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spk00: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Advanced Drainage Systems' second quarter fiscal 2022 results conference call. My name is May, and I am your operator for today's call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1 on your telephone. please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. If you require any further assistance, please press star zero. I would now like to turn the presentation over to your host for today's call, Mr. Mike Higgins, Vice President of Corporate Strategy and Investor Relations.
spk01: Thank you, and good morning, everyone. With me today, I have Scott Barber, our President and CEO, and Scott Cottrell, our CFO. I would also like to remind you that we will discuss forward-looking statements. Actual results may differ materially from those forward-looking statements because of various factors, including those discussed in our press release and the risk factors identified in our Form 10-K filed with the SEC. While we may update forward-looking statements in the future, we disclaim any obligation to do so. You should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, all of which speak only as of today. Lastly, the press release we issued earlier this morning is posted on the investor relations section of our website. A copy of the release has also been included in an 8K submitted to the SEC. We will make a replay of this conference call available via webcast on the company website. With that, I'll turn the call over to Scott Barber.
spk02: Thank you, Mike, and good morning. Thank you, everybody, for joining us on today's call. We achieved a record $706 million in sales in the second quarter, an increase of 30% compared to the same period last year. Sales growth was primarily driven by pricing at both ADS and NippleTrader across our geographies and our end markets. Our volume was down slightly in the second quarter, primarily due to the retail business within the ADS residential end market, which had a difficult comparison relative to last year when we experienced record shipping levels in the retail category at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Excluding retail, the ADS construction market sales volume was up slightly despite constraints within our manufacturing and transportation operations. Infiltrator sales increased 38%, primarily due to favorable pricing, as well as a slight volume increase with strong growth in the southeast and southern regions of the United States. Additionally, international sales for the total company increased 29% this quarter, with double-digit growth in our Canadian and Mexican businesses. Our backlog and pace of orders remain favorable, as well as our ability to capture price in the market, which gives us confidence in the updated sales targets we issued today. The price increases we implemented in the second quarter will hit their full run rate in the fiscal third quarter, and we have obtained some additional pricing on certain products and in certain end markets to cover the continued inflationary cost pressures. Overall, the demand environment remains favorable, and our leading indicators point to continued strength as we work through the high levels of backlog in our order book. From my perspective, we must continue to work down the backlogs at both ADS and infiltrator, manage through the customary weather and seasonal impacts in the second half of the fiscal year, and continue to leverage the self-help programs that are creating additional production capacity. In addition, we are focused on installing and ramping up new equipment coming online, which will add some production capability in the second half of the year and additional capacity as we enter fiscal 2023 this coming April. Moving to profitability, our adjusted EBITDA decreased 5% this quarter. Favorable pricing issued over the past year covered inflationary cost pressure on materials and diesel. However, labor shortages in both manufacturing and transportation impacted our profitability. This was particularly evident within our transportation business, where we had to ship more deliveries to third-party logistics services, a cost premium compared to our internal fleet. In addition, the year-over-year cost for third-party logistics services is up significantly. Within the manufacturing organization, we were unable to consistently operate all the production lines we wanted to run due to labor shortages. Importantly, though, the programs we discussed on our last call around SKU reduction, process simplification, inventory consolidation, and sourcing product from Mexico are working, resulting in improved daily production rates as we progress through the second fiscal quarter and into October. Availability of raw materials was more problematic in the first part of the quarter, but improved month to month. Material costs remained elevated, and as expected, the second quarter had the largest gap between high material prices this year and historically low prices of last year. Importantly, we were able to maintain the amount of adjusted EBITDA generated as the infiltrator business in the second quarter. Infiltrator products are primarily produced at a single manufacturing location and less transportation sensitive than the ADS products. While Infiltrator faced similar headwinds from labor and transportation, the impact on profitability was less pronounced. Overall, the first half of this fiscal year has largely played out as we expected. As discussed on our first quarter call, we're going to see the year-over-year improvement in adjusted EBITDA in the back half of this fiscal year. We will realize the full run rate of price increases in the third quarter, as well as the benefits from our self-help initiatives. Though this year has been challenging, we remain confident in our ability to identify and execute the right programs to expand our margins over time. Finally, our year-to-date capital spending more than doubled in the first half of this fiscal year. We were making investments to increase capacity, with some having an impact in Q4 for infiltrator and the ADS pipe manufacturing. We started up our production line in the Midwest at the end of the first quarter to help increase capacity, and we also made investments in the storm tech business to increase production capacities and infiltrator. New injection molding processes, presses are starting up now. with additional presses coming online in the fourth quarter to support the growing on-site septic business. These new investments also include automation that will help offset the impact from the labor shortages. Importantly, once our approved capital investments are up and running, we expect capacity will increase by double digit at both ADS and Infiltrator, which will allow us to continue to meet the robust demand environment through the back half of this fiscal year and beyond. All that said, core drivers of our business remain strong. We will continue to systematically work our self-help programs, particularly on the labor and transportation, that improve both production and our service levels to customers. And as we move through this unique period with record demand, significant inflation and labor challenges, we are confident the programs we are working will benefit our business for many years to come. With that, I'll turn it over to Scott Cottrell to further discuss the financial results. Thanks, Scott. On slide five, we present our second quarter fiscal 2022 financial performance. From a top-line perspective, we generated significant growth year-over-year, driven by both ADS and Infiltrator. Legacy ADS pipe products grew 31%, Allied products sales grew 19%, and Infiltrator sales increased 38%, with double-digit sales growth in both tanks and lease-filled products. We continue to demonstrate our pricing power with significant year-to-date price increases across each of our segments. As Scott mentioned, during the second quarter, strength in our construction market sales partially were offset by constraints within manufacturing and transportation, as well as weakness in our retail and market, which was impacted by tough comparisons year-over-year. Consolidated adjusted EBITDA decreased 5% to $165 million, resulting in an adjusted EBITDA margin of 23.3% in the quarter. We knew this quarter would be our most challenging from a year-over-year comp perspective, given the low input costs and high demand environment we experienced last year. Importantly, we have good line of sight into the costs impacting our business and have taken actions to mitigate them in the back half of this year. These efforts have already contributed to margin improvement on a sequential basis throughout this second quarter. The long-term fundamentals of our business remain intact, and we are on track to hit the double-digit growth in our adjusted EBITDA guidance for the fiscal year. Moving to slide six, we generated $31 million of free cash flow year-to-date. In addition to the growth-oriented capital investments Scott outlined, Working capital was a significant use of cash here to date as we purchased raw materials and built inventory at a much higher cost compared to last year in order to support the demand we are experiencing. We continue to make progress on our working capital initiatives, most recently working to extend our payment terms with some of our largest suppliers. As a percent of sales, working capital was 22% as compared to 20% in the same period last year. From a capital deployment perspective, we remain committed to efficient and disciplined capital allocation to drive shareholder value. Our first priority for capital deployment remains investing organically in the growth of the business, as we view this as the highest return and lowest risk use of our available capital. To that end, we've spent more than two times the amount as last year at this time, primarily on these type of growth initiatives. For the full year, we continue to expect between $130 million and $150 million in capital expenditures, with the largest investments focused on future growth, followed by our productivity and automation initiatives. In addition, we continue to work an active M&A pipeline focused on staying close to the core, including regional pipe capacity, allied products that fit our solutions package, and recycling capacity to support the future growth of the business. We are committed to a strong balance sheet, financial flexibility, and returning excess cash to our shareholders, as demonstrated by the $312 million returned to shareholders year to date through share buybacks and dividends. We completed our share repurchase program in the second quarter, purchasing a total of 2.6 million shares year to date. Finally, our trailing 12-month leverage ratio was 1.7 times remaining below our targeted leverage of two to three times that we've previously communicated finally on slide seven we have updated our fiscal 2022 guidance based on our performance and pricing actions taken to date order activity backlog and current market trends we currently expect net sales to be in the range of 2.55 billion to 2.65 billion representing growth of 29% to 34% over the prior year. Our adjusted EBITDA guidance is unchanged at a range of $635 million to $665 million, representing growth of 12% to 17% over last year. The increase in our revenue guidance today is due primarily to the continued strength in orders and our backlog, as well as the impact of favorable pricing that we've introduced to the market to date. With that, I'll open the call for questions. Operator, please open the line.
spk00: Absolutely. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star 1 on your telephone. To withdraw your question, press the pound key. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Your first question comes from the line of Mike Halloran of BIRD. Your line is open.
spk05: Good morning, everyone. Good morning. So let's talk through the moving pieces as we go to the back half of the fiscal year for you. Obviously, the guidance implies above normal seasonal ramp and EBITDA levels as you move to the back half of the year. I'm hoping we can just talk about the components behind that, because it seems like it's a combination of capacity coming online, being able to, you know, loosen some of the labor shortages and the impacts, and then also price costs and price timing. So maybe we could start on the capacity piece first and just understand what levers you guys have pulled and what this could mean for demand as we move to the back half, or at least the ability to service the demand in the back half. If that question needs to have the labor piece embedded in it, certainly understand.
spk02: Okay. I think of it in three components. This is Scott Barber, by the way. Mike, good morning. So I think of it in three components for that back half to come together for our plan, and we have a good line of sight on it. It's, let's call it price material, capacity, as you described, And then volume, just release of orders to go through there. Price material, I think we've worked very hard on in the front half of both companies. And I think as you see in this deck, kind of moving along very, very nicely in per plan. Capacity, I would say, has gotten better as we've gone through the months. There is a labor component to that. And we're working to mitigate that. It's not fully mitigated, but I think if it kind of stays the way it is right now, we can get through that. And the machinery that is coming online that we mentioned in this were decisions made as long as a year ago. And that stuff is hitting the floor and ramping up. Nice impacts on both companies, but a little ahead in infiltrator than on the pipe side. So that's good because that infiltrator, you know, it's a very profitable company. It's a very good shipping pace to that distribution. So that capacity piece... in the reason Scott went through more on the capital being spent now, does have a nice impact in the second half. And for the first time, we also kind of revealed that it gives us, once ramped up, kind of nice double-digit increases in our capacity going forward. We never really talked about that very much, but we thought it was important to begin, now that we see it coming online, getting in there. And then probably the one that I think about the most is the volume release. Price in good shape, capital spending capacity coming online nicely. Then the volume piece, which could be You know, a lot of things that can go on on that volume release, the orders are there, the backlog is there, but you've got to get people to release it and take shipments to the sites, which can be driven by seasonality, other supply chain issues or labor issues that the contractor might have. So some are a bit out of our control, but we're working very, very hard and closely, which we're pretty good at, to make sure we get everything shipped as we can. A lot of moving pieces in there, kind of a long answer, but I hope that that's where you were headed.
spk05: Well, it was a long question, too.
spk02: It was your typical lovely, cheered question.
spk05: Well, you know, you try to get as much in as possible, I guess. So the price-cost piece then, you know, Scott mentioned that the margin levels got better through the quarter. Yeah. As we get to the back half here, do you think you're above the curve in the third quarter or the fourth quarter? Which one when it comes to not just mitigating the diesel and the resin or commodity inflation like you did this quarter, but also maybe getting on top of the transportation piece and labor pieces? Or does that take a little bit more time?
spk02: It takes a little bit more time, but I think that sequential improvement we saw intra-quarter is something that we plan on. Obviously, you've got some seasonality impacts and leverage impacts as we go, but that pricing piece of this and getting to that run rate later as we go through this third quarter. I think becomes extremely leveraging. And when we get into that fourth quarter, you see kind of that nice margin improvement on a year-over-year basis as well. So I would say it continues to get better as we march through the back half with kind of that inflection point on a year-over-year basis by Q4. So the gross profit piece looks good. Yeah, the leverage on the STNA piece we're going to continue to get. It's just on the gross profit piece. It's driving it.
spk05: So in other words, sequential improvement in the margins through the back half of the year, despite what are kind of the normal seasonal factors, given all those things you mentioned. Is that fair? Directionally, yes. All right. I've asked a chunk, so I'll pass it on. Thank you for the time. I appreciate it.
spk02: Yeah, you got it. You're welcome.
spk00: Your next question comes from the line of Josh Brooks Newinsky of Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.
spk03: Morning, guys.
spk02: Morning. Hey, Josh.
spk03: So I'm going to ask kind of a multi-part question as well. And you know what? That's the price you pay. So on the kind of volume and price situation, obviously we can sort of see how chunky price is this year. Scott, you mentioned you're adding in a little bit more as well. if we just take some of the historical bouts of inflation as maybe a proxy for what happens as resin rolls over and it looks like it's starting to, how much of that do you think you end up retaining? I mean, obviously, you know, the margins of the company have come up a lot over the last, you know, kind of four or five years is, you know, using inflation as sort of a price umbrella and then retaining some of that as it's cost normalized, you know, an outside piece of that, a smaller piece, like, Just maybe help to mention out that piece of it, because I think we all can appreciate that, like, maybe freight's elevated for a longer period of time. Labor's probably elevated forever. But there are some pieces that could be a little bit more temporary.
spk02: We would agree with you, exactly agree with you on that. And I think as we look forward, we would expect – replicate prior performance on retaining price uh if we won't retain 100 of it there's some markets that are more competitive than others either by segment or by region and we'll certainly continue to execute this conversion story and share game story that we want to do but we will i think retain uh a good piece of this price i mean i'm sure every every all people running industrial companies right now are asking them this this question of themselves josh is how much of this can i keep as we go forward and we're we're trying to you know work all kinds of different parts of our value proposition to do that and it is you've heard me talk about this in the past It's not just the product, it's the service we provide, and it's the transportation services we provide. It's, you know, all that we do to help people design projects and things like that. So we'll look at our whole value proposition and work that piece very, very hard, that price retention piece.
spk03: Got it. That's helpful. And then maybe sort of a follow-up to that. You know, obviously, you know, you guys are providing more of a premium product on, say like the pipe side, there's labor avoidance, there's other reasons why that's like a more desirable outcome. What is sort of the price differential, if you had to guess, you know, kind of across your markets, you know, versus reinforced concrete? Is it still a discount or are you starting to come into lockstep there?
spk02: I'd say it's more in lockstep today than perhaps where we were historically. Historically, Josh, and And we look at this very closely in particular markets where we want to protect our market share or gain market share. There's other markets where we've probably given a bit back on our conversion story. intentionally because we didn't have the capacity in that in that region to service it when it came up as you as you know and we've discussed it's really been an availability game here i mean in the industry for the last you know eight months six six to eight months but i would tell you that that that advantage is probably collapsed some because our escalation in price but you know i think we also know very cleverly where that is and how to how to how to make in-game adjustments if necessary. Got it. Appreciate the call. Best of luck, guys. Appreciate the call. All right. Thanks. Thanks, Josh.
spk00: Again, to ask a question, you will need to press star 1 on your telephone keypad. Again, that is star 1 on your telephone keypad. Your next question comes from the line of Gary Kshmosh of Loop Capital. Your line is open.
spk04: Oh, hi. Thanks for... Taking my question, I wanted to ask just around the sales guidance increase and recognizing the balance of that is coming from pricing. But I just wonder if you may be able to provide a little bit more color as to where that's coming from. It seems like it's pretty broad-based, but any more color by segment as to where you're getting the incremental price more successfully.
spk02: Got it. You know, I think that, this is Scott Barber, and a couple things. You know, the pricing is very broad-based in the infiltrator products and in the ADS products. There's kind of no segment that is untouched by this. It has probably been a little more aggressive on what I would call Products that we stock versus products that are project-based, those tend to be a very normal behavior. Or some of our stuff, we're competing on projects every day, and you've got to make sure you're competitive. Some stuff goes into stock at a distribution. That tends to be not as everyday competitive. It's got to be in line, but a little different. And I think that's how I would describe that environment. The agriculture is always a little more competitive also than the commercial businesses. Mike, would you add anything to that?
spk01: Yeah, I would agree with Scott, Eric. This is Mike Higgins. When we look at our end markets, the pricing increase on a year-over-year basis is really pretty consistent. Pretty steady, yeah. And that's A bit by design, it's how we price. As Scott said before, it's pretty consistent across the products, and that translates to pretty consistent pricing in the end markets.
spk02: There's no one place that stands out as driving 80% of the price is, I think, maybe what you were trying to get at.
spk01: And geographically, we're seeing the incremental pricing gains that we would want to see as well. So it's not like one part of the country carrying it versus another. Great. That's what I was looking for.
spk04: I wanted to follow up with the issue of capacity and the capacity that's coming online. Is that requiring incremental labor? And maybe more broadly, you touched a little bit on looking to ramp up labor just given the headwinds in manufacturing and on the transportation side. Can you expand a little bit more on that? Where are you in the hiring process?
spk02: That's a very good question and one we work on a lot. So let's take it in two pieces. I would say is the infiltrator capacity comes online. Those are pretty automated manufacturing cells. So the labor that comes online there is pretty small. It's 10 people, six people to ramp up a whole bunch of capacity. And then on site in Kentucky, they're doing all kinds of other projects of automation that frees up labor and kind of net net you don't see big increases in head count as they add what are very nice chunks of incremental capacity in the pipe thinking business we are trying to do a very similar thing so the uh the projects that scott and i have been looking at and approving that our board has approved come in installed with less heads needed than prior investments that would have been made. So again, we're trying to replicate in the pipe business what the infiltrator guys have done for many, many years is that each increment of capacity needs less incremental heads. So again, it's going to be in kind of the 10s and 20s type of people, which is not easy to go and get, but we also are doing a much better job on the pipe side of you know, incremental Kaizen activities that are freeing up headcount. So worried about it, yes. Made additional incremental capital to do automation and better material handling to try to minimize the impact of additional heads and recognizing the environment that we're in today and likely will be in for a while in terms of labor availability. Got it. Thanks, man.
spk00: There are no further audio questions at this time. Please continue.
spk02: All right. Good questions, and we appreciate it today. When we were talking to you 90 days ago, we knew this was going to be our toughest quarter. We had a lot of things in flight. We've made a lot of progress over those 90 days. I tell you this, Scott and I believe we ended up just a little bit better than we thought we were going to for the corner as a result of many of those initiatives, particularly in the operations and the logistics pieces. People are working hard, rowing very, very hard here to service customers to get capacity up so that we can take advantage of this nice market that we have. Not lost on us that, you know, we're spending capital and need to do that well. You know, we've done the buyback and done a lot of, you know, a lot of cash out the door here in the last quarter, but all things that we planned to do and including rebuilding of the balance sheet with some inventory. So lots of moving pieces, but playing out like we thought it would. We had a good meeting with our board over the last several days. Tremendous support for them and the programs that we're running, both at Infiltrator and ADS. So we think we have really good alignment in the company right now on the task ahead of us for the remainder of this year and for the next couple years, which we're pretty enthused about. So we appreciate your participation today and look forward to catching up with you all over the course of today and the next couple of weeks. Thanks.
spk00: This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.
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