Vulcan Materials Company

Good morning. Welcome everyone to the Vulcan Materials Company's fourth quarter 2024 earnings call. My name is Shana and I will be your conference call coordinator today. Please be reminded that today's call is being recorded and will be available for replay later today at the company's website. All lines have been placed in a listen only mode. After the company's prepared remarks, there will be a question and answer session. Now I will send the call over to your host, Mr. Mark Warren, vice president of investor relations for Vulcan Materials. Mr. Warren, you may begin.

Thank you, operator. And good morning, everyone. With me today are Tom Hill, chairman and CEO, and Mary Andrews Carlisle, senior vice president and chief financial officer. Today's call is accompanied by a press release and a supplemental presentation posted to our website vulcanmaterials.com. Please be reminded that today's discussion may include forward looking statements which are subject to risks and uncertainties. These risks, along with other legal disclaimers, are described in detail in the company's earnings release and in other filings with the Security Exchange Commission. Reconciliations of non-GAP financial measures are defined and reconciled in our earnings release, supplemental presentation, and other SEC filings. During the Q&A, we ask that you limit your participation to one question. This will allow us to accommodate as many as possible during our time we have available. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Tom.

Thank you, Mark, and thank all of you for your interest in Vulcan Materials today. 2024 was another year of successful execution. Our two-pronged growth strategy of enhancing our core and expanding our reach is working. We improved our industry-leading aggregate cash growth profit per ton by 12% and deployed over $2 billion towards value-creating aggregate led acquisitions. These acquisitions expanded our presence into new attractive growth areas and strengthened our existing franchise in three of our top 10 revenue states. We finished the year strong. We plan to capitalize on our solid momentum and deliver attractive earnings growth again in 2025. Before discussing our outlook in more detail, I will provide you some key highlights from our fourth quarter performance. Our teams delivered $550 million of adjusted EBITDA in the fourth quarter, a 16% improvement over the prior year. Importantly, adjusted EBITDA margin improved on a -over-year basis for an eighth consecutive quarter. In the aggregate segment, cash growth profit per ton expanded 16% to $11.50 in the quarter through a combination of continued pricing momentum and moderating -over-year unit cash cost of sales. Aggregate rate adjusted price improved 11% in the quarter, consistent with full-year results. Price improvement remained geographically widespread. Our shipments were more mixed in the quarter across geographies and in uses. Shipments were 3% lower than the prior year. Growing public shipments and strong demand in storm-impacted areas of western North Carolina and East Tennessee helped to particularly offset headwinds in private construction activity. With less disruption from weather and our consistent focus on maximizing efficiencies through our Vulcan Wave operating efforts, freight adjusted unit cash cost of sales increased 5% compared to the prior year. This was a meaningful improvement compared to previous quarters and a testament to the execution of our operating teams. This continued execution will be a focus for us in 2025. The pricing environment remains healthy and we expect freight adjusted aggregate price to grow between 5 and 7% in 2025. Now this includes an over 100 basis point negative mixed impact from recent acquisitions. Inflationary cost pressures continue to moderate and we are making progress on our Vulcan Wave operating process intelligence adoption. We expect freight adjusted aggregate unit cash cost to increase low to mid-single digits in 2025, leading to another year of double-digit -over-year expansion in our aggregate unit profitability. We expect 2025 aggregate shipments to increase between 3 and 5% compared to last year. This growth outlook is driven by recent acquisitions coupled with expectation of stable demand for our legacy business. I expect that continued growth in public construction activity will offset ongoing more modest contraction in private activity. Over the last year, turning 12 months, highway starts have increased by another $7 billion to $122 billion. Blowing highway input cost inflation and continued IIJA related spending support ongoing growth in highway shipments in 2025 and beyond. Additionally, $45 billion of funding initiatives were passed at the state and local level in the recent election cycle to spur additional transportation investment in Vulcan states. Affordability and elevated interest rates remain headwinds for residential construction activity. Increasing single-family starts over the past 12 months support modest growth in single-family housing in 2025. But multi-family starts data and elevated vacancy rates point to another year of declining demand in multi-family housing. Because of demographics in Vulcan market support a consistent need for additional housing, the timing of additional interest rates reductions and overall improvement in affordability will dictate when residential construction activity returns to growth. Likewise, a return to growth in private non-residential construction will also be a matter of timing. While we expect lower private non-residential demand in 2025, we currently anticipate that starts will bottom by mid-2025 and may begin to recover by the second half of the year voting well for 2026 activity. Recent trends in both warehouse starts and data centers have been encouraging. Trailing 12-month warehouse starts, the largest category in private non-residential construction, have continued to flatten out at pre-pandemic levels after a precipitous drop from historic highs throughout 2023. Current planned data centers activity in our markets remains robust and according to costar data, approximately 7% of proposed data center activity is within 20 miles of a Vulcan facility. As I said earlier, the focus of our teams is execution, controlling what we can control. Against the demand backdrop I just described, we expect to deliver between $2.35 and $2.55 billion of adjusted EBITDA in 2025. Now I'll turn the call over to Mary Andrews to provide some additional commentary on our 2024 performance and more details around our 2025 outlook. Mary Andrews?

Thanks, Tom, and good morning. I commented a year ago that our balance sheet was a source of strength and provided us considerable financial flexibility to continue to grow. In 2024, we deployed approximately $2.3 billion towards strategic acquisition. We also reinvested in our existing franchise and furthered our greenfield efforts with $638 million of operating and maintenance and internal growth capital. And we returned $313 million to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases. At year end, our net debt to adjusted EBITDA leverage was 2.3 times. In March, we redeemed our 2026 notes at par for $550 million. And in the fourth quarter, we issued $2 billion of notes across 5, 10, and 30-year tenors to fund our 2024 acquisition activity. Recently, we provided notice of our intent to redeem the $400 million of 2025 notes with cash on hand, effective March 28, 2025. Given another year of solid cash generation in 2024, we remain well positioned to continue our long track record of growth through disciplined capital allocation and consistent execution. In 2024, our teams executed well in a challenging volume environment to expand adjusted EBITDA margin by 190 basis points and deliver $2.1 billion of adjusted EBITDA for the full year. Aggregates cash growth profit per ton grew by 12% to $10.61, demonstrating the durable, compounding nature of the aggregate's business and our continued progress toward our $11 to $12 per ton goal. SAG expenses for the full year were 2% lower than the prior year. We remain focused on continuing to drive value for the business through disciplined investments in SAG expenses to support our organic growth initiatives and innovation through technology. SAG expenses as a percentage of revenue were .2% in 2024. Our return on invested capital at year end was 16.2%, largely consistent with the prior year. The increase in invested capital was driven by fourth quarter acquisitions, which provided very little earnings contribution given the closing date. Absent that timing impact, return on invested capital improved 40 basis points. Carrying strong momentum into 2025, we anticipate another year of attractive margin expansion and earnings growth. Tom highlighted our views around demand, pricing, and aggregate unit profitability. So let me provide a few additional details around the 2025 guidance. We estimate that recent acquisitions will contribute approximately $150 million of adjusted EBITDA in 2025. We expect our downstream businesses to contribute approximately $360 million in cash growth profit with an estimated two-thirds of the contribution from the asphalt segment and one-third from the concrete segment. These expectations reflect expansion and cash unit profitability in both segments and the contribution of recent acquisitions. We forecast SAG expenses of between $550 and $560 million. We project depreciation, depletion, amortization, and accretion expenses of approximately $800 million, interest expense of approximately $245 million, and an effective tax rate between 22 and 23%. In 2025, we plan to reinvest in our franchise through operating and maintenance and internal growth capital expenditures between $750 and $800 million. Included in this plan is approximately $125 million of spending on three sizable plant rebuild projects that are underway, in addition to capital for recently acquired businesses. Overall, we expect 2025 to mark another year of expansion in adjusted EBITDA margin, attractive growth in adjusted EBITDA, and strong cash generation. I'll now turn the call back over to Tom to provide a few closing remarks.

Thank you, Mary Andrews. I want to take a moment to thank the men and women of Volcom Materials for your consistent and enduring commitment to excellence. Most importantly, you kept one another safe and looked out for your brothers and sisters across the company and communities in which we live and work, particularly in the face of persistent, inclement, and sometimes severe weather. And I am so proud of your consistent execution of the Volcom way of operating and the Volcom way of selling strategic disciplines. You proved your mettle and increased cash, gross profit per ton every quarter for the second year in a row. I'm excited about what we will achieve in 2025. Together, we remain focused on controlling what we can control and drawing value for our customers, our communities, and our shareholders. And now, Mary Andrews and I will be happy to take your questions.

Certainly, at this time, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. If your question has been answered, you may remove yourself from the queue by pressing star two. Once again, that is star one to ask a question. We will take our first question from Trey Grooms with Stevens. Mr. Grooms, you might be on mute. Your line is open.

Hey, I'm sorry. Sorry about that. Good morning, Tom. Good morning, Tom, Mary Andrews, and Mark.

Thanks.

Well done on the strong finish to the year. I wanted to ask on aggregate pricing. It seems like some markets have seen a shift from January to April as far as just the timing. Can you talk a little bit about that and maybe the success of January increases that you've seen and how we should be thinking about the cadence of pricing this year?

Sure, Trey. So Q4 in the total year last year went with pricing up 11 percent. So that allows us to carry really good pricing momentum into this year. As you saw, our guide is five to seven, but that's also negatively impacted over 100 basis points by the acquisitions. I'm not worried about those. We'll get those back up to our averages quickly. But our January 1 price increases, you couple that with our booking and backlogs, I think it supports our guide, as did I thought our January results, our 25 results. The timing of price increases, I think, will be very similar to last year, whether it was in bid work or asphalt or ready mixed price increases. The vast majority of our price increases took effect January 1. I think we should, we would guide you to, I think we'll be in the range quarter to quarter throughout the year. Now remember, mix can impact a single quarter. It can impact it up or down. But mix adjusted, I think we should be consistently in that five to seven range.

Yeah, and Trey, you know, I would add that most importantly, we expect that the consistent pricing improvement coupled with, you know, moderating costs that we talked about in the prepared remarks will yield low double digit improvement and cash gross profit per ton consistently each quarter as well. You know, extending what we've now strung together a nine quarter run on double digit improvement. And really the, you know, the underlying performance of the aggregate business is going to be the biggest driver of our 2025 EBITDA growth, which we expect is going to improve, you know, by about 12% on an organic basis. So really expecting a strong performance from the ag segment.

Yeah, well, thank you for all the color and that's impressive and encouraging. So keep up the good work and I'll pass it on. Thank you. Thanks, Trey.

We will take our next question from Stephen Fisher with UBS.

Thanks. Good morning. I think you mentioned on the aggregate volume side, sort of the organic steady pace. I'm assuming that means about sort of flat organic volumes expectation. If that's correct, then feel free to correct me on that. But I'm just curious about the cadence of how that plays out during the year. We've been observing this slowdown in overall non-res construction and you mentioned the private side kind of being a little weak to start off. So just curious what you've assumed for the cadence of that organic trend in the first half of the year versus the second half. Do you have actual declines maybe in the first half before, you know, maybe easier comps and growth in the second half? Thank you.

Yeah, I think you completely understand it. It is growing public, offsetting some challenge private. If you look back at 24, we never really never got out of the weather problem. The easiest comp to your point is Q3. If you look at January, February, we got a slow start. Some of that is cold and wet weather. But remember, it's just January and February, so not too worried about that. I think regardless of the challenges, our Volcan teams will perform. I think I have complete confidence in our full year guide. But as you said, back half loaded probably with some easier comps coupled with probably some help from single family and non-res construction in the second half.

Terrific.

Thank

you.

Thank you.

We will take our next question from Catherine Thompson with Thompson Research Group.

Hi, thank you

for taking my question. Good

morning. Thank you for taking my question today. So your volume guidance and quota was very close to ours pricing exactly in line. What jumps out at me is, and correct me if I'm wrong with this, but your gross margins came in at a retro Q4 level. Could you, you've articulated in the past the Volcan way of operations, but if you could parse that a little bit more for this quarter and project how we should think about next year in terms of that margin of kind of the why behind that record for Q4, the components, and how that plays into the longer term strategy, including for this year. Thank you.

Sure. You know, our cost increase in the fourth quarter was much improved over the prior three quarters. Three reasons why. One was whether it was not as negative. Two, volumes were not as negative. And three, our Volcan way of operating technology and tools and disciplines are improving our efficiencies. And as we look to 2025, we believe we'll continue to mature the Volcan way of operating, which will continue to enhance our operating efficiencies. We would guide you to the kind of low to mid signal digit increases in 2025. That is a substantial improvement over the past couple years, but really kind of back closer to what we've seen in history. So I think what you're seeing is the Volcan way of operating at work and offsetting some of the headwinds we would see.

And Catherine, you know, on gross margin, you know, we saw improvement on a year over year basis each quarter in 2024. That's what I would expect for you to see in 2025. I think in terms of kind of the cadence of gross margin, I would think about it, you know, it's typically lowest, obviously, in Q1 highest in Q2 or Q3. We did have an outstanding fourth quarter and plan to, you know, carry that momentum into 2025.

Great.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question is coming from Anthony Pettinari with Citi.

Hi, this is Ashish. Hey, hi, this is Ashish Sadanath from Anthony. Thanks for taking my question. I just wanted to ask around, you know, administrative policy. Have you seen any kind of pressure on, you know, the pace of IJ rollout or per project starts from, you know, any of the policy decisions or expected orders we've seen and then on tariffs? What kind of impact your business we could expect potentially?

So I don't think we see any impact from policy on the public demand. It's IJ, which you're seeing is the growth in public going to work. And remember that money is protected through dedicated long-term funding. So nothing's going to happen to it. Looking forward, we would think this government will support traditional aggregate intensive public work legislature. So probably a positive from that perspective on tariffs. On aggregate tariffs directly, we see very little impact on everything else. And we've looked at, you know, steel and rubber. I'm not sure anyone can tell you what's going to happen, but I don't think it's a big impact to us. And, you know, the flip side of that is I'm confident that Volcom Cure's teams will navigate whatever comes at us. You know, look, we've seen a pandemic. We've seen volumes down. We've seen record inflation. And our teams consistently grow unit margins and earnings. And that's exactly why we developed Volcom with selling, Volcom with operating. So that we can consistently grow our unit profitability regardless of any outside challenges. So the government, I think, supports infrastructure and I don't think we'll handle whatever comes at us on the tariffs.

Great. Thank you. I'll turn it over.

Thank you.

We will take our next question from Jerry Rivich with Goldman Sachs.

Hey Jerry. Yes, hi. Good morning, everyone. Hi, Tom. Mary Andrews, Mark. Hi, Mary Andrews. I just wanted to pull the thread on the cost performance. You know, if we back out the period cost absorption, your variable cost per ton were essentially flat in the quarter. So I'm wondering if you could just expand on what part of your cost structure is actually deflationary now. If we just straight line the performance into the first quarter with normal seasonality, that would imply cost per ton are about flat year over year in the first quarter, which I just want to make sure that's right considering the pricing outlook relative to that is pretty attractive. I think I'll

take that one. I think I would not call cost flat. I would call them up mid to single digit and I think pretty consistently through the year. Now remember, quarter to quarter cost is going to be choppy. It's just the nature of the beef. So really kind of need to look at it on a 12-month basis. Four quarters encouraging, but we've got to string that together. If you look at inflation, I don't think there's any deflation on anything out there that I can think of. You know, as we guide to 25, I would tell you diesel up slightly. Wages mid-single digit, electricity of high single digit, and all of that partially offset by improved operating efficiency. But, you know, I would not guide you to flat. I think you would stay in that longer term, that low to mid-single digit cost performance. Nice performance. Thank you. Thank you.

We will take our next question from Angel Castillo with Morgan Stanley.

Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. I just wanted to go back to the comments on private non-resi. You talked about potential for kind of starts to maybe bottom in the middle of the year and maybe even rebound in the second half. Can you just maybe help us understand, I guess, what you're seeing or hearing, you know, whether it's from your customers or in terms of coding activity and maybe just kind of what gives you confidence on that kind of cadence? Yeah,

so I think let me be clear. I think we do see non-residential construction shipments are still down in 2025. I think the good news is we're starting to see some turn in that performance. Data centers will be a bright spot and most of the planned data centers are in our footprint. And while warehouses has been a big drag and will be still a drag in the near future, I think that's changing. And if you look at a number of our markets on a trailing three-month basis, we've seen that turn positive, not everywhere, but it's starting to turn. And then so I think you're starting to see some green shoots. I think you're starting to see some things turn. There's a lot of money sitting on the sidelines. Light traditional non-res is still a drag, but that's going to follow subdivision, so it's going to take a while. So while non-residential construction will be negative in 2025, we think it should gradually get better as we progress through the year, which kind of sets us up for a more positive outlook at this point, very preliminary for 2026.

That's helpful. Anything in the quoting activity that you're seeing?

Yeah, so that's interesting. I'm glad you asked that. For the last six months, we quoted a lot of non-res work that is still sitting on the sidelines. So we think there's pent-up demand there, but I think people want to see more. They're hoping interest rates go down. But that's good news because at some point in time that money will go to work.

Very

helpful. Thank you. Thank you.

We'll take our next question from Phil Nane with Jeff Reiss.

Hey guys. Tom, congrats on another strong quarter. I have a few questions around the pricing commentary. You talked about 100 basis points drag on price mix from these recent deals. Can you give us a sense how much lower is ASP for some of these deals versus the corporate average, and how quickly do you think you can narrow that over time?

So it's substantially lower. I mean, and I'm not going to quote numbers on that, but if it had over 100 basis points on the whole company, it is lower. We've already started that work. I think we were successful with January price increases in those markets, and we'll continue that as we progress through the next few quarters and years. I don't think it takes us long to get it back up to where a more reasonable Vulcan market would look like. Okay.

And then separately from a pricing standpoint, if I account for the 100 basis points, you're still talking about really good pricing, but perhaps a little softer than the high single digit framework you gave us last quarter. Any puts and takes you want to give us a little more color? Because it doesn't sound like timing is a real issue for you, Jen, versus April, like your competitors. So just give us some puts and takes on perhaps what you're seeing in the marketplace on pricing.

I think we were pretty consistent throughout our geographies on price increases. Same thing within uses. I think you got to remember while you're a little lower than double digit, maybe on same store high single digit, you also are not looking at double digit cost increases. You're looking at mid to low. So we'll continue that trend of taking money to the bottom line, which is the most important thing we can do, is grow our unit margins by double digits. You've seen us do that over the last couple of years, and I think you'll see us do that. That's what our guide is for 2025, and I think we feel pretty good about it. Okay. Appreciate the call. Thank you. Thank you.

We will take our next question from Mike Dahl with RBC.

Thanks for taking my question. Tom, Suzanne, you obviously put a lot of capital to work with the acquisitions. They did come with some mix of downstream businesses. Can you help us understand how you view the downstream portion, whether those are businesses that are likely to stay within the portfolio, and what is or is not incorporated into the guide with respect to that?

So the acquisitions are pretty new. They were very successfully run with good management team, good assets. Like anything else, we're going to look at this as a set of assets, and if it fits us, we'll run it. If it earns an appropriate return that suits us, we'll run it. If it is more valuable to someone else, then we'll divest of that, and we'll take those proceeds and put them back in the agris business.

And in terms of the guide, Mike, the guide assumes we own the businesses like we do, maybe for a little helpful context for you. We commented in the preparer mark that there's $150 million of EBITDA contribution from the acquisitions. That's about 60% in the aggregate segment, and about 40% of that would be contributing to the downstream businesses.

Okay. Great. Thank you.

Thank you. We'll take our next question from Adam Dahlheimer with Thompson Davis.

Hey, good morning, guys. Congrats on the Q4 beat. Mary Andrews, do you have the... Well, I was also curious about the downstream portion, because that was a pretty big increase year over year, so that looks like it's from acquisitions. I was curious if you have the 360's cash gross profit. Do you have that on a reported basis?

You know, I'm going to stick with the 360 for now, and we can talk offline about some more specifics, but maybe what would be helpful to you is the improvement in the cash gross profit contribution from the downstream businesses. It's about 75% of that overall improvement is from the acquisitions. We also see, you know, improvement in the underlying business in both segments, and that's about 25% of the improvement year over year.

That helps. Okay.

Thank you.

We'll take our next question from Timna Sanners with Wolf Research.

Yeah, hey, good morning. I wanted to ask you a little bit about the M&A landscape after the deal you just finished, and how you're looking at 2025, if it could build from what you just accomplished. And then if I could sneak in a question on Mexico, any update on the Caliqa Quarry respetation efforts with the USMCA panel? Thank you.

Yeah, so I think there's still a very healthy pipeline of M&A. There's a number of projects we're working on. It'll take some, you know, it'll take some time, but I think we'll continue to be successful that as we go through 2025. On Mexico, I think the short answer there is no real news there. We're still waiting on the tribunal to make a decision. We feel very good about our case and think we will win that and we'll, you know, we'll, when they make a decision, we'll let you guys know. We are anticipating that sometime this year.

Okay,

thank

you. Thank you. We'll take our next question from Garrick Smoice with Loop Capital.

Great. Thanks for taking my, hey, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. You spoke to the pricing cadence being similar this year as opposed to last. What are your thoughts on your increases, what opportunities you see there potentially and what the timeframe could be?

Yeah, so they are not included in our guide, but we will absolutely announce mid-year price increases. We will announce those probably towards the end of the first quarter so we have time to have those conversations. Again, as I always remind you, mid-years will have a bigger impact on 2026 than they will in 2025, but you'll, you know, it's too early to call how successful those will be, but we'll for sure going to announce them. We'll have conversations with customers and we'll see where we go from there.

Great. Do you have a chance how much 2024 mid-years are impacting 2025?

Well, that's a really, that's a really hard to parse out. They definitely had an impact. I think we're pleased with part of the things that they do is help you give notice to your customers so they have more time to react, which allows us to be more successful for January 1. So some of it is amplitude of the price and some of it is timing, but it definitely helps both. Understood. Thanks for that and best of luck.

Thank you. We'll take our next question from Keith Hughes with Truist.

Thank you. Thank you. I just asked a short-term weather question, but everybody asked me, according to the date, has there been supportive or certain insurances, still had delays year after year, some of the storm I get it.

So short-term in January, February has been very cold. We're going to see that this week with cold and snow, so not a great start, but when we put a plan together, we expect weather impact at some point in time of the year and we expect to get lucky in supporters, but we try to look at more normalized weather as we make a prediction and our guidance. I think as we pointed out, Q3 was particularly challenged last year. Hopefully, that'll be easy comp in the middle of the season. So hopefully that'll help us. X hurricanes.

Exactly. And one other question on the Southern California acquisition. Is that, particularly the downstream, does that mix in well with current operations at both end or does that operate more as a standalone entity?

So if you look at the overall, it fits us very well, particularly on agris perspective. We don't have a lot of downstream ready mix in those markets, but it also has some asphalt that fits. So part of it fits in agris and asphalt as far as us being there, and then the ready mix, they have an excellent position in those markets, but we were not in the ready mix business in those markets. Okay, thank you.

We will take our next question from Brent Fahlman with VA Davidson.

Hey Brent. Hey, thanks. Tom, I have a question more on maybe the direct impacts and tariffs on your business and in Mexico is not really in the conversation, but I was thinking more along the West Coast and what Vulcan's response is going to be to the extent that tariffs are implemented on some of your assets shipping down from Canada.

Well, I think we'll follow the letter of the law. We've looked at that. It is a pretty negligible impact for us and, you know, whatever it is, we'll handle in the business, but I wouldn't, it doesn't move the needle. Okay, thank you. Thank you.

We will take our next question from Michael Duda with Vertical Research.

Good morning, Tom, Mark, Mary Andrews.

Morning.

Tom, with the very solid pricing it looks like for 2025, even though it's decelerated from 2024, do you sense this is, even like say your organic volumes are flat and they kind of flattish on the overall market, does this look like maybe a more normalized level pricing relative to the history span or is there still room for upside on that going forward? Thank you.

Yeah, I think that, you know, there's always upside on price. You've got to earn that with your customers. Obviously, growing demand always helps that and we haven't seen growing demand now for a few years, which puts some pressure on price, but I think if you look at the Vulcan way of selling and the way we service our customers, I think we earn price and I think we're doing that and I can see that in our performance in 2024 and I got in 2025.

Thank you. Once again, that is star one to ask the question. We will take our next question from David McGregor with Longbow Research.

Good morning, everyone. Yeah, good morning, Tom. Congratulations on a really strong quarter. Great performance. Thank you. I wanted to ask you about pricing and the Vulcan way of selling and clearly this process has been very successful and it delivered some very visible results, but as your markets evolve and I'm thinking, for example, of your ready mix and fixed plant customers who in many instances are now paying more for their limestone than they are for the cement. And then I guess secondly, your Vulcan way of operating process, it's giving you better incremental unit costs. Does the profitability algorithm sort of adjust at some point to rely on slightly smaller price increases in favor of larger unit gains that are achieved maybe in the way of market share gains from competitors who are continuing to push hard on price increases?

Yeah, let me be clear. I wish we had cement pricing. We don't. It's much lower than cement pricing, but also that cost is much lower. I think that as you look forward, I would go back to the strategic initiatives of Vulcan of selling and Vulcan of operating. Vulcan of selling allows you a much better in-depth look into what's going on in the market and gives your salespeople the tools to price better and also gives them logistics and other tools to better service your customers. I think on the Vulcan of operating, it allows for better training and better operators in how we inspect our equipment and reduce downtime and also the technology allows for better throughput and throughput of critical sizes. You put those two together and I think both of them have a lot better chance of beating history, both the sales piece and operating piece, which leads you to better opportunities on unit margin growth that again will beat history and you've seen us do that. You know, over the last nine quarters, a double-digit improvement. So that's not happening by accident and it doesn't happen by accident going forward. Again, if you know that's over timeframes when volumes have actually gone down this year, we're calling flat. But when volumes come back, you have even better opportunity to improve your unit margins, both on the price side and on the cost side.

Okay. All right. Thanks, Tom. Thank

you. Thank you. It appears we have no further questions in the queue. I will turn the program back over to our presenters for any additional or closing remarks.

Yes. Thank you for your time and your interest in Vulcan materials today. We appreciate the relationship. We hope that you and your families stay safe, particularly with all the weather we're having and we look forward to talking to you throughout the quarter. Thank you.

This does conclude today's program. Thank you for your participation. You may disconnect at any time.