Advanced Drainage Systems, Inc.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Today's presentation will start in two minutes. Thank you for your patience. You will be placed back on music hold until the call begins. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to advantage drainage systems, first quarter of fiscal year, two thousand twenty six results conference call. My name is Tamika 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. If you would like to ask a question during that time, press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If your question has been answered and you would like to remove yourself from the queue, press star one. 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. Sir, you may begin.

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 case submitted to the SEC. We will make a replay of this conference call available via webcast on the company website. With all that said, I now will turn the call over to Scott Barber.

Thank you, Mike. And good morning, everyone. Thank you all for joining us on today's call. We generated strong results in the first quarter, delivering a resilient thirty three point five percent adjusted EBITDA margin despite a challenging market environment. The ADS and Nipple Trader teams executed well and remained focused on driving profitable growth and operational excellence by executing our market share model, introducing new products, pursuing acquisitions and and investing capital for long term growth. Revenue increased two percent overall, primarily driven by the Orenco acquisition. Organic sales were down slightly, though our core non-residential and residential in markets were resilient in the quarter. Importantly, Allied Products and Nipple Trader, which are two of our higher margin categories, increased revenue in the quarter. We continue to build on the strong foundation of the ADS story. We operate in highly attractive water segments supported by secular tailwinds from changing climate patterns, as well as the increasing awareness of the societal value of proper stormwater and on site wastewater management, ultimately driving long term demand for the company's products. ADS is the only company with solutions that extend throughout the entire stormwater system on a national scale. Through our best in class portfolio of water management products, we deliver solutions that are safer, faster to install and lower cost through savings on labor and equipment. To meet the needs of our customers and communities, we continue to bring innovative solutions to the market that expand and evolve our product offering. In June, ADS launched the Arcadia Hydrodynamic Separator, a high performance water quality separator product designed to remove suspended solids. With industry leading performance, this product addresses the need to protect water resources from pollution. This product comes on the heels of the new stormwater treatment solution, the EcoStream biofiltration product launched in the latter half of physical 2025. Both of these water quality products are designed to remove pollutants such as nitrogen, phosphorus, sediments, metals and hydrocarbons in different applications. Water quality remains a key growth area for ADS and this category has grown at high teens' cage over the last three years as regulations requiring stormwater treatment continue to evolve. Our new engineering and technology center equipped with a 90,000 gallon closed loop hydraulics lab allowed us to test and commercialize these products more quickly than was previously possible. For context, that is the amount of water used by the average US household over the course of two and a half years. This lab has the capacity to move water at 2,300 gallons per minute and compare that to the water pressure in your average kitchen sink of two to three gallons per minute and it will give you an idea of the capability of our new engineering and technology center. Additionally, demand in the advanced treatment market is also a key focus area and we are pleased with ARINCO's strong start to the year with growth in commercial applications as well as controls. ARINCO's performance was a significant contributor to driving infiltrators' 21% growth this quarter, complimented by double digit organic growth and on-site wastewater tanks where conversion to plastic remains highly relevant. Domestic allied product sales increased 1% driven by demand in the multifamily residential market where we experienced double digit growth of key products like retention detention chambers, water quality products and our stormwater capture structures. More broadly, residential market demand was highly variable depending on geography and application. While multifamily construction improved, single family housing continues to be impacted by the interstate environment and affordability constraints. From a geographic lens, we saw better land development activity in the west and northeast but the DIY channel we serve through service through big box retailers was challenged. Infiltrator core products, both leach field chambers and septic tanks, significantly outperformed the market. We will continue to drive growth through product introductions and material conversion opportunities while also building on the relationships with the large national and regional home builders to drive above market growth in residential construction. In the non-residential market, growth was driven by acquisitions and strong execution from our sales team, particularly commercial construction activity in the Midwest, Atlantic Coast, South and Southeastern United States. We continue to see good activity in data centers and large projects and believe that underlying demand in key geographies was impacted by heavy rainfall and high temperatures, particularly in May and June. With respect to infrastructure, despite revenue being down this quarter compared to the prior year, it was actually the third highest revenue quarter in the company's history. As a reminder, this segment is more concentrated in geographies where we have stronger approvals and often large projects like airports can make quarterly performance uneven. That said, over the long term, the demand drivers remain strong. Over 50% of the IIJA's highway and street funds will be spent over the next five years, so we continue to feel good about the overall direction of the infrastructure market. Moving to profitability, this quarter's .5% adjusted EBITDA margin is among the highest in the company's history, despite a challenging demand environment. Excluding a RENCO, the consolidated margin would have been 34.1%. Importantly, overall pricing remains stable sequentially as expected. Price cost was favorable in the quarter, benefiting from favorable material cost as well as product mix. Manufacturing costs were unfavorable as expected due to the fixed cost absorption on inventory produced over the winter months. We were able to offset a portion of that with favorable transportation costs driven by the better performance of new assets and implementation of new programs. Also of note, we recently began to wind down operations at a distribution yard and a small pipe manufacturing operation. With the capacity investments in the region and acquisition of River Valley pipe, we were able to eliminate some inefficient production while also improving our customer service and delivery. Over the last year, we have taken fixed costs out of the ADS network by closing two pipe production operations, a recycling facility, and three distribution yards without compromising any customer service. We can do this because of the investments we have made in new lines, rebuilds, and the planning programs implemented over the last several years. To illustrate this point, on average, ADS production per line increased by over 20% compared to pre-COVID levels. And the strategic capital invested over the last several years has allowed us to remove inefficient equipment from the network. I'm very proud of the team for the performance delivered in a challenging quarter, their disciplined execution and commitment to continuous improvement resulted in our safest quarter ever, achieving a record low total recordable incident rate below 1.5 compared to an industry average of 3.2. These achievements reflect our ongoing focus on operational excellence and safety, which are foundational elements of our sustainable growth strategy. When you stack up our strengths, the scale, the product portfolio, our go-to market strategy, and the ability to invest in both our businesses, our people, and industry growth, you can see ADS as a powerful value proposition. In summary, we continue to execute effectively in a challenging environment, preserving strong margins, and enhancing our mix towards more profitable products and geographies. Our self-help operational initiatives are now bearing fruit. We've increased the capacity of the existing production lines and added new ones in strategic areas to meet customer demand. We've also upgraded the service and delivery experience for our customers, leveraging new digital tools across our platform. While we navigate the near-term environment, we do so with an eye towards the future. We remain firmly committed to our long-term vision and will continue investing in the capabilities that will position us for future success. Overall, that long-term outlook for our business remains strong, supported by compelling secular tailwinds driving demand for water management solutions across the U.S. Now I'll turn the call over to Scott Cottrell. Thanks, Scott. On slide five, we present our first quarter of fiscal 2026 financial performance. Revenue increased 2% to $830 million, despite challenging end-market demand. Importantly, we believe our results outpaced our end markets overall, demonstrating the resilience of the ADS business model. As Scott noted, from a profitability perspective, we are very pleased with the .5% adjusted EBITDA margin in the first quarter. A couple of things I feel are worth reiterating. First, pricing remained stable sequentially, as we had indicated and expected. Second, price cost was favorable year over year. From a manufacturing perspective, while we did experience unfavorable fixed cost absorption during the quarter, we were able to partially offset such with favorable transportation, as well as favorable variable manufacturing cost performance. Regarding SG&A costs, the -over-year increase was primarily driven by the acquisition of Orenco, as well as continued investments in areas that drive long-term shareholder value, such as resources and talent at our world-class engineering and technology center. We have worked to offset these increases by containing costs in travel, marketing, and other discretionary expenses. Again, despite choppy end-market demand, it is important to highlight the company's performance and the resulting .5% EBITDA margin, one of the highest margins in the company's history, despite end-market weakness, demonstrated the continued resilience of the ADS business model. On slide six, we present our free cash flow for the quarter. We generated $222 million of free cash flow year to day, compared to $126 million in the prior year, primarily driven by better working capital performance. Of note, we expect the OBVBAA to result in an incremental $30 to $40 million of free cash flow this fiscal year. Thoughtful capital allocation continues to be a key focus for the management team and our board, given the strong cash generation of this business. We spent $53 million on capital expenditures in the first quarter, and we now expect to spend approximately $200 million to $225 million for the full year, focusing on innovation and product development at the new world-class engineering and technology center, as well as increasing our recycling capacity in the Southeast, continued investment in customer service, productivity, and automation, as well as executing on growth and key geographies. We ended the quarter with less than one turn of net leverage and over $1.2 billion in available liquidity, including $638 million of cash on hand. This level of financial strength gives us exceptional flexibility to invest with conviction and respond quickly to strategic opportunities as they arise. Our capital allocation priorities remain focused on value creation levers, such as capital expenditures, innovation, and acquisitions. Moving on to slide seven, while pleased with our performance in Q1, given the continued uncertain demand environment, our guidance ranges remain unchanged. We remain focused on executing our long-term strategic plan to drive consistent long-term growth, margin expansion, and free cashflow generation. With that, I will open the call for questions. Operator, please open the line.

As a reminder, to ask a question, press star one on your telephone keypad. If your question has been answered and you would like to remove yourself from the queue, press star one. Your first question is from the line of Ryan Blair with Oppenheimer.

Thank you. Good morning, guys. Morning. Very solid start to the year, I guess to level set on Q1 performance, can you estimate the impact of weather in terms of project delays and remind us of the easy comp dynamics from Q125? In the end, I guess I'm just trying to get to the net impact of Q126 deferrals versus prior year project dynamics.

Oh, okay. Morning, Brian. This is Scott B. Unpacking how things are moving because of weather. I mean, that's kind of how I interpret your question. And I do think that, you know, early in the first quarter, April, May, you know, some things were moving around by weeks, you know, delayed two, three, four or five weeks, so that stuff certainly moved around between the fourth quarter of last year and this quarter, some stuff moved into this quarter. I'm not sure that it was, you know, hugely detrimental to us because it's just as a delay, you know, this stuff kind of comes back. And if I recall correctly, you know, last year was, there was probably some stuff pulled into the quarter.

Yeah. So Brian, I would say last year, you know, we, it was probably 15 to $20 million. When you look at, you know, the kind of favorable impact that happened in Q4, that was stolen from Q1, so that would kind of be there. I would agree with Scott, you know, things kind of moved around in the quarter, but kind of evened out, right? And as we get through July and August, you know, we think it's kind of a normal run rate, assuming no other significant weather events that delayed things.

And I guess what I'm trying to really always suss out of these situations is, you know, demand overall is just kind of tepid, you know, it's very regional. And as things, as weather moves them back and forth a little bit, we've got to be careful not to get, you know, too excited, you know, when stuff kind of moves around by a couple of weeks or from one month to the next. Our overall view of the demand is it's rather, you know, flattish and tepid. So when we can grow in residential and non-residential, these very core markets across both the infiltrator and the ADS platform, we feel like we're doing pretty good and more than holding serve in our key markets and geographies.

Absolutely. That seems to be the case. I appreciate the color there. Price cost always came to focus and turned positive a little earlier than anticipated. I just given, you know, price stability, continued sequential stability, anticipated next turn visibility on input costs. What does your team expect for Q2 price cost? And is there any shift to the neutral full year impact that you've taken with that?

Now, let's show the last part of that first. So price cost for the year still expected to be flat. And then again, a little bit favorable versus our expectation in the first quarter, as you indicated. But again, remember, last year kind of we didn't have the pricing impact until our fiscal second quarter. So again, a little bit of pricing that we had to deal with on a year over year basis in that first quarter. But we'll app in the second quarter. So that'll that'll be something as you look at that progression from Q1 to Q2 and then through the remainder of the year. But again, sequentially pricing has remained relatively flat, like we've been talking about. So that's that's very good.

Your next question is from the line of Matthew Bowley with Barclays.

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for taking the questions. Wanted to start on CapEx. I think the guide was reduced from two seventy five million to that two hundred to two twenty five. So I just wanted to check on if anything's changed around the capital projects you're planning to invest in this year. If this is just timing or if we should kind of read any implications to share the timing of the pre-purchase or potentially a little bit more dry powder for M&A. Thank you.

Yeah, Matt Scott here. It's just timing. Some of the larger projects we had are just moving to the right a little bit. And again, doesn't impact our ability to meet our anticipated demands. Got hit on the efficiencies and productivity and some of the other things that we've done strategically to meet the demand in certain regions. So it's just all it's timing.

OK, got it. Thanks, Scott. And then secondly, on Infiltrator, you know, that organic growth of nearly one percent. Obviously, the residential end market is fairly choppy here in terms of starts. I think I heard you mention that you saw double digit organic growth in on site wastewater. So I guess I was wondering if you could expand on that a little bit and how that plays into your outlook. And, you know, could we expect to see that on site wastewater side of it perhaps offsetting this residential backdrop here? Thank you.

So this is Scott B. and Craig's here with us today, too, from Infiltrator. And it's tanks, you know, it's tanks that are that continue to gain share and grow through new distribution points, new models that we introduced over the last 18 months, tooled and introduced over the last 18 months. And in the poor leach field, I think that we are in the right spot where our the types of plate homes or geographies that are that use our products have on site wastewater treatment are, you know, it kind of higher mix towards that versus municipal there. So we continue to do really great work there in new products, running our programs through the distribution and again, you know, just executing well in Winchester, Kentucky. They're very nice facility.

Your next question is from the line of John Lovlo

with EBS. Morning, guys. Thanks for taking my questions as well. Wanted to ask about, you know, last quarter, you talked about the first quarter perhaps being the softest margin given pricing dynamics and also, you know, the worst fixed cost absorption. So curious if that still stands. I mean, it doesn't seem like the outlook would imply would imply that. But is there any change in the cadence of how you're looking at the margins through the year?

John, Scott B. Scott C. wants to talk, I can tell also. But, you know, we worked our tail off to try to offset what we what we saw as really poor absorption through the winter months, flushing out in our first fiscal quarter. So we worked very hard in other areas that were period costs, particularly in transportation and logistics to make that a better story than we anticipated. Does it inform, you know, the rest of the year we're not changing our guide. It's just the first quarter. We're honestly more worried about demand than we are our ability to perform on cost or resin and stuff like that. So that that's why we're cautious. I mean, I use this word tepid around demand and I really we just don't want to get ahead of ourselves there. So that that's what we're thinking about. Scott, you want to add anything to that? You know, you nailed it. Perfect.

OK, no, that that makes a lot of sense. And then, you know, it looks like you guys didn't buy back any stock in the quarter. I mean, how should we sort of think about repose going forward? You guys have plenty of cash. You lowered your catbacks. You know, how are you how are you thinking about repose has been moved forward?

Yeah, it's something we're looking at, John. We continue to look at it. So we'll look. It's just something we we measure based on our capital needs right now and what we're investing in there. And as you heard me say, some of those projects are moving out to the right a little bit. So we've got a little bit of availability, a little bit more cash. The OBBBA bill is going to give us a little bit more cash flow than what we had thought as well coming into this year from the bonus depreciation and the R&D piece of that. So, again, a little bit more cash to deploy than what we thought. So, again, I would I would look to us looking at data here in the next couple of quarters. And again, as we look at that based on our working capital needs, our capital expenditures, our innovation and other investments that we're making, it becomes a key part of that disciplined and balanced capital allocation approach that we want to use. So right now we're comfortable where we are, but that doesn't mean that in the next couple quarters we take what I'll put air quotes around excess cash and put that to work. So that's how I talk to it.

Makes sense. Thank you.

Your next question is from Trey Grounds with Ethan's.

Hey, good morning, everyone. This is Ethan on for trade. Thanks for taking the question. I wanted to hone in on allied and infiltrator and those two segments seeing stronger growth versus pipe and how you guys are seeing a nice mixed benefit there. So any sense on how you guys are expecting that sort of relative performance to trend for the year? Maybe any margin mixed benefits versus what had been baked into guidance? And I think I also heard that there was some geographic mixed benefits as well. So any more color on that would be great. Thanks so much.

So good question. And we will continue to really drive the work on programs to get, you know, higher attach rates of pipe and allied products. And what I mean by that, we are working a lot of programs to sell the full package and to increase our penetration of the allied products at a greater rate than we increase our penetration of plastic pipe. That is goes on in every geography. Some are ahead of others. And those geographies that are a little behind in that, we're doing some new things to try to stimulate that. Infiltrator is infiltrator. You know, it's new products. It's the tanks. You know, we continue to, you know, invest heavily in that business from a capital and resource perspective and acquisition perspective to drive that at a higher growth rates. It's part of our algorithm is to drive allied and infiltrator at higher growth rates than the basic pipe business. That said, I think it's kind of built into our guidance, those relative growth rates. And when we can execute on that, sometimes we get a little bump. I think we probably got some right now. The other thing I would add to that is the really nice program that the infiltrator team is working on the Orenco acquisition. You know, that mixes them down a bit. They kind of take that personally. So they're working really some really good programs. And in a RENCO team is doing a good job executing those programs, as a matter of fact. So that's another big work item for us as a company is to continue to improve the profitability of that acquisition. So those are kind of our major levers. I think we built it into our guide mostly, but to the extent we can exceed our expectations around growth, that would help the gross margin mix of the company.

Got it. Got it. That's very helpful. I appreciate the color there and quickly shifting to the cost of the price cost equation. You know, materials seem to be a bit of a good guy there. Any color that you can give on what's driving the outperformance there and yeah, any more color on that would be helpful. Thank you.

Yeah, anytime you talk about price cost, starting with the price side, obviously, we've got a little bit of that head when we talked about for the pricing that started coming off a little bit in the second quarter of last year, continuing as we move. You obviously got some mix that goes into there that makes it on that side a little bit better than what we had thought. On the resin side of the house, we have really good visibility of that. We know what's on the balance sheet. We know what's going to release over the next couple months through cost of sales and our gross margin. So again, not a lot of surprise there, but again, to your point, a nice tailwind. It's execution. Yeah, so it's

execution. It's good price cost management through both pipe, alloy products.

Here next question is from a line of Garrett Shmois with Loop Capital.

Hi, thanks. Congrats on the quarter. I wanted to ask just first on the cost absorption that you had previously called out and saw in the first quarter. Just want to be clear that that's fully behind you and there's no lingering impact that you would expect.

Yeah,

nothing worth highlighting there. We got

most of that behind us like we talked about. Okay,

and then just wanted to follow up, just a light of the type of backdrop that you're seeing on the demand side. I think I can predict the answer to this question, but are you seeing any change in the competitive landscape? I know you're getting a ton of questions. With respect to new capacity to come on in some regions over the last several quarters, any thoughts on the competitive backdrop given demand, in your words, remains pretty tabby.

Yeah, yeah. Okay, appreciated that you continue to get those questions and nothing new there. I mean, we continue to execute well and I think there's a few things to point out here. You know, one is, you know, sequentially our pricing has been very consistent,

you know, for the last four or five quarters.

And we have managed pricing against whatever competitive, you know, thing we face, mainly in pipe. We've done that and kept our pricing consistent for a year now and we continue to grow in residential and non-residential, which are our two biggest segments and is where people try to come after us. We continue to work our costs pretty darn well and the profitability of that type thing, you know, is

pretty consistent.

We've executed a lot of different materials programs, engineering programs, our logistics and transportation team has done a great job of working new programs and using our new assets. We've completely refreshed our truck and trailer fleet over the last year, year and a half. So we've done all these things to kind of manage price, materials, conversion through the capex. We offset a lot of that under absorption and our margins are pretty good. I mean, the resiliency of the margins in the face of that competition, you know, over the last year that you guys have been bringing up, it's not like we never had competition. We've always had some. You know, I think we're proving that we have a resilient model. And I don't believe in a tepid environment of demand like this that radical price actions increase demand. They don't. I mean, there's only so many projects that are going to come to the market. And you got to have price discipline around that. So I feel pretty good where we are. And I sometimes feel like I don't know what more I can do to demonstrate that we know how to manage this environment. But we'll keep trying, keep working our programs, keep nailing down 30% plus margins, I guess we'll just keep moving on that path. I know that was a long answer, but I felt I felt I wanted to really

try to put that to bed for you. I appreciate that. Thanks.

Your next question is from the line of David Tarantino with the Quebec Capital Markets.

Hey, good morning, guys. Morning, maybe just on infrastructure sounds like the sales drops form a function of tough compare. So maybe could you walk us through the underlying demand trends there and how we should expect us to move forward.

Yeah, there are some tough constant infrastructure really driven by a lot of very nice airport projects that occurred a year ago. We're pretty strong in that, particularly the retention detention area. And those, I mean, I don't like, hey, non repeat a big projects, but that's kind of what happens in that segment. Mike on the pipe side.

Yeah, I think on the pipe side, you know, David, it's been kind of highly variable and we've talked to you guys previously about this. Scott mentioned it in the prepared comments about you know how our participation varies by state, depending on the strength of kind of our approvals and acceptance. And it's really a case where we kind of have, you know, half the states doing pretty well and then you know half the states being a bit slow. And, you know, I would say as we look forward, you know, project identification is flat, but, you know, we're not seeing as much at the DOT level, but seeing more at the local public infrastructure level, which those projects tend to be a bit smaller than what you see for the DOT. You know, I think there's some other things you see out there too, right? I know everybody talks about, hey, you know, only 50% of the infrastructure bill money has been outlaid, so there's, you know, there's stuff to come. But, you know, when you look at it, I think, you know, the contract counts nationwide by the various people you track, they're anywhere down from 3 to 11%, but the value of those contracts is up. So, you know, kind of what we're seeing is, hey, it's costing more to do these projects, so kind of more money, more costs, but less projects out there. But again, it's a big focus for us to continue to work, you know, kind of our -to-market strategy, our market share model against executing there and, you know, we'll continue to work that.

Okay, great. And then maybe following up on non-res, could you just give us a little bit more color on what you're seeing in terms of the pipeline of projects and orders relative to the TEPID environment you guys outlined in the guide and maybe frame for us how the conversion outgrowth is tracking relative to these trends?

Yeah, I would say the kind of the four looking indicators around project identification and quoting and the other kind of, you know, third party metrics we look at kind of line up with a TEPID environment. You know, we still think, even though our share might be more mature and non-residential versus residential or infrastructure, you know, in those key states in the South and the Southeast, you know, where we have lots of opportunity for share gain, you know, we're seeing strong sales in the quarter and, you know, we would attribute some of that to a little bit of, you know, hey, those geographies might be a little stronger from an activity standpoint, but also too that, you know, we're taking share when you look at the states this quarter that were strongest from a volume perspective on non-residential, you know, we like those states that we see Florida, Texas, Tennessee, California, those are all states that you guys have heard us talk about, you know, they're kind of in that lower half, the smile, the crescent, whatever you want to call it, and, you know, we had good volume growth in the quarter there, so that shows us that, you know, hey, the markets are like on fire there, you know, there might be a little better than the national average, but, you know, we're being successful, you know, taking share like Scott was talking about, you know, the markets are tough, so, you know, you're trying to get more share of wallet, acquire new customers, do more conversion, HP has been strong growth in those states as well, so I think it's, we kind of attributed to, hey, we need to control, we can control, and that's the execution of our -to-market strategy.

Your next question is from the line of Mike Holleran with Baird.

Good morning, everyone. Just a couple of quick guidance questions, just following up on it. First, on the revenue side, you know, you had that slide last quarter that pretty aggressively or detailed the revenue outlook from an end market perspective moving through the year, curious if that's changed, if there's been any moving pieces in the thought process to the tepid markets sitting here, and whether you just take normal seasonality as well as embedded in the guidance from where first quarter is, some sort of deterioration, any context around that would be great. No,

I think our look to the end markets mirrors what we went out with guidance wise as adjusted for seasonality, as you mentioned, Michael, so no change to our outlook right now to those end markets, hence why we're leaving our guidance unchanged. Okay,

that's what I figured, and then similarly on the margin line of things, if I hear all of the commentary around the puts and takes with margins, there really wasn't anything unsustainable in the first quarter margin here other than possibly mix. You know, I heard Scott Beats comments on more concern over what demand looks like back half of the year. That's partially why there's some caution around on the margin line. But what I would like to confirm here is a couple things. One, just that the sequentials as you're thinking about the margins haven't really changed, or the thought process around it hasn't really changed. And then, and then secondarily, are there any moving pieces here that we need to think about other than again maybe mixed normalizing that would lead to more compression than normal versus that first quarter number, because, you know, essentially you look at the next three quarters relative to where the first quarter is, you know, there is an implication of something a little bit worse than normal doesn't seem that's what you're saying. So any context there would be helpful.

No, that's exactly what we're not saying. So again, I think when you look at that kind of how those margins will convey through the year, especially a Q1 to Q2. Q2 usually looks a lot like Q1. Obviously, there's going to be puts and takes there based on our Q1 performance. But again, it's one quarter choppy, tepid and markets. So again, we're comfortable leaving the guidance ranges where they are right now. And what I would add is my worry, Mike, is the demand side and if that demand side is weaker, then I anticipate in the plan, is that going to cause me some absorption problems? Again, I got to go work. So, but as far as pricing and materials and our ability to convert and our ability to transport the mix of infiltrator and allied versus pipe and all that, I'd say we're kind of per the norm in terms of these first half, second half and then relative growth rates of the various segments.

Your next question is from the line of Ryan Connors with North Coast Research.

North Coast Research. Thank you. So yeah, good morning. I had a couple of questions here. Most of mine have been answered, but a couple big picture. First of all, I know there's been some drama in the some of the bigger players and distributions and new players coming in. And just curious if there's anything to call out there in terms of any impact on your business from a volume or margin standpoint, any inventory building or drawdown, any discount, anything with that volatility in the panel that's, yeah.

Good question and drama is a good word, I'd say. And the answer is that we believe that to be largely in the past for relative to us. And there would be nothing from an inventory build or mix or different behavior that we would call out on that. I mean, we're always dealing with some level of change and drama, you know, relative to distribution and in markets and customers. We've been heightened there for a while, but I'd say it calmed down, Ryan. And we do, though, you know, always look for opportunities to run programs, to do stuff, but it's not affecting our business in any spectacular way.

Got it. Okay, that's helpful. And then second, just big picture, you know, if my math is correct, Pipe was barely 50% of sales in the quarter, 50.1 is what I got. So kind of heading towards this milestone where Pipe actually becomes less than half of the company, which is pretty amazing when you remember the days when it was, you know, 90-10 Pipe and Allied products. So what's the long term vision? Should we expect Pipe to just continue to be declining in the mix over, you know, two, three, four years and at some point it's, you know, a third or a quarter of the company or do we kind of stabilize and we should think about that 50-50 kind of being, you know, where the company wants to be longer term?

Yeah, so good. Again, another good question. I don't see it being a quarter or a third of the business for sure. I see it kind of bouncing around. It's 50-50 and I always kind of come back to our long term strategies to grow the infiltrator business and the Allied products business faster than the Pipe business because we believe we are less penetrated, particularly in the Allied products than the Pipe. So we therefore have more kind of open space and growth opportunities. So we will continue to work that whether it goes, you know, to 40% at some point, I would see that being the kind of the low watermark of it. But we do think it's very important for us as a company to grow our higher margin product lines faster than the company average to create positive mix for the company. So that's kind of core to my strategy for the company.

Got it. Okay, very helpful. Best of luck. Thanks for your time. Yeah, thank you.

At this time, there are no further questions. I will now hand the call back over to our presenters for any closing remarks.

We appreciate all the questions today and the participation in the call. We feel good about the quarter. We feel good about how we are executing. I'll just reiterate, we're worried about demand. And I don't think it's things that we might do that we're doing. I think it's just the environment that we're in. But we also know we have the right you know long term trends and long term water positioning for our on-site septic business, our wastewater business through Infiltrator, our Allied products and Pipe business through ADS. So we like the hand we're dealt. We see good needs from the cash backs and opportunities of the cash. So we'll continue to be very focused on that as a manager team and our board. That said, we appreciate it. Thank you. We look forward to the follow up calls and seeing you all around.

This concludes today's call. Thank you for joining. You may now disconnect your lines.