing businesses. Today, I want to highlight two innovations under our SEPTRA business. Please advance to slide 13. One example I've spoken of before is our anticipated growth in military containers for ammunition and propellant. The SEPTRA team continues to gain traction with the U.S. military and with militaries around the world. We believe that global rearmament will be a growth driver for the SEPTRA military cases. The SEPTRA cases are lighter and easier to use, and we believe that over the next five to 10 years, they will continue to gain traction as they replace wood and metal containers in militaries around the world. Please now turn to slide 14. As you know, SEPTRA is a leading provider of portable fuel containers. Last month, we launched a product that we believe will be a success in the market. The Flow and Go Power Fuel Station is a 14-gallon container that gives the contractor or consumer the convenience of a gas pump on a job site, a construction site, or at home. The Flow and Go Power Fuel Station is ideal for construction sites, landscape work, or power sports. Based on our consumer and market research, we believe the product is a winner and will complement our current Duramax offering. I have many other examples of new product development across the company. Several of these were reviewed at our Investor Day in March. We will continue to grow organically as well as through acquisition with a focus on branded, differentiated products. Now, I'll turn the call over to Grant for a detailed review of our first quarter financial results as well as our outlook.
spk03: Thank you, Mike. Please turn to slide 15 for a complete summary of the first quarter of 2024 financial results. Net sales were $207.1 million, which decreased $8.6 million, or 4 percent compared to 2023, with a decline primarily driven by lower volume in the distribution segment, with the material handling segment basically flat to a slight decline -over-year, as the inorganic revenue from the signature systems acquisition was offset by declines in key end markets for RV and marine, secular declines in consumer with gas cans, as well as the timing of agriculture orders. Adjusted gross profit was $67.6 million, and adjusted gross profit margin was 32.7 percent compared to $71.2 million and 33 percent in 2023. On a dollar basis, the gross margin decrease was a result of lower volume and mix and increased pricing pressures in the material handling segment, partially offset by lower material costs and the contributions from the signature acquisition. SG&A expenses were $53.5 million, which increased $1.4 million, or 2.6 percent, compared to 2023, primarily due to the addition of signature, which included $3.2 million in higher acquisition and integration costs -over-year, and $1.7 million of intangible asset amortization. SG&A as a percentage of sales increased to 25.8 percent, compared to 24.1 percent. First quarter adjusted operating income decreased to $16.6 million, compared to $20.3 million in 2023. First quarter adjusted EBITDA was $25.1 million, which decreased 3 percent compared to the prior quarter. Adjusted EBITDA margin increased 10 basis points to 12.1 percent, from 12.0 percent in the first quarter of last year. Lastly, adjusted earnings per share was 21 cents, compared to 38 cents in 2023. The variance compared to the first quarter of last year was driven by lower sales and operating margins, as well as increased interest expenses related to our new term loan A, which was used to finance our acquisition of signature systems. Now on to slide 16 for an overview of our segment's performance for the first quarter. For the material handling segment, net sales decreased by 0.3 million, or 0.2 percent, compared to the prior year. This slight decrease was the result of lower volumes in the vehicle end market due to continued truck conditions in the marine and RV markets, secular decline in gas can sales, and order timing of agriculture, largely offset by $19.3 million in infrastructure sales for the recent signature systems acquisition. Material handling to adjusted EBITDA increased $2.2 million, or 7.1 percent, to $32.5 million, and adjusted EBITDA margin increased to 21.4 percent, or 150 basis points, compared to the year ago period. The positive deltas were primarily driven by signature's contribution that was partially dampened by a decrease in sales volume and pricing in the other business units. Net sales for the distribution segment decreased $8.3 million, or 13.1 percent, year over year, driven by lower sales volumes, partially offset by higher pricing. Distribution adjusted EBITDA decreased $2 million, or 59.4 percent, to $1.4 million. Distribution segment adjusted EBITDA margin was 2.5 percent, as compared to the 5.4 percent in the prior year quarter. The variances in EBITDA margin performance, as compared to Q1 of last year, were driven by the decline in sales volumes. Turning to slide 17. Pre-cash flow for the first quarter of 2024 was $14.6 million, compared to $16.7 million for the first quarter of 2023. Working capital's percentage of net sales was up 360 basis points, compared to the first quarter of 2023, due to the acquisition of signature systems. Capital expenditures for the first quarter of 2024 were $5.7 million, and cash on hand at the quarter end totaled $32.7 million. We ended the first quarter with a -to-adjust EBITDA ratio of 4.2 times, due largely to the debt we took on to finance our signature systems acquisition with our new term loan A. Under the terms of our loan agreement, net leverage is 2.6 times, which is in line with our previously communicated acquisition strategy of having a net debt leverage ratio of approximately three times at the time of a major acquisition, with the target to be under two times within two years of acquisition, assuming no new acquisitions. Now please turn to slide 18, where we've provided our outlook for the fiscal year 2024. For the full year 2024 guidance, we are maintaining our current outlook, while also adding that the outlook for net sales growth, earnings per share, and adjusted earnings per diluted share are likely to be at the low end of the previously communicated ranges, as we incorporate the first quarter results into the full year guidance. Additionally, as Mike had previously mentioned, given the continued headwinds in some of our key end markets, in the near term, we are identifying additional annualized cost actions of $7 million to $9 million to help mitigate some of these headwinds as part of our self-help initiatives, driven by our DNA to increase efficiency and to maximize value. We are also working to implement the $8 million of annualized signature cost energies. These two initiatives, one combined, are anticipated to improve the Meyers cost structure by $15 million to $17 million on an annualized basis from the current run rates. As was discussed at our investor day, we are very positive about the future at Meyers and the strategic direction that we are taking to drive continued profitable growth. Now I will turn the call back over to Mike for some closing comments.
spk06: Mike. Thank you, Grant. I'd like to close with the summary slide that I used at our investor day a few weeks ago. Please turn to slide 19. Without a doubt, our first quarter results were disappointing. We continue to face trough and trough-like conditions in a few of our end markets. As I said at investor day, I expect that these conditions will persist in the near term and that we're not out of the woods yet. That being said, we are taking more aggressive action on cost reduction. We can tap into the efficiency gains we've made over the past years. I've spoken to the concept of unearthing a hidden factory and we can take costs out without impacting capacity or service level. We're going to do that. I don't want to speak to the specifics or the specific sites at this point. We will communicate that later. We are addressing the short term and that's why we are maintaining our guidance, though guiding to the lower end of the range based upon our first quarter results. I'd ask you to keep focus on the next years while we manage through the next quarters. The company has built a strong foundation over the past four years during Horizon 1. We have the capability now and the levers of self-help to blot the impact when a few of our cyclical end markets turn against us. With our foundation in place, we are accelerating into Horizon 2, driving the transformation of Myers Industries. We believe and are seeing early proof points that signature systems will be a meaningful catalyst for our company. We also believe that the storage handling and protection portfolio represents an important part of the future direction of Myers and will be a cornerstone of our company. We are also confident in the engineered solutions and the automotive aftermarket portfolios. Both of these have sustainable competitive advantages excellent products and services and excellent people. I continue to be enthusiastic and positive about the opportunities for our company to create value for our customers, our employees, our communities and our shareholders. And with that, I'd like to turn the call over to the operator for questions.
spk02: Operator. Thank you. If you'd like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, please press star followed by two. When preparing to ask your question, please ensure your device is unmuted locally. Our first question comes from Christian Zyler with KeyCorp. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
spk07: Good morning, Mike, Grant and Megan. Thanks for taking the questions. Were you guys seeing the slowdown at the time? Morning,
spk08: Christian.
spk07: Were you seeing the slowdown at the time of your analyst day or was that more pronounced? I know you've been at the low end of the range, but given 1Q's results, what gives you confidence to maintain the current range, and what do you see so far in 2Q?
spk06: Yeah, one of the bigger impacts, Christian, was that we had a meaningful ag order that was pushed to later in the year and not a first quarter, and that occurred after the investor day or about then, I think, largely after. On the distribution side, we saw the slowdown as the results come through, and again, that was more of a post-investor day. What gives us confidence is you have more of a shift in some of our high-profit businesses, namely ag. We also continue to see some upticks in the consumer business, the gas can business, as well as military. That's why we're sticking to the range. We also have to recognize the first quarter miss, and that's why we're guiding to the lower end. Grant, do you want to add something? I mean, I
spk03: do think Mike answered the question about the investor day. The back half of the year is really where we start to see some of the ramp with the military orders that we've talked about. We are now in production with those orders, so that is starting to ramp up, and we should start to see that grow throughout the next three quarters. And then we continue to get a lot of inbounds on just other opportunities for that business. So, we really think that that could be, as Mike mentioned, a longer-term growth catalyst as we start to ramp up our production. The other thing is, just in general, we continue to see some strong e-commerce demand. We did have a little bit of a stumbling point in our first quarter where some of the demand was taken offline with Amazon due to some pricing issues that we had. That has since been resolved, and we now see that continue to pick up throughout the year as well. And then we don't have a significant storm activity in our current guidance range for hurricanes, as we've talked before. That can drive anywhere from five to six cents per share with a meaningful storm. So, we do see that would typically be in the latter half of the year. Then lastly, as Mike said, this agriculture move from the first quarter into the latter part of the year was pretty significant for us, and we don't see any issue with that being something that would be delayed into 2025, as we do have permorters. It's just more of a timing of when the customer wants to have delivery of those products.
spk06: Christian, if I can add, it really was a big push on the ag seed boxes for GMO seed. That was delayed to later in the year. Some of those larger GMO seed companies are also trying to control their capex, and so there was a defer there. The other piece is on the military. We did have a significant project that is scaling up, and as a part of that scale up, the orders were pushed into second quarter and third quarter and out of first quarter. So, those are really the two big chunks.
spk07: Great. Thanks, Dr. Coller. Just, I guess, a follow-up. Since you maintained the guide, do you have more visibility or just confidence in the double-digit revenue growth or in the EPS range?
spk08: I would say they're
spk03: equally, equal confidence. I think the revenue obviously helps drive the EPS range for us, but we do have, you know, we do see, you know, quite frankly, we see an opportunity at the high end of the range, you know, everything falls in place, but just given the first quarter, we wanted to be a little bit more conservative on cutting towards the lower end of the range, but I do think that we have opportunities here. Obviously, you know, we talked a lot, Mike talked a lot about the distribution business. That's one that we're really very focused on, just improving the overall performance, but it has been helpful that we do see overall that that automotive aftermarket does seem to be taking a little bit of a pause on the trends that we're seeing, although for the long-terms, you know, we see the automotive market continue to have good tailwinds.
spk07: Thanks. I guess, what do you expect for organic growth in both material handling and distribution for the year? Is flat to down mid-single digits
spk08: reasonable? Right, what's your next? Yeah,
spk03: I mean, I think we have, in general, you know, the distribution business, we are, you know, we are pushing the team to get back to growth, and our material handling, kind of our core business outside of Signature, we've been, you know, we've been looking at probably low single-digit potential growth opportunities there. Signature, we continue to maintain, we'll be at a time where 15 percent growth on an annualized basis, and that really lines up, you know, with the guidance that we've provided,
spk06: so. Yeah, that's right. We, it is early in the year, and what we've learned with this business, because we have so much exposure to so many different end markets, it is challenging to get our arms around it. Now, as Grant mentioned, we could very well be at the high end of the range, but again, we wanted to be more conservative and guide to the lower end. But Christian, we've got a number of bright spots on volume. We've got a number of new product innovations that are delivering. We've talked about it looks like it's going to be a robust hurricane season. You know, that's good for our SEPTA business. The military continues to get qualified and get traction. That's a good thing. However, we're still dealing with, you know, RV sales, marine sales have now followed RV and are off meaningfully. We make water tanks and fuel tanks for boats. And then also the consumer discretionary, as I've mentioned before, we make, you know, high ticket discretionary items. I talked about mailbox sheets, flower pots, hardscape items. And what we're seeing is the consumer is slowing down their discretionary purchases where they can. That's a trend that we saw in 23 that just continued into 24. So it's a bit of a mixed bag. The numbers that granted given on overall revenue are good numbers and accurate numbers. We see a number of bright spots and green shoots. We also have some in-market exposure that for the next six to nine months, I think we're going to really have to focus on taking costs out. And that's why we spoke to that again. I don't want to talk about specific plans at this point, but we've got a lot of efficiency. We can get more units of output out of our plants. And it gives us the opportunity to to reduce our footprint and reduce our fixed costs. And that's what we're going to do.
spk03: This with that question, that is mitigating factor as well, too, on is some of these markets we continue to have the headwinds that we're experiencing. We have not yet incorporated any of these additional cost initiatives into our end of the guidance range that we have to a large extent yet. So we're still identifying those initiatives and getting ready to work on the timing of that.
spk07: So. Got it. That's helpful. And then it looks like Signature had about 16 million in free cash flow last year. I think you don't guide to free cash flow, but based on Cormier's and the addition of Signature, is 80 million reasonable or is there else something we should think about for free cash flow?
spk08: Let me just take a quick look here at a chart, Christian, just make sure.
spk03: I think that's probably reasonable. Let me let me take a look at this as if you have some other questions just to kind of calibrate to make sure I'm comfortable with that number.
spk06: So, yeah, I mean, Christian, just on that point, as Grant looks up the specific number, we are seeing really solid results from Signature. There's a lot of growth tailwind there. The infrastructure investment that's being put in place through the various government spending plans over the next decade. Signatures is will will benefit is benefiting will continue to benefit from those programs. We just we continue to be very pleased with that acquisition. And, you know, as I said, look, our objective was to learn with some small ones, get our processes in place. We know we're not going to about a thousand. The Mohawk acquisition, as I said, has been a bit of a challenge culturally. We're working through that. We're bringing those businesses together. But a lot of the key learnings from the three or four prior acquisitions we did that were small, you know, and in the magnitude of thirty million dollars, twenty five million dollars, they really allowed us to have excellent processes and to really improve our capability. When we moved into the intermediate size acquisitions like a signature where, you know, we spent three hundred fifty million dollars, I think we got a great company with a lot of growth, great margins. And quite frankly, I think I think we bought it at a very reasonable price.
spk08: Great. I'll pass back. Thanks. Thank
spk02: you. We now turn to Anna Jolly with Gabelli. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
spk01: Hi, this is Carolina from Gabelli. So hopefully this doesn't repeat the prior question too much, but can you just talk a little bit about what surprised you in the material handling side of the business outside of the Ag order? More this quarter than expected. And then. And some of that in the discussion area items. And then also, secondly, can you talk about what you're what you kind of learned from Mohawk and Trilogy plastics that that you're applying to signature?
spk06: Yeah, Carolina, good question. You know, a large part of it was the shift of the agricultural seed box order. And another piece of it was, you know, in March, some of the the gas hand sales that we expected were more shifted to to Q2. But the lion's share of it was the Ag seed order. And that's why we stand by the guidance that's just shifted to later in the year. On on distribution, the sales came through weaker in in March than we anticipated. And the key learnings there is the need to integrate swiftly and effectively in the need to integrate the cultures fast. The other thing I the other learning is. Quite frankly, is what we said when in the Q&A session at Investor Day, buying some some fixer uppers or some lower performing businesses and trying to convert them to a higher performing run rate and doing it in a very short period of time. And it's it is a lot of work in doing that with some smaller acquisitions, in particular, several of them concurrently. You have your hands full. I do believe we will bring the performance of Mohawk up to the level of Myers Tire Supply. Mohawk was running at about one half the EBITDA margin percent as Myers Tire Supply. And our belief was we could bring it up to the level of Mohawk. Myers Tire. And in fact, just the complexity and bringing in the distribution centers, the IT systems that work with that, as well as the company cultures. You know, we. We ultimately bought a complicated small business, and, you know, we knew we would learn what to do and what not to do and what the capabilities are of Myers. And that's where our focus now is, I'd much rather buy a quality company that has branded and differentiated products. We're being much more careful about low barriers to entry businesses. And we bought some lower barriers to entry businesses to give scale to our rotational molding, as well as the distribution. Those are the right things to do. Those businesses need scale. But as we said at Investor Day, we now have a larger business in contract manufacturing and a larger business in industrial distribution. They're fine businesses, but they're not going to have the EBITDA profile that we seek. And that ultimately is more of the Buckhorn, Acro, Acromill, Scepter and Signature model where your EBITDAs are 30 percent plus. And that's why I say that's the cornerstone of the company. And that's where we're taking the company. So hopefully that addresses the question.
spk01: Great. Thank you.
spk06: Thank you, Carolyn. Grant, anything to add?
spk03: Yeah, you may have mentioned, I apologize if you did, but I think the ERP piece is also just a technical piece of just making sure that we can get good visibility across our businesses with ERP consolidation. That's going to continue to be something that provides that infrastructure for growth for us as well, too. And so it's not just the Mohawk integration issue, it's also within the business. It will help us clearly be an enabler to be more efficient and to run the business more effectively.
spk06: Yeah, that's it. Carolina, the low barrier to entry businesses, as you would expect, have your lower margin profiles. And while they are easier for us to integrate and we can buy them for a lower price point, we've learned focusing on the differentiated, branded businesses with a competitive moat is the right approach. And as a matter of fact, we were able to get all that with signature still at an eight times multiple, which we feel really good about.
spk08: As a reminder, if you'd like
spk02: to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad now. We now turn to William DeZellem with Titan Capital Management. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
spk05: Thank you. I'd like to jump to the seven to nine million of cost savings that you referenced here. Are those cost savings currently being used or is that a target and you have some general idea how you're going to get there?
spk06: Bill, we do have a general idea because ultimately it's going to be on some footprint reduction activities. And at this point, I want to be a little cautious because we've not yet locked those down and confirmed those two employees. But we believe we can actually decrease our footprint, decrease fixed costs without impacting our service level because of all these things that's spoken of the last three years, the improved scheduling, the improved operating efficiency. We have more capability now per fixed assets. And it's the right thing to do is to streamline those assets. It makes our business and our company more simple. And then it also allows us to reduce some costs. So we think that efficiency gains, it's time to act on those, particularly in some of these areas where we have less differentiation, more on the maximized value side of the house. And we think there's some opportunities there. Grant, anything from your side? I
spk03: would just maybe provide my general philosophy on these, Bill, is that I think it's important when we're going for, you know, a number that we've provided that we have more initiatives than what, you know, essentially would be the information we've provided. So I've typically tried to make sure that we've got a pipeline of, you know, one hundred twenty five percent of the, you know, of the numbers we might be discussing just because some will take longer, some will fall off the list. And so we truly are just identifying those and working on those. And so we, you know, I would say that just given the track record, we will be, you know, coming back with some further information on it. But I feel very comfortable that these are numbers that we are going to be able to achieve, we just don't have them fully identified yet.
spk06: So, yeah, that's right, Bill, just, you know, this is Mike. We've we've not confirmed actions, locked down actions. Once we do, clearly we will be disclosing those and we'll disclose them soon.
spk05: That is that is helpful. And then relative to signature, continuing on the cost front, you're all referencing the eight million of cost savings. And is that new? Because I was thinking that signature, there were not going to be a lot of cost savings just because there weren't weren't many synergies and that would be essentially a standalone business. Did I did I just not remember correctly or did something change there?
spk06: No, Bill, nothing's changed. So we've said we believe we'll have eight million dollars largely in cost synergies. And if you recall back to investor day, I think Carolina asked a question on clarifying those synergies. And there's really they're really in only three or four buckets. We do have arms around them. If you recall from that session as well, Jeff Cundino, who runs that business, affirmed his confidence in getting those synergies and having that as a role model for the company. The run rate in twenty twenty five. So you've got eight million there and then seven to nine outside of outside of signature. And we feel confident about that 17 that 15 to 17 million.
spk05: OK, my apologies for not remembering that. Thank you.
spk08: No problem. No problem.
spk02: This concludes our Q&A, and I'll hand back to Megan Baringer for closing remarks.
spk04: Thank you, Alia. And thank you for everyone for attending our first quarter, two thousand twenty four earnings call. We invite you to follow up with additional questions or meeting requests. To schedule time, please contact me using the information found on slide twenty nine. Thanks again and have a great day.
spk02: Ladies and gentlemen, today's call is now concluded. We'd like to thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect your lines.
Disclaimer