Operator
Thank you for standing by. My name is Amy, and I will be your conference operator for today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Q1 2025 Armstrong World Industries Incorporated Earnings Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star and the number one on your keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, again, press star and the number one. It is now my pleasure to turn the call over to Therisa Womble, VP of Investor Relations and Corporate Communication. You may begin.
Thank you, Amy, and good morning, everyone. On today's call, Vic Grizzle, our CEO, and Chris Calzaretta, our CFO, will discuss Armstrong World Industries' first quarter 2025 results and rest-of-year outlook. We have provided a presentation to accompany these results that is available on the investors section of the Armstrong World Industries website. Our discussion of operating and financial performance will include non-GAAP financial measures within the meaning of SEC Regulation G. A reconciliation of these measures with the most directly comparable GAAP measure is included in earnings press release and in the appendix of the presentation, both of which were issued this morning. During this call, we will be making forward-looking statements that represent the view we have of our financial and operational performance as of today's date, April 29, 2025. These statements involve risks and uncertainties that may differ materially from those implied or expected. We provide a detailed discussion of the risks and uncertainties in our SEC filings, including the 10-K filed earlier this year. We undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statement beyond what is required by applicable securities law. Now, I will turn the call to Vic.
Thank you, Theresa, and good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our call today to discuss our first quarter 2025 results and our expectations for the rest of the year. Our first quarter was another quarter of record-setting sales and adjusted EBITDA for Armstrong, as we continue to execute our growth strategy well and improve our productivity and expand our capabilities into new market opportunities. In the first quarter, total company net sales increased 17% and adjusted EBITDA increased 16% with meaningful margin expansion in both of our segments. And in fact, it was the best Q1 margin performance in both segments since 2020. These results were a clear demonstration of the strength of our business model, the diversity of our end markets, as well as the strong execution culture we have here at Armstrong. Delivering these financial results in an environment of elevated uncertainty requires focus and agility to adjust to changing operating conditions and customer needs. And doing this while continuing to deliver industry-leading quality and service levels our customers have come to expect. Again, the agility and commitment to execution by our teams was on full display in the quarter. And as many of you have come to know, this is a hallmark of the organization we have here at Armstrong. So I want to take this opportunity and thank all of our employees for their tremendous efforts and their commitment to execution. Now taking a closer look at the first quarter results in our mineral fiber segment, net sales increased 2% while EBITDA increased 7%. Sales growth for the segment was driven by a 7% increase in average unit value or AUV versus the prior year, which included favorability in both like-for-like pricing and product mix. This increase in AUV more than offset lower sales volumes, primarily driven by weather and lower foot traffic in our home center channel and predominantly in the southeast where winter weather was particularly severe. In the mineral fiber segment, I'm pleased with the EBITDA margin performance, which expanded 180 basis points to 43%. This was the strongest first quarter margin performance since 2020 and our ninth consecutive quarter of year-over-year margin expansion. Again AUV was a key driver of EBITDA growth and margin expansion in the quarter. Also notably in the quarter and a contributor to margin expansion was our manufacturing productivity despite the softer volumes. This outcome reflects the multi-year long-term approach to investing in productivity that we practice here at Armstrong. This not only helps with our direct productivity but it also enhances our consistency of our service and quality levels that distinguish us in the marketplace one of the key indicators we track internally is what we call our perfect order measure that you have heard me mention in the past this measure includes five areas of service and quality that represent a perfect order from order to entry order entry to customer receipt and again representing what a perfect order looks like in the eyes of our customer This quarter, the measure was solidly ahead of our target and near historic highs. This has been a passion of ours, and in times like these with high levels of uncertainty and risk for supply chain disruption, this is and will continue to be a critical differentiator for Armstrong. Overall, I'm pleased with the performance of the mineral fiber segment quarter, despite softer volume, delivering EBITDA growth, margin expansion, AUV growth, and manufacturing productivity, all while maintaining our high levels of quality and customer service. Now turning to the architectural specialty segment, where our results in the quarter were particularly strong and broad-based in both the organic and the inorganic sides of the business. This is clearly a demonstration of the advantage of having the broadest portfolio of solutions, where we continue to leverage our scale and specification strength to sell more products into more spaces and drive profitable top-line growth. For a decade now, we have averaged 20% top-line growth in this segment. And with our strong start to the year, we expect to continue this pace of growth in 2025. Organically, the first quarter architectural specialty sales grew 11% from prior year's results. And our 2024 acquisitions, 3Form and Zayner contributed another 47 percentage points of sales growth. Additionally, our order intake grew in the first quarter. Notably, both our sales and order intake spanned a wide range of product types and broad-based set of market verticals. In addition to the transportation vertical, we saw good project activity in office, retail, and education. And because of our industry-leading product portfolio, strong service levels, and mostly U.S. manufacturing footprint, rent, we believe we are well positioned to continue to win. Along with strong top line growth in the quarter, I am particularly pleased with the strong adjusted EBITDA growth and margin expansion performance in this segment as well. Architectural specialties adjusted EBITDA increased 94%, including organic EBITDA growth of 34%. And as important, the EBITDA margin for the segment expanded at both the organic and total segment level as we continue to improve our operating leverage and in fact this was the strongest first quarter architectural specialties adjusted EBITDA margin performance since 2020 and marks continued progress toward our goal of 20% EBITDA margin for this segment. It's also worth noting in the quarter the solid performance of our 2024 acquisitions. We are very pleased with how both 3Form and Zainer are performing and the mutual benefits we are seeing developing as we increase our collaboration and knowledge sharing. And frankly, I'm not surprised at how well this is going given that both these companies come with highly professional and skilled management teams who have the right mindset to collaborate and innovate with Armstrong to accelerate their growth. With 3Form, the collaboration across our sales teams has uncovered many opportunities to sell more products into more spaces given three forms unique ability to create translucent solutions that use light and texture to enhance design opportunities for architects and in addition we have worked together with their teams to increase three forms operational efficiency and are already seeing benefits from these efforts and at zaner as we noted last quarter we significantly expanded our exterior metal design and fabrication capabilities and further deepened our presence in an attractive adjacency that complements our existing interior metal business. The strong market reputation of Zaner gives us early access to large complex projects and we expect this will enhance our visibility to more selling opportunities for the interior spaces of these large projects in addition to the new business opportunities on the exterior. And as we have stated we estimate that this exterior metal adjacency will add another billion dollars to the addressable market for our architectural specialty segment, bringing its total addressable market to more than two and a half billion dollars. We're excited to expand our presence in this adjacency and to continue our above market growth rate for years to come. Now, before turning the call over to Chris, let me take a moment to share how we're thinking about the market in light of the current and evolving tariff landscape. As we all know, this is a very fluid and uncertain set of dynamics that we will all have to navigate. First, it's worth repeating that our production and supply chain is predominantly U.S. based, and the majority of our products sold into Canada and Mexico are covered under the USMCA trade agreement. In the limited areas where we see a direct impact on our costs, we expect to mitigate those impacts through negotiations, price actions, and through supply chain adjustments within our U.S. footprint. So for direct impacts of tariffs here at Armstrong, the impact is both minor and manageable. Beyond these minor impacts, we do believe the indirect benefit effects from high levels of uncertainty around these tariffs has the potential to dampen in market activity. This of course is much more difficult to call given the varying impacts throughout the value chain. For Armstrong, the market impact is likely to come in the form of holding back and pausing on discretionary renovation work until there is more clarity on the way forward, much like we have seen in prior periods of market disruption and uncertainty. There may also be some disruptions in the construction supply chain that could impact project timelines. That said, in total we don't see a meaningful impact from disruption in new construction activity in 2025 given the lag time on new construction projects. The ground level bidding activity in the market remains supportive at this time, as do the order rates through April, and the sentiment from our customer survey work remains positive but understandably cautious given the uncertainty. Of course, we will remain vigilant as further disruptions from policy changes could create more project delays than we are seeing at the moment. Given what we know and its expected impacts and with our controllables, namely pricing, productivity, and good cost management, we remain confident in our ability to navigate these conditions and therefore we are reaffirming our full year guidance for 2025. So with that, let me pause and turn it over to Chris for more on our financials.
Thanks, Vic, and good morning to everyone on the call. As a reminder, throughout my remarks, I'll be referring to the slides available on our website, and slide three, which details our basis of presentation. Beginning on slide six, we summarized our first quarter mineral fiber segment results. Mineral fiber sales were up 2% in the quarter, driven by favorable AUV of 7%, partially offset by lower sales volumes. The strong AUV result was fairly balanced between like-for-like price and favorable mix. Lower sales volumes were driven primarily by softer demand from our home center customers who experienced lower store traffic due to a number of factors, including negative weather-related impacts in certain markets. We also had one less shipping day compared to the prior year quarter, which represents about a point of volume in the quarter. Overall, the market we experienced was consistent with the choppy conditions that we expected heading into 2025. Mineral fiber segment adjusted EBITDA grew 7 percent despite softer volumes with adjusted EBITDA margin expanding 180 basis points to 43 percent. Adjusted EBITDA margin expansion was primarily driven by the benefit of AUV growth and manufacturing productivity gains despite lower volumes. In addition, the segment margin benefited from lower SG&A expenses and favorability and input costs as compared to the prior year quarter. The decrease in SG&A was primarily driven by deferred compensation plan gains. Input cost inflation was more than offset by favorable inventory valuation timing impacts. Similar to mineral fiber, we saw softer grid volume in our wave joint venture, driving weaker equity earnings in the quarter. Recall that we are also lapping a strong first quarter of 2024, which was the highest equity earnings quarter of 2024. As Vic mentioned, Mineral Fiber's adjusted EBITDA margin of 43% in the quarter was the best Q1 margin performance for this segment since 2020, and was a strong demonstration of our value creation drivers, including consistent AUV growth and manufacturing productivity gains, despite uneven market conditions. On slide seven, we discussed our architectural specialties or AS segment results, where we highlight robust sales growth of 59%. This growth was driven primarily by contributions from our recent acquisitions, 3Forum and Zaner, both of which performed in line with expectations. On an organic basis, I'm also pleased to report that we have delivered double-digit first quarter sales growth of 11 percent with strength in many product categories. AS adjusted EBITDA grew 94 percent with a 17.1 percent adjusted EBITDA margin. This represents margin expansion of 310 basis points as higher acquisition-related operating costs were more than offset by inorganic sales growth. In addition, we benefited from better operational leverage on our cost base. We are encouraged to see this adjusted EBITDA margin improvement and remain focused on delivering our goal of greater than 20% adjusted EBITDA margins for the segment. We continue to closely monitor project timelines, particularly against the backdrop of elevated macro uncertainty. Slide 8 highlights our first quarter consolidated company metrics. We delivered double-digit growth for both sales and earnings with adjusted EBITDA margins that compressed slightly versus the prior year. Notably, adjusted diluted earnings per share grew 20 percent. Our total company adjusted EBITDA margin of 33.6 percent marks a solid start to the year. Incremental volume from recent acquisitions and our growth initiatives coupled with consistent AUV performance drove our adjusted EBITDA growth in the first quarter. These benefits more than offset an increase in SG&A, which, as noted earlier, was driven by our recent acquisitions of three Foreman-Zehner. Excluding the impact of these acquisitions, we generated an organic adjusted EBITDA margin of 35.6%, which represents 170 basis points of margin expansion as compared to the first quarter of 2024. Slide 9 shows our year-to-date adjusted free cash flow performance versus the prior year. The 10% increase in adjusted free cash flow was driven by higher cash earnings and dividends from our wave joint venture, which was partially offset by higher capital expenditures. We remain confident in our ability to deliver strong adjusted free cash flow growth in 2025 to support all of our capital allocation priorities, despite elevated macro uncertainty in the first quarter we repurchased 22 million dollars of shares and paid 13 million dollars of dividends as of march 31st 2025 we have 640 million dollars remaining under the existing share repurchase authorization with a healthy balance sheet that includes low leverage and ample available liquidity we are well positioned to execute and advance our strategy as we move to Slide 10, we'll see our full-year guidance for 2025, which is unchanged for the four key metrics of total company net sales, adjusted EBITDA, adjusted diluted earnings per share, and adjusted free cash flow. We have made some modest adjustments to some of our assumptions given the current macroeconomic headwinds, and this guidance now reflects the impacts of currently known tariffs. This guidance now reflects softer market conditions in the second half of the year due to elevated uncertainty stemming from tariffs as such we are decreasing our mineral fiber sales volume expectations to flat to down in the low single digit range but we expect that this headwind to our net sales growth will be largely offset by greater than six percent mineral fiber auv growth as well as a slightly better outlook for total as sales growth It's important to note that while there will be a headwind, we do not believe tariffs as they stand today will have an outsized direct impact on our results. The tariffs as currently announced represent a manageable level of less than 3% impact to our total cost of goods sold. For WAVE, the tariffs as announced have about a 5% impact on the joint venture's total cost of goods sold. We believe we are well positioned to mitigate most of the impacts from these tariffs and our guidance is reflective of those actions. Additionally, we have relatively limited exposure to foreign currency fluctuations, which positions us well to weather volatile market environments. We remain confident in our outlook and in our team's ability to drive manufacturing productivity and demonstrate rigorous cost management and drive overall efficiency while balancing investing for growth we are well positioned to deliver solid results for the remainder of the year as we continue to demonstrate the resilience of our business model despite challenging market conditions we remain committed to driving margin expansion and continuing to deploy cash to generate growth and create value for our shareholders and now i'll turn it back to vic before we take your questions thanks chris and one thing that we have been consistent with here at Armstrong is staying with the investments in our growth
initiatives even in times of uncertainty. The reason for this is our high level of conviction in our strategy and the confirmation from the traction we're realizing from our growth initiatives. We kept our investments going in 2020 during the pandemic and again during the disruption that occurred in 2022 and we will again continue our investments in our growth initiatives in this current period of uncertainty the strength of our business model and our balance sheet allows us to do so we continue to be pleased with the reach and the contributions of canopy our online selling platform we've shared how it's helping to drive incremental sales volume for mineral fiber and grid products and we have also been adding many more of our architectural specialty products to the platform including solutions from our recently acquired three form business our project works platform our advanced automated design service had strong results this quarter and added incremental sales volumes using project works meaningfully increases the productivity of designers architects and contractors with designing and executing complex projects and achieving more efficient use of materials resulting in less waste on the job site we continue to expand the capabilities of project works both in terms of products and design optimization. And more and more customers are using this service to enhance their own productivity in their pursuit of their own cost and quality goals. And our innovation in particular around energy saving ceiling tiles is gaining traction in the market and confirming that companies are indeed looking for energy savings for both cost savings benefits and for achieving internal decarbonization goals. Our phase change material innovation coupled with our acoustical performance is changing how architects and designers as well as building owners view the ceiling with energy saving attributes that bring enhanced functionality and reduced energy consumption in buildings. Energy and how we conserve it is a key macro trend that will impact construction and industrial markets for years to come. It is driven by the increasing need for resiliency and energy efficiency in buildings, the drive towards clean technology, and the growth of artificial intelligence, along with the pressure this puts on our nation's electrical grid systems. These challenges are critical for all industries to address, but particularly important for the construction of buildings, as buildings consume nearly 40% of global energy. And in the U.S., the built environment consumes nearly 75% of all electricity used. About half of that energy usage is to heat and cool buildings. Just this month, the leading standard for healthy and sustainable buildings, the LEED certification standards, recognized a heightened need to deepen its focus on decarbonization and energy efficiency and have increased LEED credits for energy savings in the latest version released. We believe that our products can play an important role enabling the industry to address this Innovative products like our Templock energy savings ceilings respond to the urgent need for energy efficiency and decarbonization with their ability to achieve up to 15% energy cost savings from heating and cooling buildings. These products can make a meaningful impact for both reducing the cost of operating commercial buildings and increasing decarbonization within these buildings. In addition, Templot can reduce energy usage at peak times of the day, thereby helping to lessen the strain on the U.S. electrical grid system. Now with the explicit inclusion of phase change material as qualifying thermal storage technology for tax credits under the Inflation Reduction Act, Templot can be even more of a win-win for building owners and operators through lower installation costs and lower energy operating costs. Customers of TEMPLOC may be eligible for tax credits of 40 to 50 percent, dramatically improving the return on their investment. With this tax credit, TEMPLOC is gaining recognition as a viable energy savings solution, and we're seeing increase in interest for winning specifications and are currently ramping up production. These are exciting developments for us, and we are continuing our innovation around the TEMPOC platform with our multi-generational approach to product development. We look forward to providing more updates on our progress in the coming quarters. And as important, beyond our organic growth initiatives, with our high confidence in our cash flow generation and the strength of our balance sheet, we remain active in our pursuit of inorganic growth opportunities as well to sustain the strong and consistent growth of our architectural specialties business. So as we navigate these uncertain market conditions and plan for a softer back half of the year, mainly due to pausing of discretionary renovation work, our agility and commitment to execution with the help of a local supply chain structure as well as the diversity of our end markets will serve us well. The dependable ability to deliver AUV growth, productivity gains, and above market growth rates in our architectural specialties business will allow Armstrong to outperform in conditions such as these. And because of our resilient business model, we are well positioned to be both prudent where appropriate and assertive where opportunities present themselves to optimize the value creation outcome for our shareholders. With that, we'll pause now and take your questions.
Operator
Thank you. The floor is now open for questions. Just as a reminder, if you have dialed in and would like to ask a question, please press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. If you would like to withdraw your question, also press star in the number one. If you are called upon to ask your question and are listening via loudspeaker on your device, please pick up your handset and ensure that your phone is not on mute when answering the questions. We do request for today's session that you please limit to one question and one follow-up. Again, star in the number one to enter the queue. Your first question comes from the line of Susan McClary with Goldman Sachs. Your line is now open.
Good morning, everyone. This is Charles Perron and for Susan, thanks for taking my question and congrats on a strong quarter.
Just maybe first, I want to talk about your expectations for volume deceleration in the back half of this year. It sounds from your commentary that orders and activity are holding strong through April. So against that, is the deceleration more signs of conservatism or any other sign to slow down your hearing when speaking with customers? and how do you expect those to flow through across your two segments over the course of the year?
Yeah, it's a good question because we're kind of in the middle of this, right, 30 days outside of the announcement of much broader and larger tariffs. So we're kind of in the middle of this now. So it's a good question. The sentiment from the customers and the reason why I mentioned the on-the-ground bidding activity does remain to be kind of intact and steady and not reflective of what we think the downstream impact of this uncertainty could have in the back half. So, yeah, I think in the current moment and what we're experiencing today is about what we would have expected before, I think, again, the announcement of the size and the breadth of that has maybe changed the sentiment. So our basis of this outlook for the back half of the year is really experiential. In prior periods where we have event-based disruption in the marketplace, the first thing that goes to the sidelines is that discretionary work. Projects that aren't critical and that can wait, and customers or owners behind those projects move them to the sidelines and wait for a little bit more visibility and clarity. That's what we've experienced, and that's kind of what we're modeling it here. Even though we're not seeing it and feeling it today, we do expect that based on prior experiences, when we have this level of uncertainty for this length of time, the first thing that's going to show up is a softening in the discretionary project work. So again, we've modeled our outlook for the back half based on that experience.
Okay, that's super helpful, Vic. And maybe second, talking about the mix impact in mineral fiber, when you consider the price connections that you look to put in place, the benefit from recent product introduction like 10-block healthy spaces against the risks of a slowdown, are you seeing any signs of trade down in mix moving away from those new products? And maybe also it would be helpful if you could provide some context about what you see historically in mix, what's happening during prior downturns.
Yeah, again, good question, because under these conditions, you would expect maybe some of that trade down to happen. We have not seen that. As you can see in our results in the first quarter, we had a positive product mix, which means that customers continue to trade up to our highest technology products, our highest aesthetic product. So that's continued into the first quarter. Actually, this is a dynamic that transcends downturns. We've seen this for well over a decade now, this natural dynamic to mix up. I don't see that changing in the back half of this year, even with the downturn. We didn't see that in a great financial crisis. We didn't see that during the pandemic. And those were much deeper downturns, of course. So, we don't expect an AUV mixed impact from that dynamic that you're referencing. But let me just add, though, when you look at the new technology that we're talking about with our Temploc product, for example, and some of the other technologies around low embodied carbon, these products come at a higher AUV into the marketplace. And so we believe as those transition and become more of a volume multiplier in our portfolio, that there's upward lift on our AUV performance over time. So we believe this has been a trend that's been continuing for a number of years, well over a decade, frankly. And we think that this is a trend that can continue as we innovate into that dynamic that the industry wants to mix up in all parts of the cycle. Again, good question. Thank you.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Garrick Schmoyes with Loop Capital Markets. Your line is now open.
Good morning. This is actually Zach Pacheco on for Garrick. Thanks for taking my question. Maybe to hone in on the mineral fiber AUV again, I'm just curious how much of the implied guidance rates includes maybe a second price increase later this year versus kind of just what you're currently seeing and what you've already secured. Thanks.
Sure. Hey, good morning. Yep. So yes, our guidance does incorporate, you know, kind of as we've stated in the past, getting back to our, you know, normal cadence of, you know, two price increases a year. So yes, it is reflective of that. And, you know, just to maybe break it down a little bit further, the guide in terms of the AUV does include positive mix and positive like for like pricing so kind of given the the backdrop of you know tariffs and uh you know higher costs uh accordingly um that auv incorporates positive mix and is a little bit tipped to a little more price than than mix but overall um expect you know again a good solid auv performance in the year and for modeling purposes a little bit a little bit heavier in the back half than than the front half getting back to your question on on price increase and pricing understood that makes sense
and then maybe just any more color on current bidding environments across your verticals any change to the office end market or what you're expecting to see thanks sure um let me let me add a little bit um more than usual on the bidding activity i think it's something obviously since we're right in the middle of the uncertainty getting underway here. I've talked in the past about bidding activity in terms of the Dodge first-time tracker on bidding activity. It's really the earliest phase of project launching and it's something we watch quarter to quarter and that particular measure softened in Q1 as uncertainty was building and really no surprise that's exactly what you would expect first time bids things that are in the early stages like that could take a pause and a wait and see mode and we didn't see did see that in in Q1 and it softened both the new and the large renovation um and again just as a reminder this dodge first time bidding activity has somewhere between a 12 to 24 month and sometimes even greater than that out before ceilings are needed so this is something that we look at as a kind of high level um across the horizon type of um indicator of activity that that's out there um again in summary this is kind of what we've been seeing over the last seven or eight quarters leading up to this quarter has been this choppy kind of quarter to quarter sideways movement in this particular bidding activity metric. But what I mentioned in my prepared remarks is another bidding activity altitude, if you will. It's really the ground level, on the ground, sublevel project bidding type activity. And what this bidding activity really reflects is more down to ceiling projects and the interior projects bidding level. And in Q1, this remained active and steady. And what we we saw was good activity across many verticals like data centers and transportation schools hospitals even office ti we we saw good activity in the quarter and i think this is to your question what we're seeing today is really um a kind of a consistent sideways sideways motion on our bidding activity at the ground level we're going to continue to keep an eye on the flow or the discretionary portion of that ground-level business, because we think that's what we're going to see as the first signal that the markets is softening up based on this uncertainty. So we'll continue to track that closely and report out on that.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Keith Hughes with Truist. Your line is now open.
Thank you. The question is on the wave with the steel tariffs coming in. you talk about the impact what you're having to do on pricing there i'm i'm sorry keith would you say that last part again yeah uh question is on wave uh you talk about the impact there with steel tariffs and what they're having to do on pricing yes yeah and the um in the wave business we um obviously use steel and aluminum for the structure the the grid uh structure of our ceiling systems.
As a reminder, most of what we source in terms of steel aluminum comes from the US and is locally sourced. We do bring a small percentage from external markets for, I will say, strategic reasons. We do that. So we can shift that volume as we need to local sourcing here. But what we have seen in the first round of tariffs that we saw back in 2018 with steel, steel imports is that the local steel companies begin to raise their prices. And so we're seeing actually a kind of an indirect, if you will, a ripple effect impact from the steel tariffs on local steel prices. And so we're having to raise prices in the marketplace to help pass that on. We have two price increases already in the first quarter on the street to try to help us stay in front of that steel inflation. So a little bit less of a direct impact on tariffs in our wave business, and a little more of an indirect because of the market pricing coming up.
Historically, when wave raises prices, is there a margin drag until they catch up with the input, with what's happened on the input?
Yeah, in 2018, that happened because the steel tariffs went in if you remember during the first first administration that that was that happened very quickly and it took us a quarter or two to catch up in 22 uh that did not happen we stayed ahead of of the the prices or the uh inflation and um we didn't see the drag on our margins so um our plan here is we're we're um staying ahead of the inflation with our prices and trying to well trying to stay ahead of those those steel tariff um price increases so and i expect that we'll continue to expand margins in that business um throughout the year and keith maybe just one additional point on waves that we still expect equity earnings to grow mid single digits for for the year final question um on the specialty business how much did price play a role in the reported numbers and what are you expecting on that for the rest of the year yeah i'd say minimal that's really the number of projects that we're winning and the size of the projects. I think it's more on the volume side than a meaningful price. We are raising price in various substrates to stay ahead of any impact from tariffs. But for the most part, the goodness and the strong performance of that business has really been projects and win rates and projects driving that business.
Operator
All right. Thank you. The next call comes from the line of Phil Ng with Jeffries. Your line is now open.
Hey, guys. Congrats on another strong quarter. Quick question on the home center side of things. You called out weather impacting the quarter in 1Q. Have you started seeing that normalize that? I think weather's cleared out a bit in March and April. So just curious to see what you're seeing on the home center side of things and then how they've kind of managed inventory i mean it's lumpy from time to time yeah that could be lumpy as you acknowledge uh yes we have seen uh orders normalized especially in those locations that were hardest hit by uh the severe weather so yeah that's getting back to its normal run rate okay so we should expect the drag you saw in one queue from the home center to kind of flush out kind of a non-event for 2q yeah i think for the for the rest of the year.
I wouldn't call it 2Q just because they can flex their inventories over a quarter as we have reported on numerous times. So I would say for the year. We don't expect this to be anything different than what we see in the rest of the marketplace for the year. So this timing-related impact should work its way through. Okay, that's helpful.
And then, Vic, I think you kind of pointed out, if I heard you correctly, maybe it was AS or maybe it was a broader comment for new construction. But I think based on the backlog you have right now, it sounds like you're pretty confident it could carry through 25 and appreciating that AS business, new construction, there's a longer lag. Do you have enough line of sight to give us some color on what you're seeing on 2026?
If you've seen bidding activity, quoting activity for that channel, AS particularly going out to 26 you know what's the early look right now yeah you know the the new construction side of the business and the equation is from the back half of 23 and 24 positive new construction starts right so those when you lag those out for when a ceiling is required for those new construction jobs um we think that that's really going to hold for for 2025 and if you spent all that money on those projects, by the time you get to ceilings, you're likely to finish that work. And so that's kind of our assumptions going into that. We don't see a big disruption on new construction coming through as we lag it into 25. We have better line of sight, Phil, to your question around project and the project nature business of the architectural specialties. I can tell you that we're closing good work for the back half of this of this year in 25 and of course into 25 or 26 and even into 27 some of these projects are larger and longer term so we're starting to close work out into those but it'd be really premature for me to to talk about the the the magnitude of that and what that could mean for us for 26 but again I would just point you back to the momentum this business has created, started in the back half of 24, it's continued into the first quarter of 25. That team is doing really well and closing work. I think we're closing more work. And I expect that momentum to continue.
Operator
Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Adam Bumgarner with Zellman. Your line is now open.
Just on the incremental price increase i know it's typically been in february and august each year is that another way to think about it this year as well and and perhaps maybe a higher price increase than maybe what you put through in february or kind of similar just curious how to think about that yeah i would say it's at this point um on our normal uh twice a year pricing cadence i think the amount the extent of that will really be dependent upon you know kind of how the the overall tariff and and cost landscape unfold so we're going to continue to keep to keep an eye on that as always but for purposes of you know at this point in time and what we have you know somewhat of a line of sight too that's that's how we're how we're thinking about it again as I commented on AUV and our AUV growth for the year you know again tipped more towards price with positive mix and again that's largely on us continuing to stay close and monitoring the cost side of our business and then adjusting the price side accordingly. Okay, got it. Thanks.
And then just maybe on the education market, not sure if you guys touched on that, but curious what you're seeing there. I know the ESSER funding kind of rolled off to some degree. Are you seeing any change in the trends you've been seeing over the last year or two? Yeah, not materially. We've been watching that very closely as well. There was a lot of bonds that were approved for education at the state level in November. We were hopeful that that might fill in some of the gap from the ESSER funds. But what I can tell you, what we saw in the first quarter is still good activity in the education sector. So we'll see how the summer season plays out. That's really where you see the bulk of the education, K-12 action anyway. So we'll be very watchful of that. But so far, we've not seen a fall off in education activity.
Operator
All right. The next question comes from the line of Rafe Jedroschik with Bank of America. Your line is now open.
Thanks for taking my questions.
Last one, you said you were expecting, I think, inflation, a cost of inflation for the year in the low single-digit range. can you just give an update of what you're expecting now and then the difference between energy and and uh freight and raw materials sure sure good morning rave yeah so just to size uh our inflation uh assumptions for the year um we expect uh freight to be relatively flat for the year raw materials um expect uh to be inflationary uh in that mid single digit percentage range versus prior year and then energy between 10 to 15 percent inflationary and that's really kind of driven by volatility in the natural gas market so what that puts you at is from a total input cost perspective in that mid single digit range of inflation for a full year versus prior year so again just a reminder within that within that energy bucket it's about pretty evenly split between uh electricity and natural gas but um you know from a raw material perspective this this does kind of dial in you know a little bit of an uptick uh in uh some of our some of our raws that that'll be uh slightly impacted by uh by by tariff uh tariff impacts so mid single digit
inflation uh for the year uh as percentage versus prior year got it that's helpful and And the higher price realization in your guide is what's offsetting that?
Yeah, I mean, we think about this more broadly than just the pricing component, which certainly is, as Vic mentioned in his prepared remarks, a mitigation and way to continue to offset. But we also are focused on continuing to drive productivity. We've had a really strong track record of being able to demonstrate manufacturing productivity on our plants. We expect that to continue, as well as the focus on ongoing, you know, disciplined and rigorous cost control and cost management. So I think all three of those components coupled together is really what gives us, you know, the levers, if you will, to continue to grow and expand margins here. And that's how we're thinking about operating the business, you know, given these dynamic times.
Okay, that's helpful. Just on the AS side, the organic growth, obviously you had M&A contribution, but the organic growth is really strong in the first quarter here. How do you think about what the implied organic growth is for the remainder of the year, and how does that compare to the market?
What's the market share that you're seeing or your growth relative to the market that you're anticipating? yeah so for um kind of implied in the in the guide for the year on the organic side of of as um it's a softer back half than than the front half of the year but really what's at play there is is lapping a really strong back half of 2024. so as as vic mentioned and i mentioned in our remarks about you know keeping a watchful eye on you know overall projects projects project delays et cetera, that could certainly be at play. But again, we have a little bit of a timing dynamic given just the strength of the back half last year relative to the expected strength in the back half of this year. And I'd say we're continuing to do well in the AS business and are very pleased with the double digit top line growth that we saw organically here in the quarter. So really pleased with that business and its performance.
Operator
Thank you. Again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star and the number one to enter the queue. Your next question comes from the line of John Lavallo. Your line is now open.
Good morning, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. The first one is on mineral fiber AUV incrementals.
They're consistent with last quarter but it's below historical levels i was under the impression that this may have been driven by a little bit more mix versus price in auv but that doesn't seem like it's the case so curious what's driving that and would you expect this to kind of normalize higher as we move through the year yep yep so yeah that's largely um you're talking about the uh the impact the impact on on auv in the quarter um it's really timing uh in nature we can see this from time to time and get some quarterly noise, if you will, around how projects ship, which can influence the overall basket of products and how that falls to the bottom line. So when I take a look at our overall expectation for the year, we do believe that our incremental there on EBITDA will return to and kind of be in line with our historical fall-through right there. But from time to time, you get a little bit of quarterly noise, and that's what we saw here in Q1.
Okay, gotcha. And then manufacturing costs have been a headwind to AS, suggested EBITDA for a few quarters now. Curious what's kind of driving that headwind, and do you expect that to subside as we move through the year?
Yeah, I'd say largely when you look at the AS segments, again, with the inorganic growth that we've seen, you know, the manufacturing costs are stepped up in connection with you know the the acquisition of two businesses that we saw in 2024 that's largely the uh the you know called the manufacturing cost increase that we've seen uh in that in that segment okay thank you guys thanks your next question comes from the line of brian bureaus with thompson research group your line is now open hey good morning thank you for taking my questions
I guess on the sales guidance for architectural specialties, looks like it's a slight raise there. I guess it kind of goes against the general uncertainty in the market. And I know you talked about a few trends there throughout the call. But just curious if you could expand on what is behind the raise there for the guidance, if it's project timing or better acquisition cross-selling or something else, just what's driving that.
Yeah, I'd say, you know, there's a little bit of what Vic had mentioned earlier around, you know, project, the overall visibility to projects there in that side of the business, you know, more clear line of sight due to, you know, our backlogs. And you also have a bit of that project, I'll call it timeline, which is, you know, once a project kind of gets started, it's from the time of breaking ground to sealing ship, and it can be in that 12 to 24 month range. So we feel that that line of sight gives us confidence around our ability to call that top line growth increase, slight increase in NAS. But tempered with that, too, is a little bit of the uncertainty and cloudiness around what potential project delays could look like. So overall, it's the backlog and the line of sight that we have that gives us confidence in the uptick in the top line growth expectation for AS, albeit balanced with, you know, that potential uncertainty that's out there.
And, Brian, let me add, what Chris has said is exactly right. If you don't mind, I'll just add that the other component that's a little different in architectural specialties is the market penetration growth dimension of that business. Remember, this is doing much better than the overall market is doing, and that's something that we can continue to do even if the market softens in the back half. So that's the other, I think, growth dimension that we have here, growth driver that we have here, that's different than, say, in our mineral fiber business.
Understood. And then on the updated mineral fiber volume guidance, are there any specific verticals that you would expect to see maybe a quicker or more severe pullback based on your historical reference? Or is that more of a broad-based view that everything would, discretionary type spend would pull back kind of in line with everything? Thank you.
Yeah. Yeah, I understand the question. You know, going back to an answer I gave earlier around the discretionary portion of the renovation work is where we're going to see the softness in the back half. Our experience here has been it's really vertical agnostic. If it's a discretionary project, whether it's an education, healthcare, or office, it is subject to a wait and see when there's a high degree of uncertainty. So I wouldn't say one particular vertical is going to stand out over the other. I think we're going to see across the verticals the discretionary work, again, I think that's where we're going to see the softness in the back half.
Operator
Thank you. And our final question comes from the line of Stephen Kim with Evercore ISI. Your line is now open.
Yeah, thanks a lot. Vic, I just wanted to follow up on that last point there. Discretionary projects, do we see any kind of, would we expect to see any kind of AUV or margin impact if you do see a decline in discretionary first. I'm also kind of wondering whether or not you might see or anticipate you might see maybe smaller customers having more of a sort of a disproportionate impact from the sentiment impacts you were referring to earlier. Similarly, could that have an AUV or margin impact worth calling out?
Yeah, you know, this discretionary business, flow business, as we refer to it, Stephen, as you know, is where we have the least amount of visibility. It is concentrated more with the installed base, and it kind of mirrors more of the installed base, which still is a lot of older, more, I would say lower AUV type products. So, if there's any AUV impact, it would be a lift on AUV or a help to AUV because of the mix improvement by not having some of the lower AUV in it. Whether it's material or not, I think that's another question. But directionally, to get at your question, I think if there is an AUV impact from that discretionary spend or the lack of the discretionary spend, I think it might show up there. I think these are smaller projects, not smaller customers. I would think about it that way because even larger customers might forego or put on whole smaller projects. And, again, I would say it's the same dynamic. I think, if anything, there might be less lower AV products in the mix and would be an upward help to the overall mix. Does that help?
Yep, absolutely. That was exactly my question. I appreciate that. And then second question relates to the, again, staying on AUV impacts, the home center softness. I'm wondering, does that also have some sort of an AUV effect? In other words, was AUV maybe a little benefited by the home center softness this quarter as well?
Yeah. Yes, definitely. As we've talked about, that's our lower AUV channel. We have a very low or a small group of products that we sell through that channel. and they tend to be at the lower AUV so yes there was a little bit of a help in the quarter on the mixed side from the lack of volume in that uh retail channel okay great thanks very much you bet there are no further questions at this time so i would like to turn the call back over to mr vic grizzle well thank you all for joining our call today and and for your questions um i think as you can hear in our discussion today, we have a resilient business model and we have a proven ability to execute on our controllables that give us confidence to navigate these choppy and uncertain market conditions. So we're ready to and poised to execute even in softer market conditions that we're forecasting for the back half of this year. Thank you again for joining our call today.
Operator
This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.
