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spk08: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Advanced Drainage Systems' second quarter of fiscal year 2023 results conference call. My name is Jason, and I am your operator for today's call. Currently, all participants are placed in listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question and answer session. I would now like to turn the presentation over to our host for today's call, Mr. Mike Higgins, Vice President of Corporate Strategy and Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
spk07: Thank you, and good morning. 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, followed 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. 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. I'll now turn the call over to Scott Barber.
spk04: Thank you, Mike, and good morning. Thank you, everyone, for joining us on today's call. We achieved another very strong quarter of results with the second quarter sales of $884 million and adjusted EBITDA of $263 million. Importantly, this is the fourth quarter in a row that we have covered cost pressure through favorable pricing in the third quarter in a row of margin expansion. Sales growth of 25% was broad-based across geographies in both the construction and agriculture end markets. supported by continued strength in our priority states and allied products. The strongest volume growth occurred in the ADS residential and agriculture end markets. In the ADS agriculture business, we did a good job level loading deliveries, and that is shaping up for a fall season with year-over-year growth. The ADS residential business grew as home builders continued to develop land despite market uncertainty. We expect homebuilder land development to continue on previously acquired land. And over the long term, the lack of available home supply will continue to drive growth in this market. ADS participation in the residential market is still early in the material conversion story. So despite the pullback, residential remains a large growth opportunity for the company. What we see being on the land development side is the sales are choppy. Some areas remain strong, like the Atlantic Coast, the Southeast, and Texas. In other areas, like the Northeast, sales, orders, and project identification are beginning to slow. We are focusing business development efforts in those geographies where land development is continuing. In addition, we continue to develop programs with national and regional home builders where the ADS value proposition of faster, safer installation, fewer trucks to deliver the required linear feed to the job site, better installed cost, and sustainability is a proven winner. Infiltrator revenue increased 3% this quarter. The septic tank business grew double digit as plastic tanks continue to gain market share against traditional materials, and we add distribution points. We are still working down that backlog, leveraging the new capacity investments that have come online this year. In the leach field products, backlog is normalized and lead times are now customary with historical performance that infiltrator customers expect. The better lead times as well as residential market uncertainty led to distributor destocking over the second half of the second quarter as our distribution partners are less concerned about product availability and lead time. It is important to note The impact of destocking is larger in the infiltrator business when compared to the ADS business because on-site septic products are delivered from distributor stocks, whereas the ADS products are delivered directly to the job site by ADS trucks. Both companies are well-positioned to maintain price and leverage the material conversion story to drive above-market results. In Florida, Hurricane Ian impacted sales in the central and southwestern parts of the state. As the threat of the hurricane became more significant during the last week of the quarter, shipment volume in these portions of Florida decreased 70% and are slowly rebounding. Other portions of Florida are normal in terms of shipments. This is important to note since Florida is the largest state in terms of sales for the company. We expect contractors in southwest Florida to prioritize recovery efforts in the near term as opposed to the stormwater project installations as we move through the fiscal Q3. Importantly, ADS employees were minimally impacted and the ADS Florida facilities were back up and running with minimal downtime and raw material supply was not disrupted. If I take a step back and look at how the second quarter played out, overall sales volume was strong and according to plan in July and August. The first week of September started slowly. The second and third weeks strengthened to July and August pace. In the fourth week of September, when it became apparent that Hurricane Ian would hit Florida, shipments slowed down considerably. So we did see an overall volume degradation in September after a good first two months of the quarter. October shipments are on pace with September. Let me provide some more details and context on this demand inflection that we are in the midst of right now. First, there is variability by geography. We had difficult year-over-year comparisons in areas like the Northeast and Northwest where activity was elevated last year due to reopening. We believe that particularly in regions like the Northeast and Pacific Northwest, which had more dramatic pauses during the pandemic, that one and a half years of activity was compressed into a 12-month period that began in the second half of 2021 through late this summer. In other areas like the Atlantic coast and the southeast, including Florida, construction activity remains favorable and on track. Second, the destocking of the leach field chambers and infiltrator distribution was more dramatic and quicker than we anticipated in this past quarter. We believe that we are approaching the end of the destocking impact at Infiltrator as of the end of October. Next, we have been systematically working down backlog levels at both ADS and Infiltrator, and in most products and geographies, the backlog is now in a normal position. The normalized backlog and the shorter lead times we can provide due to the result of the capacity that we put in place has resulted in a slower order pace and less inventory bills at infiltrator distributors. In addition, customers are uncertain about market conditions in a rising interest rate environment, and this has slowed order rates for products that are stocked by distribution. As we move into the second half of the year, we are seeing a market inflection point. Demand is uncertain and interest rates continue to rise. Additionally, we are seeing a normal seasonal pattern of activity, more like pre-pandemic conditions. We adjusted the second half revenue guidance and accordingly, and due to improvement in raw material costs, favorable pricing and cost control, we were able to hold adjusted EBITDA guidance. We will continue to manage costs and stay focused on investing in initiatives that provide ADS the greatest returns and support the growth programs. As such, we are moving forward with capital spending planned for fiscal 2023, especially in high-demand regions like Florida and the Southeast, and those high-return, high-growth areas of the company, such as recycling and infiltrator businesses. Finally, in October, we broke ground on our new industry-leading engineering and technology center in Hilliard, Ohio, near the ADS corporate headquarters. This expansion brings together, in one location, product development, material science, and manufacturing engineering into one world-class purpose-built facility. This engineering and technology center will be the most advanced stormwater engineering and material science center in the world, enabling our team of engineers, scientists, and technicians to design sustainable solutions that utilize recycled plastics to improve quality of life in communities across North America. We will also be utilizing LEED building techniques, supporting the ADS commitment to sustainability. Though demand is uncertain, we are making the necessary pivots to manage the business through this inflection point. We are leaning into areas of the business where demand remains strong, such as the residential land development, as well as the data center and warehouse construction. We expect price costs to remain favorable, particularly as inflationary pressures begin to level off. We will also continue investing in the business to ensure we exit the current environment in a stronger competitive position. We do this with confidence in the strength of both the ADS and infiltrator business models. The conversion story related to competing materials remains intact, and we have an extremely healthy balance sheet and cash generation profile. We are in a very good financial position to execute on what we need to do both organically and inorganically, should the right opportunities arise. With that, I'll turn the call over to Scott Cottrell to further discuss the financial results. Thanks, Scott. On slide five, we present our second quarter financial performance. From a top-line perspective, we generated 25% growth year-over-year, primarily driven by favorable pricing at both ADS and Infiltrator. Legacy ADS pipe products grew 28 percent, allied product sales grew 37 percent, and infiltrator sales increased 3 percent. Consolidated adjusted EBITDA increased 60 percent to $263 million, resulting in 650 basis points of margin expansion to 29.8 percent in the quarter. As Scott mentioned, favorable pricing continued to cover inflationary cost pressures related to labor, manufacturing, and transportation costs. From an input perspective, raw material costs have moderated sequentially but remain at historically elevated levels. We expect this favorability to continue as we move through the second half of this year. Moving to slide six, we generated $361 million of free cash flow year to date compared to $31 million in the prior year. Strong growth and adjusted EBITDA coupled with better working capital helped drive significant free cash flow generation and conversion, which was approximately 64% of our adjusted EBITDA year-to-date. Given the current market uncertainty, it is important to highlight the strength of our balance sheet and financial position. As of the end of the quarter, we had over $1 billion of liquidity, including nearly $460 million of cash. Our trailing 12-month adjusted EBITDA to debt ratio sat at one time, and we expect to convert over 50% of our adjusted EBITDA to free cash flow for the full year. In addition, we recently received an upgrade from S&P on our debt and credit rating. We remain committed to our leveraged targets of two to three times net debt to adjusted EBITDA, but we are currently focused on the low end of that range at this time given market conditions. Importantly, 68% of our outstanding debt is fixed rate debt and therefore not subject to further interest rate increases. Through September 30th, 2022, we repurchased 1.9 million shares through our share repurchase program for a total of $195 million. As of last Friday, October 28th, that number now stands at 2.1 million shares for $227 million, leaving $773 million remaining under our previously announced billion-dollar share repurchase program. Given our strong financial position, we plan to continue our balanced capital allocation strategy of investing in our business while also returning capital to shareholders through our dividend and share buyback program. Year to date, our capital spending has increased 19% to $76 million as we continue to invest in capacity, efficiency, and automation. For the full year, we now expect our capital spending to be around $175 million. Finally, on slide seven, we provide our updated fiscal 2023 guidance. Based on our order activity, backlog, and current market trends, we now estimate revenue growth of between 12 and 16 percent, or $3.1 billion to $3.2 billion. We are not changing guidance for adjusted EBITDA, which is expected to be in the range of $900 to $940 million, representing growth of 33 to 39 percent and translating to an adjusted EBITDA margin of 29.2% at the midpoint. We will continue to monitor the market and take actions as we deem appropriate to make sure we are right sized for the demand environment in front of us. An example of such is adjusting our future production schedules as needed to right size our inventory and better align such with our forecasted demand environment over the coming quarters. In addition to cost control measures like the inventory right sizing initiative I just mentioned, We also intend to continue investing in the business, ensuring that we exit a market slowdown in a stronger competitive position than when we entered it. With that, I'll open the call for questions. Operator, please open the line.
spk08: If you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. If for any reason you'd like to remove that question, please press star followed by two. Again, to ask a question, it is star one. Our first question is from Michael Halloran with Baird. Your line is now open.
spk03: Hey, good morning, guys. Good morning, Michael. So a handful of questions here. Let's start on the inventory side. Obviously, that seems to have caught you guys off guard a little bit as you worked through the quarter. You know, was there – how quickly were you able to react to it once you saw the challenges? And maybe provide some context for why you think that by the end of October the inventory levels had worked themselves out. You know, I think a lot of people are in other kind of product categories that touch your markets or expecting that to last a little longer. So I think some comfort in understanding what you've done, what the levels look like, how they compare to normal and what kind of demand environment you're assuming in, in what you're calling the normal kind of run rate would be super helpful.
spk04: All right. Uh, good morning, Mike. This is Scott Barber. Um, so I think you're, let's probably start with the infiltrator. inventory destocking, which is really focused on the leach field products. Recall that there's really two major product lines there, the bigger being the leach field, the newer one being the tank. And the tank really isn't experiencing that destocking. It's still in kind of that work off the backlog mode. And what we saw, I would say, you know, kind of starting to midpoint in the quarter is inflection in the reduction of that backlog. In other words, it was getting steeper on the leach field products. It started to be worked off very quickly. And then just not kind of a reorder point. What I mean by that is, you know, the demand of the leach field products started to kind of really wane as we got halfway through the quarter. And we have now gotten to this point where, you know, the lead time on the leach field products and the kind of open orders behind it, the backlog, are in a way that's kind of what we saw pre-pandemic. That leads us to believe we're towards the end. We don't know that for sure. We need to continue to watch. But I believe around that particular product, which was the most dramatic in the quarter, that what's in front of us is really kind of demand uncertainty by home completions, and it starts then completions. We think the distribution and inventory is kind of getting to the right level there. So we don't expect another big event of destocking. It will be more demand driven. Did that kind of clear what you were asking around the inventory levels and the destocking?
spk03: Yeah, that was. One question, what percentage loosely of your organization actually is beholden to these inventory pieces? A lot of your business just doesn't really have channel inventory. Right, right.
spk04: Mike, I mean, what's the figure we've given on? It's really the infiltrator products that are mainly stock. Correct. Retail and the ADS. Retail and the ADS side, but that's kind of been lower for a while.
spk07: Yeah. If you think about the ADS business, somewhere between 70% to 80% goes directly to a job site. With the infiltrator business, pretty much all of that is going to go from an infiltrator facility to a distributor's yard.
spk03: So you're thinking somewhere around 25% to 35% is what the piece that would be holding the inventory then?
spk04: Yeah, in that neighborhood, yeah. It would be in that neighborhood, depending on the season.
spk03: So that's helpful.
spk04: So didn't you see the gross mark? Yeah, go ahead. Sorry. No, I was just going to kind of reiterate, Mike, that You know, we we believe the bigger thing to kind of watch out for is demand driven, you know, from here forward. We think this it did hit us faster than we thought. There's no doubt about that. I mean, and but, you know, we believe we're more towards the end than we are at the beginning of that phenomena at any of the stocking locations for particularly infiltrator.
spk03: That's helpful. And then two more buckets of questions. First, on the commercial construction side of things, you mentioned some regional slowing. Is that mostly just alluding to Florida? And more broadly, could you just talk about what the trend line you're seeing is and any areas of concern on the commercial construction side outside of expectations for a slow recovery in that specific region of Florida that was hit by the hurricane?
spk04: Well, if As we kind of peel it back and we look at the Northeast and the Pacific Northwest, those areas went down pretty hard in the pandemic. And so starting last year until this summer, they were very elevated levels of activity. That appears to have been kind of worked through, and now we've kind of come back into a more normal seasonal pattern. there, which is below where we were a year ago, but compares well to pre-pandemic in terms of commercial demand in those regions. Florida, if you kind of take aside the hurricane impact in southwest Florida, I think things are going along pretty normal, as we have seen over the last several quarters in terms of construction activity. But Southwest Florida is important. It's a high growth part of the state. And we're going to feel some impact from that. But it'll get worked off. These things do. There's no destruction of demand. It's just kind of pushed out for right now. If we look at quoting activity and project identification, things like that in the commercial space, it's above prior year. Not, I mean, it's not double digit, but it's above prior year and kind of good healthy levels. The, we taught the warehouse business remains good for us. Lots of projects in that funnel. I know there's a lot of concern about that, but that, that really remains pretty good. Um, the data center piece, these onshoring projects, we have a lot of business development activity there. We've done a really nice job. We, we stood up that business development a couple of years ago before the pandemic. We layered the residential and the warehousing into that. Now we're layering into that these onshoring projects. And some are here in Ohio, some are in Texas. We see them across the country. So we're getting a lot of quote activity in that kind of space. That said, we're in this inflection point and how these things are going to impact us. But for right now, that appears to be doing OK.
spk03: Right, helpful for that. And then last question, didn't see gross margin commentary by kind of the usual three things in the press release today, the pipe allied and infiltrator. Any help on that side? And then when you look at the back half of the year margins, I think one of the Scots alluded to normal sequential patterns. from a seasonality perspective. And second half, it's always worse than the front half, at least in a normal year, worse than the front half on the margin line. But just help provide some context to how much of the price cost capture you think you can maintain and any help with how to think about what were really good first half margins and your ability to carry through that goes through on a seasonally adjusted basis moving forward.
spk04: Yeah, Mike, Scott Cottrell here. So, I'll try to unpack a couple of those points. Sequential margin performance, as Scott and I said in the script, we see this year kind of returning to more of our normal sequential kind of seasonality patterns. So you're absolutely right. Anywhere from 200 to 300 basis points or greater is normally kind of that deterioration from first half to second half margin performance, just because of the winter months, the lower volume, that absorption and leverage piece. We'll see that again, and that's what you see in the second half. On the drivers of price cost, yes, you'll see that. Now, we're starting to lap a lot of the pricing year over year. We're keeping it at these high levels, but on a year-over-year basis, you'll see more of that resin benefit coming in on a year-over-year basis as we go through the second half, and that's been embedded in our guide. As to the margin performance in the quarter and year-to-date, Those EBITDA bridges are in the earnings release, as you said, and then the margin piece of that by segment will be out as part of the 10Q filing later today.
spk03: Appreciate it. Thank you.
spk00: Appreciate it. Thank you.
spk08: Our next question comes from Matthew Bully with Barclays. Your line is now open.
spk06: Hey, morning, everyone. Thank you for taking the questions. If I could kind of zoom into the volume outlook, you know, within the guide. I think obviously you're guiding to second half revenues, I guess, down 3% year over year. I'm curious if you can kind of unpack, you know, what the volume assumption is in that. And if I take, you know, residential weakening, some kind of, you know, near-term destocking and and Florida getting pushed to the right, or activity in Florida. You know, I'm curious if you can kind of size up the volume impacts from some of these kind of more discrete items. Thank you.
spk04: Hey, Matt. Scott here. So, again, you're right. So, a little bit of pricing. Benefits still, second half, year over year. It'll be mostly a volume play, which is what we saw, and all the key dynamics that Scott covered here a little bit ago via the script, as well as answering Michael's question here a little bit ago as well. But you're going to see most of that impact, that volume impact on kind of that infiltrator side of the house first, which is how we've always been talking about it. But that's exactly what we're seeing. So you're going to see a lot of that. Allied still going to be strong year over year. So we'll still see some nice volume growth. as well as pricing there. On the pipe side, on the ADS legacy business, again, some of those dynamics that we talked about come into play there as well. But most of that volume coming off will be an infiltrator. And as Scott mentioned, we knew based on single family housing starts and the lag times, it was coming at us. It happened probably about a quarter ahead of when we thought. And the impact in September was was pretty dramatic and pretty sudden, leading to all the actions we talked about before. But it's fair to look at a lot of that volume as being infiltrator-related.
spk06: Got it. Okay, that's very helpful. Thanks for that. And then secondly, on the margin outlook, I just heard you saying, and you said several times around, that there's some raw material benefit starting to flow into the second half there. You know, I mean, if I kind of just high level say you took your revenue guide down by $150 million at the midpoint, but the EBITDA margin or the EBITDA dollars are unchanged, you know, what I'm trying to get to is I guess how much of, you know, the deflation that you're now starting to see is incorporated in that, you know, in that second half guide and, you know, sort of what are the expectations around I heard you say operational, you know, cost control, things like that. I'm just trying to get at how much of actual declines in raw material prices are included in that second half guide. Thanks.
spk04: Yeah, Matt, the way I think about it is those decreases are embedded in our guide. Again, based on resin procured in the month of September, October, by the time that it goes from raw material and is converted into a pipe finished good product, And then sold, you know, that could be 90 days, if you will. So we have three months of visibility to those costs that are on our balance sheet today. So, again, we've embedded that or considered that favorability as well as pricing. I mean, it's really important to also look at kind of where our pricing's been and where we've gotten it to and the fact that sequentially we expect to hold on to most of that, as we've talked about in the past. But, again, that resin and what we're currently procuring it at is included in our forecast and the guide that we went out with.
spk06: Got it. And then just, you know, on that point, you know, can you kind of speak to the resins themselves, sort of, you know, to what degree have they come off peak, if you can give any color on that?
spk04: Not, I mean, directionally, again, it's off sequentially. as well as year over year. But again, the absolute level, when you go back historically and look over the last five plus years or greater, it's still at a very elevated level as compared to historic levels that we've seen. But again, sequentially, year over year, it's providing a nice benefit and offset to some of the volume challenges that we're seeing. And again, we kind of knew that, but the magnitude of such, to your point, helps us offset some of the volume declines that are coming at us that, again, came at us a little bit faster than we thought they would. Gotcha.
spk06: All right. Well, thanks for the color.
spk08: Our next question comes from Josh Poriinsky with Morgan Stanley. Your line is now open.
spk05: Hey, good morning, guys. So just following up on the price-cost commentary, I mean, I guess versus last quarter, you had a little bit less of a benefit in the EBITDA bridge. I don't think the year-over-year comp was a lot better. And I sort of get that you have more deflation showing up in the second half, although I think the resin kind of downward trajectory has been fairly stable. So I guess maybe what I'm trying to say here is I would have thought there would have been more this quarter. Is there anything going on with either mix or price flowing back to the customer in some instances? Like, can you just talk about, you know, how that has gone, you know, kind of at the customer level in terms of managing that price cost? Does that change at all versus the last quarter? Or is it really just a function of, you know, more of the improvement on residents that we've seen as, you know, kind of times itself into next quarter and beyond rather than this one?
spk04: It's timing. Well, the only thing I'd say, Josh, looking at the EBITDA bridge, I mean, that price cost was $169 million favorable in the quarter. Again, when you look at the magnitude of what we saw in the first quarter, yeah, it's not the same on a year-over-year basis, but that's because of the price increases that were lapping last year. So when you get to Q3, Q4 of this year, again, you're not going to have as much pricing benefit on a year-over-year basis. But what we're going to see is a nice resin benefit year over year that'll be in that price cost bar and is embedded in our guidance. So that's the interesting thing when you look year over year. But when you look sequentially, which is, again, how we look at it, we're holding on to most of that pricing like we thought we would. Obviously, with some of our plastic pipe competitors in certain regions, we got to be smart about it. But again, we're holding on to most of that pricing. And we track that. We look at it monthly, weekly, daily, and we're holding on to it. And then to some of the points we've talked about earlier, we're also starting to see on a procured basis some really nice resin benefits that'll start coming through the P&L here over the next couple months.
spk05: Got it. And then I apologize if I missed this in some of the earlier comments, but on the kind of lost revenue or deferrals coming out of Florida with the hurricane's Over what time frame are you expecting to catch up on that? Obviously not imminently, but like is this a two-quarter phenomenon? Is it really into next year? How do we think about, you know, the catch-up?
spk07: Hey, Josh. This is Mike Higgins. Yeah, I'd say kind of that area, you know, talking southwest Florida that was hit the hardest, you're probably looking at potentially a two- to three-quarter phenomenon. I mean, obviously people have seen the damage and the devastation that occurred So, you know, a lot of the activity clearly is shifting to that. So, you know, we'll see some sales related to that, but kind of your everyday, you know, kind of non-residential, residential construction projects that we sell, those are going to get pushed for at least a couple of quarters. You know, and that's coming from our guys on the ground talking to their customers, talking to our distribution down there.
spk05: Got it. And then I apologize if I could sneak in just one more. The way that you guys are sort of describing the end market environment right now, especially on the resi side, with maybe non-resi closely following in most macro environments, how does that kind of 8% CAGR long-term target look today? Is that something that still feels kind of achievable over the next several years, or does that need to come down if we have kind of a more pronounced slowdown here over the next you know, call it 12 to 18 months.
spk04: Yeah. I mean, obviously if it's more pronounced, you got to look at things, but again, the long-term trajectory and value proposition and model that Scott talked about earlier, no change. So for over the long-term, absolutely that growth trajectory, that material conversion story, all of that holds true. So that the ADS model, the infiltrator model, that conversion story is intact.
spk07: Yeah, I think the way we talk about it, Josh, is, you know, yeah, clearly, you know, there's something going on in the market. It's an inflection point. There's uncertainty. But our business model is not broken, right? The conversion story, the value proposition that we bring, you know, we're still executing on that every day. And we'll be very resilient and we can pivot, you know, based on kind of where opportunities are presented in the end markets.
spk04: And if you're thinking, Josh, this is Scott Barber. No, I was going to say, this is... Scott B., you know, I think, you know, this is really we're in that period of inflection and you don't really know where it's going to end up. I mean, we know there's something common. The depth or length of it, we don't know. We can read the signals and watch the Fed and all that other kind of stuff. But we just don't know yet. So we're not going to change our long term growth plans around any of this until we get a better a better handle on what the depth and length of what we're entering is there. I mean, I think as I tried to describe, I mean, we were saying along in July and August, September, you know, was a lot different than July and August. You know, October has kind of been the same. We're trying to figure out exactly these different impacts of destocking, you know, slowdown in core demand in the end market, all these things. And we'll sort it out. And we won't know until we're past it, but we're going to stay on top of it every day. And this is not unlike when the pandemic began, when there was a couple of months of sorting things out, you know, making sure we were lined up right, then you go. And that's where we are. Hey, Josh, the only thing I'd add to that, you heard Scott and myself mention it multiple times, but we're continuing to invest heavily in the business. Obviously, certain regions still need to be invested for growth, but a lot of automation and efficiency type of spend that's coming that way. And again, as we talked to it, our game plan here is to continue investing in these areas so that we're even more competitive when we come out of this downturn. And again, we've got the balance sheet to do that, and we see that as a great way to not only invest organically in the business, But again, look and be positioned for any kind of M&A opportunities that might come our way down the road as well.
spk00: Understood. Appreciate all the time, guys. Best of luck.
spk08: Our next question comes from Garrett Shimoy with Loop Capital. Your line is now open.
spk02: Oh, hi. Thanks for taking my question. You kind of alluded to this a little bit on the pricing questions, but just curious if the pace of the competitive behavior has accelerated at all over the course of the last couple of months, or is it more of a normal type pricing environment when you start to see rising costs start to come down?
spk04: Good question, Garrett. This is Scott Barber. So it differs by market. And I would say to you that in regions of tight RCP, reinforced concrete pipe supply, you know, high demand for that stuff, maybe a little lack of capacity in those products, you know, pricing is very steady, you know, and maybe with some opportunities. In our more competitive markets like agriculture, you know, some days there's a daily fight, other days it's pretty steady. It's not anything that we don't experience in a normal course. And like Scott said, you know, we're going to protect our market share, but it's not at any elevated level over normal. And I think that's what you're kind of asking is, is there any unusual activity because of the decrease in material prices? And it's, you know, every now and then you see one, you see a hot one, but It hasn't been above what I would call normal type of activity.
spk02: Got it. That's helpful. The follow-up question is just on material conversion, just the pace of how that could look over the next several quarters. I don't know if you can wind back maybe in other periods. of an economic slowdown? Have you been able to maybe accelerate the pace of material conversion and maybe speak to the spread now between HDP pipe pricing versus maybe some of the other competitive materials that are seeing some more inflationary pressures moving forward?
spk07: Yeah, hey, Garrett, Mike Higgins. So to the first part, other periods where we've seen economic slowdown, I would say it's more geography-based where you're able to kind of accelerate that share gain, right? So clearly, things become more competitive. Guys are looking to protect margins in a slowdown. So if you have a contractor who maybe you have on the edge of kind of converting to your product, you're able to kind of push him a little further because of that competitive need and an economic slowdown. So I would say the pace accelerates in certain geographies maybe more than others. But I think we're running at a pretty good clip right now at conversion, specifically in the residential and markets. And I'm sorry, I forgot what the back half of your question was. Total installed cost. Oh, yeah. I think you know, where we've seen over this year, the kind of the spread, the total installed cost advantage of our products versus the traditional materials has, you know, come into that more normalized level of, you know, kind of 15, 20, 25% versus concrete pipe, you know, as they've had to kind of take prices up, you know, around inflationary pressures and demand or supply constraints related to the demand. You know, I think we've seen those geographies where there was some parity maybe evolving, that advantage has come back in line with what we typically see. Understood. Thanks for the help.
spk08: Our next question comes from John Lovallo with UBS. Your line is now open.
spk01: Hey, guys. Good morning. This is actually Spencer Coffman on for John. Thanks for fitting me in here. You know, maybe just the first one. You know, given... Amazon announcements on, you know, pausing warehouse distribution, CapEx as a reach for the industry. How are you thinking about the sustainability of warehouse and distribution and markets? And sort of along the same lines, just given all the economic uncertainty out there, you mentioned that we're sort of in this inflection point right now. You know, what type of visibility do you have into, you know, the entire business right now?
spk07: We're going to take on the warehouse. Yes, Spencer, Mike Higgins again. On the warehouse side, distribution center part of that question. I'd say broadly, overall, the activity level remains strong, specifically on the coasts. There's a real kind of acute shortage of warehouse space there. So we still see pretty strong demand up the East Coast, up and down the West Coast. As far as the Amazon piece, I know that gets a lot of headlines. But, you know, they're roughly 15% of the market. So there's still a lot of other development, a lot of other activity that goes out there. So, you know, the market's not solely reliant, you know, kind of on Amazon. And, you know, kind of one of the kind of viewpoints that we have been here is, you know, Amazon typically over invest early into things. And this might be one of those things that they pull back. Right. So they over invested in this type of space. They're kind of pulling back on that a little bit. And then the other thing we hear from other kind of real estate professionals or the real estate industry is when you pull a couple of those layers back, you know, Amazon, you know, kind of subleasing some of this space out is older stock. So they're older buildings that they've been in. You know, they're trying to consolidate operations into these newer facilities they built, which are much larger, heavily automated to deal with the labor challenges.
spk01: and uh you know there's there's takers for that old stock uh that old warehouse space so we we feel pretty confident in that type of activity you know through through the end of the fiscal year okay thanks mike appreciate the color there um and in my follow-up question you know just on the raw material costs that are improving down both you know quarter of a quarter and year of year um it's still elevated how you guys are describing it i mean when you couple that with just some of the demand weakness you're seeing and how are you thinking about the price moving forward? I mean, would it be unreasonable to see potentially some give back here?
spk04: You know, I think the give back is just so localized that it's difficult for, I think, you guys to do it. I mean, it's pretty minimal within the context of how much price we've gotten over the past past year. When we have to give back price, it tends to be on one project and one very regional type of thing. It doesn't tend to be across one whole class of distribution or customers. And it's very rifle shot. And the experience of the company is those rifle shots don't kind of pile up into some kind of tsunami. We're pretty good at keeping them extremely localized. And we offset that with when we compete against reinforced concrete with our polypropylene or HP products that are a bit tighter in supply, higher demand environment, we're competing against those guys. And we also have the pricing that we do on our allied products which tend to be highly, highly differentiated and highly, highly specified. So you kind of roll all that together, Spencer, and we feel like it's a very manageable, very manageable variable for us. And when you look at some of the other inflationary cost pressures, you look at, it's not just all about resin, but when you look at labor, you look at transportation, those are all costs that are still with us at elevated levels. So again, understand the question, but again, not a big item as we look at it. Okay. Appreciate the call, guys. Thank you.
spk08: There are no further questions, so I'll pass the call back over to Scott Barber for closing remarks.
spk04: I really appreciate everyone's participation and the good questions today. We anticipated a lot of these lines of questions. We look forward to kind of the follow-ups. And I just conclude, our team continues to work extremely hard on execution. You guys know me. I mean, execution is the first thing we think about in our business all the time. That's going to be really important. It's always important. It's really important in times of inflection. We remain very focused on kind of our end markets and customers and those programs that we know can drive growth. We'll manage through it. It's an inflection point in the market. There are a few things that we've got to continue to figure out. We feel good about kind of holding the EBITDA guidance and well positioned on that and the cash flow generation of the business that I think gives us a lot of options on things that we can do in the future. So appreciate it. Look forward to talking to you all soon or seeing you all. Thanks.
spk08: That concludes the conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect your lines.
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