Azz Inc (AZZ) August 2026 Conference Transcript

Good morning, and welcome to the Ideas Conference. I'm Sandy Martin, and next up we've got AZZ, and AZZ is a client, so if you've got questions or want a follow-up meeting after the presentation or later on after the conference, please let me know. AZZ is traded on the NYC. The market cap is over $4 billion now, and with us today is David Nark, the Chief Marketing, Communications, and Investor Relations Officer. Dave?

Thank you, Sandy, and good morning, everyone. Happy to be here, bright and early. I'm in the leadoff batter spot of the conference, I guess, in this morning's presentation. So walk you through the investor deck. We recently updated the investor deck, so happy to be sharing that with you today. It'll be the first time we're presenting this one since refreshing the deck. So let's get to it. Of course, a quick disclaimer statement. I'm not going to read that, but just know that today's discussion is covered by the Securities and Litigation Act. So real quick on why own AZZ, I really have five things that you can take away from today's presentation. First is our unrivaled footprint. We are the nation's largest provider of hot dip galvanizing as well as coil coating solutions in North America. We're operating 47 metal coatings locations, most of those, 43 of which are hot tip galvanizing. And then the 14 coil coating locations are providing coil coating for both steel and metal. So that footprint gives us a leg up on the competition. We're about 2x the size of our nearest competitors and strategically placed around the nation being close to either fabricators on the hot tip galvanizing side or mills and service centers on the coil coating side. As you look at the story and you unpack it, what you're going to find is that AZZ has been consistently providing above-market growth and continuing to do that as we look into the future. We have plans to grow at 2x GDP organically, maintaining margins on a consolidated basis of over 22 percent, and we'll continue to invest in the business as we move forward and we'll talk more about that throughout the presentation. Industry-leading margins, I already mentioned the 22 percent consolidated just EBITDA margins, and then in our hot-dip galvanizing business, again, the hot-dip galvanizing rolls up under metal coatings. Metal coatings segment margins of 31 percent, so really strong margins for an industrial business. Our balance sheet has never been better. We're currently at 1.4 times debt to EBITDA after being as high four years ago as 3.6 times debt to EBITDA. So we've brought down the leverage after doing a strategic acquisition four years ago through debt repayment and are very pleased with where we sit today. That's unlocked a lot of value for our shareholders and certainly allowing us to reinvest back in the business. And then last but not least is we are a toll coder. So if you're not familiar with a tolling business, you're going to learn all about it today. What that means is we don't buy steel. We don't have exposure to steel. We don't have exposure to aluminum. Our customers buy that, and then they bring their product to us, and we simply coat it. So our exposure is going to be on zinc and on paint, and that's it. So high variable costs running through the business, which, again, makes us very resilient and resistant to fluctuation. so kind of unpacking the story a little bit more uh one of the things i want to share you with is we are very focused in the business of coding metal that's what we do uh plain and simple when you look at the storyline you're going to see that we're 1.65 billion dollar company adjusted EBITDA of 368 million we already talked about the 22 percent adjusted EBITDA margin 61 collective locations throughout North America, about 3,700 employees, and a market cap, as Sandy said, about $4.6 billion. So very strong position in the marketplace. You can kind of think of us as like the Walmart of galvanizing, if you want to do a comparison in your mind. You know, we're just about everywhere where our customers need us to be, And despite that, we're relatively unheard of and unknown, you know, amongst investors. So a terrific story for you to take a closer look at. Going to unpack both of the segments a little bit more for you and talk about each one. So again, metal coatings, our segment there, hot dip galvanizing and surface technologies, $758 million in sales through FY2026, which ended in February of this year. 31% margins, and again, growing at 14% year over year. A lot of that growth coming from the investments that we see happening in power, infrastructure, transmission, distribution, utility, spend, as well as data centers. So this business is ideally positioned to take advantage of a lot of those generational shifts that are happening in the end markets where we're seeing a lot of investment in utility infrastructure across North America. so a great way to play that business. Preco metals, $891 million, almost 20% EBITDA margins. It was down slightly last year. It has some residential exposure in it, and when you think about metal roofing for houses, metal front doors, metal garage doors, that's a portion of the business, and that's where some of the headwind came from. I'll walk through what we've been doing this year to correct that, and the business has been trending up ever since the start of our new fiscal year, which started in March of this year and posted a gain year over year for the first quarter. So we're certainly tracking to grow that business this year. I mentioned the footprint a little bit on my opening statement. I'd like to just share with you that footprint in a little more detail on slide six. What you'll see here is two maps. The map on the left shows our AZZ metal coatings footprint. Again, North America's leading provider of hot dip galvanizing with a really, really strong competitive moat. Being in all these locations in North America, which you can see are predominantly in the United States, as well as some locations in Canada, really serves our customers well. We want to be as close as possible to the fabrication base. That's the key ingredient to our success. So being within 150 to 250 mile radius of metal fabrication within the U.S. allows us to be their first choice and allows us to provide them with quick and very competitive and repeatable service. So we can typically turn steel around in three to five days when it gets delivered to our facility. That's usually our quote time. And the reason that's important is if there are other competitors in the marketplace, generally they're much smaller. Some of them are just single-site, family-run businesses. And once they're full, they're full. With us, we've got this network, this footprint, and we also have a transportation network that supports this so we can move steel around for our customers from site to site and from their site to our sites. so as the network gets loaded in, we can make adjustments and continue to serve our customers with that three- to five-day turnaround time. We have roughly a 27% market share in that market today. Looking at pre-coat metals, again, an industry leader in their space as well. We've got the 14 locations with 16 coil coating lines, including a new addition that we just turned on this past year, which I'll share with you in more detail. And again, what they're doing is providing roll-coded services for aluminum and steel. So these big rolls of steel and aluminum that you see pictured here on the screen come from the mill or the service center, and the customer at that point doesn't know what color they want it because their end customers, they may not have sold that steel into their end customers, but they want to make that decision later in the purchase cycle. So they purchase that from a steel mill or service center. They bring it to us. We warehouse it for a period of time for them. And again, they're owning it the whole time. It's not on our books. And then at some point when they get an order for that steel or aluminum and know what color it needs to be, they'll call us and then we'll paint it for them and ship it off. So about 23% market share in that business. So let's talk a little bit about end markets and end market diversification. Kind of moving from left to right on this slide. starting with construction that's our biggest end market we have exposure in commercial construction residential construction industrial construction and then we also lump data centers into that market as well data centers are a single digit number for us you know kind of call it five to eight percent of the total overall but rolls up meaningfully and within construction infrastructure is our second largest segment this is one of the segments that we've seen the largest growth in, consisting of bridge and highway projects and electrical T&D projects. So when you think about as you're driving down the highway, the nation's highways, or you're stopped at a traffic light, we're often overlooked, but we're all around you. So we're providing the gray color that goes on the light poles that are holding up the traffic lights, the gray color that you see along the freeway when you see the guardrail And then if you look in the distance and you see high voltage transmission lines or you see the monopoles, we're providing, again, that gray color that goes on all of that steel that you see everywhere as you look around. So when you think of the color gray, you can think of AZZ. On industrial plants, 9% of the end market, we're really focused in on galvanizing structures that support the power needs for the United States and Canada, as well as water and food processing plants. So, again, a lot of steel outside holding up these structures and gas turbines, and so we're providing, again, the finish for all those products. within transportation we do a mix of business with both pre-coat metals as well as our hot tip galvanizing business so when you think about trailers I really want you to think about 18 wheel semi truck trailers going down the road we're galvanizing the the structural chassis underneath and all the components and then pre-coat metals is providing pre-painted steel or aluminum for the box on the top of the trailer and then likewise for rvs and buses kind of the same thing so we're providing um both of the pre-coat metals and and hot dip galvanizing for those vehicles as well hvac and appliance primarily uh supported by our our pre-coat metals business both on the commercial and residential side all the large hvac customers that you probably might think of like Lennox train and carrier are customers of ours today and we're providing again the pre-painted steel that they're using to make the outdoor air conditioner condensers or maybe the inside heat pumps and gas furnace units and etc container is a growing market for us it's 3% today but it's it's growing quite rapidly we've made some investments in container what we're doing there is we are providing and coating the aluminum that is used in a majority of the products you know today that have the colored tops to them when you when you purchase a beverage so if you think about bud bud light Miller if you move into some of the energy drinks and monster Red Bull those are all clients who are buying aluminum from our customer and then we're coating it and providing that color that you see on the top. So those tops and tabs are where we're focused. So all that goes into the blender and again allows us to be really well positioned for growth. As I mentioned up front, you can kind of see the headline numbers here from last fiscal year, which ended in February of this year, the $1.65 billion, the $368 million, and then the $619 and adjusted EPS and huge cash flow, which was also supported by $273 million that we got through a divestiture through a JV last year. As you look at the bar charts, though, I think what's impressive is the growth rate, a very consistent growth rate over the past five years, ever since we've completed the strategic transformation of our business, growing not only top line, but growing margins very consistently. And we've got also the peg on here for this year's guidance, which is planned at $1.825 billion and $395 million on adjusted EBITDA. Great quality of earnings. As you can see, net income up 146 percent, gross margins 23 percent, op income up 12 percent. And again, And as I mentioned earlier, the metal coating segment really performing well with $238 million of adjusted EBITDA up and also at 31%. As you look at AZZ, what you'll find as you unpack it, we're compounding earnings. And we've done that through bringing down the leverage rate. We started leverage up at 3.6 times debt to EBITDA back in fiscal year 2022 when we purchased pre-coat metals. and we have very consistently and methodically reduced the debt and also repriced the debt in a number of times over the past five years so because of the strong cash flows we've been able to reduce that debt very meaningfully over time bringing it down to the 1.4 times that we sit at today so when you look at just last year alone 385 million dollars in debt reduction cutting it by almost 50%, and interest expense down around $35 to $45 million now. That interest expense was over $100 million when we first did the transaction, so considerably stronger balance sheet. I want to spend a little time on slide 10, giving you a look at the executive team. The team's been together for quite some time, whether they've been at Precoat or they've been at AZZ. We're led by Tom Ferguson. I've had the privilege of working with Tom now for almost 14 years. We started in the business about three months apart from each other. I came in first and then he came in right after me. And, you know, Tom's done a really good job of driving the culture, driving the strategic vision for the company, and really setting up the company well for long-term growth and success. So he's been a terrific leader to work for. Jason Crawford has come in from Precoat Metals. He has over 14 years of experience at Precoat Metals, and he's been at AZZ now for four years. In the last two years, he's been our chief financial officer. Our segment leaders are both Todd and Jeff, listed there on the top. So Todd has got almost 20 years of experience, despite his young appearance in the metal coatings industry all of that with with az and jeff also about 14 years of experience at preco metals the bottom is the the corporate support team myself as the chief marketing communications investor relations officer i also have corporate strategy and and business development tara our chief legal officer who has been there for well over 12 years I believe now Rhonda Davenport's our newest addition so Rhonda just joined us within the past month as our new chief human resources officer and then Roy Gallagher has been there about 13 years now as well as our vice president of information technology so collectively a team that has a lot of experience collectively you know we have done over 20 deals since Tom and I have join the business. So we've put together a pretty compelling list of M&A successes over the time. I want to spend a little bit of time next talking about technology. We do invest in technology in the business. We have that in three areas. One is our digital galvanizing system, which is within our metal coatings business. It's a proprietary solution. We've built it from the ground up. It's linked to our Oracle backbone, and it's providing us with not only real-time operational data, but it also serves a really good role with our customers in that it provides our customers with real-time access to where their steel is in the galvanizing process. So whether it's been picked up or delivered, when it's been received, we're taking imagery of all the steel that we receive, so we never have any issues around them shipping us 100 and we think it's 98 or anything like that. We know exactly how many we've received and the condition of that. And then we also provide them with real-time notifications on it's in process, it's ready to be delivered or it's ready to be picked up, and if there's any concerns or issues along the way, we're going to notify them as well. So a tremendous solution that really no other competitor has in the marketplace. We've been allowed to invest in this because of our size and scale. Coilzone, very similar to the digital galvanizing system that I mentioned. This is a solution that's in place on the coil coating business, Precoat Metals. Does really all the same things, but also has connections to our customers through either EDI or API connectivity. So it's really embedded deeply into their ERP systems and allows us to seamlessly communicate with them. And then lastly, IT infrastructure and AI, just overall, where we're going. We're investing in IT infrastructure and AI. Oracle EBS platform is our backbone. We've already established AI policies and procedures around the adoption of AI. We've been using it also internally in the company. We leverage Copilot, for instance, and have that within the firewall of the company and run our own instance of that. So moving on next to slide 12, talk a little bit about multi-year demand drivers in the business. So there is no doubt that we are well positioned to take advantage of the generational infrastructure investment that's happening in bridges, highways, power grid, all of that needs galvanized steel content. And like I said earlier, you know, we're everywhere that, you know, you can possibly imagine in the U.S. infrastructure when you kind of are traveling around but you just don't associate azz with what you're seeing and I think that picture there on the right is a good example of that in all that steel there that you're looking at is galvanized for just miles data center build out you know I know data centers have come under some pressure I think part of that is the election cycle that we're in but no doubt about it the the data center build out has been and will continue to be an important part of, you know, the story in U.S. and also the story of AZZ as we move forward. And we're galvanizing those structures on those, you know, hyperscale projects, as well as the co-located power that's next to it. So, and you're going to see more of that happen as these data centers roll out, that co-location power is going to be a necessary and is a necessary requirement to get these things passed and permitted. And when you think about what they're going to put in, they're going to put in solar, they're going to put in gas turbines, and those things are going to all have a high deal of galvanized content associated with it. Reshoring of manufacturing has also been something that we've been able to take advantage of. There's obviously a lot of discussion even today about tariffs and the effect on supply chains and the resilience of that as businesses are coming back to the U.S. and building facilities and investing in U.S. labor force, we are well positioned to take advantage of that because that means they're going to be investing in larger facilities and expansion and growth, and those are going to require either galvanized steel and or pre-painted steel, and we're ideally positioned for both. And then last but not least, the topic I mentioned earlier, the aluminum cans and the shift that's happening in the beverage space from plastics to aluminum. There is definitely a migration taking place. You can see it in several areas, but one of them that's notable is the water market. You see more water, just regular still tap water in aluminum containers versus plastics, and we're ideally positioned to take advantage of that. And that leads me to this slide, which is our new investment in Washington, Missouri. So we're happy that we've completed this greenfield plant. It was a two-year build-out, $125 million investment that is now complete and operational, just in time to take advantage of that secular growth that we're seeing in the beverage space. So this facility in particular has a 75% take-or-pay contract associated with it with one customer, and so we were able to lock in that customer with that contract before we built the facility. So that provides us with a seven-year ramp of volume that's going to continue to fill this facility up. That's about 45,000 to 50,000 tons per year that we expect from just that one customer. We do expect it to be accretive to earnings this year. We are in our FY 2027, which I mentioned started in March of this year. And the remaining capital has been deployed that we had just around some of the last production efficiency numbers that some of our suppliers on the equipment that provided equipment to us had to hit. So it's a great success story. It's doing really well. We're ramping not only that one customer with that take or pay their volume, but we also have line of sight to filling the remaining capacity with a number of customers that we've already done qualification trials for so great success story and again this is a really as I mentioned on the slide the engine for pre coat growth this year so as I showed you up front last year they were down about 2 percent they've already posted you know positive gains over a year year over year this year in the first quarter and we expect that to continue throughout the year and certainly there's Washington Missouri plant at pre coat it has been a big part of that growth story. Moving on to capital allocation and where we plan to invest. So we really are in a great position because we've got a very balanced, disciplined approach to capital and capital allocation, focusing on all four of these things. So investing in high ROIC organic growth initiatives, one of those was a metal coatings capacity addition that we did earlier this year. One of our largest facilities on the hot tip galvanizing side is located just south of Fort Worth, Texas, in a town called Crowley, Texas, about 15, 20 minutes south of that area. And we have invested in a second, what we call a kettle, and that allows us to effectively double the capacity of that location. And that is in anticipation of additional volume that we're seeing from customers in that area. We do have a high concentration of both bridge and highway as well as utility structure customers in that particular market that have very aggressive growth plans in the near future. So that's well positioned to take advantage and serve those customers as we move forward. So that's really emblematic of some of that high organic ROIC investment we're making. Disciplined M&A approach. So we did complete an M&A transaction this year. We purchased Seattle Galvanizing up in Seattle, Washington, just earlier this month, in fact. So really pleased with the way that acquisition has come together, and it's performing really nicely thus far. We integrated that in on day one when we closed the acquisition, and we couldn't be happier that we've got a flag that we've been able to plant out in the far west. We've grown the dividend, continuing to invest in growing the dividend. We raised it 20% most recently, and, you know, the dividend, we are a very consistent dividend payer. I think you can go back and look, and we've never missed a quarter on paying a dividend. So that dividend fully funded through the strong operating cash flow in the business. And then share repurchases. We've purchased $20 million in FY2026. We do have a $130 million authorization from the board to purchase in more shares. We'll continue to do that very methodically, looking at not only offsetting dilution, but when there's dislocation in the stock and it pulls back a little bit, those are also opportunities for us to buy in some shares. So that's our capital allocation strategy. Again, very fortunate that we don't have to make choices and trade-offs. We can invest in all four of these areas and do it very methodically. So that brings me to guidance. I mentioned it a little bit earlier, but as you look at this, we've already taken guidance up once this year. So we started the year at guiding around $1.725 to $1.775. We've moved that up to $1.8 to $1.85 billion in total sales. Adjusted EBITDA has moved up from $360 to $400 million to now $375 to $415 million. And adjusted diluted EPS has moved from $650 to $7 to now $675 to $715. And you can see some of the assumptions going into that. Number one is the Washington, Missouri plant, which we talked about. The second is the CapEx expenditures. Interest expenses I mentioned around 35 to 45 million. And then some further debt reduction of about 130 to 170 million. All of that excludes the M&A activity that I mentioned earlier, as well as any additional income we might get from our avail joint venture as that continues to close out and be done. azz as an investment choice you know i think um as you look at it what you'll see is that there's certainly been a re-rating underway and there definitely some runway that remains uh you know when you look at the stock right now it's it's trading around 11 times uh ev to ebitda uh you know our peers are kind of in that same range some of them are even higher and trading at 13 times Consensus rating, we've got 6 out of 10 of our analysts on the sell side as a buy. The other 4 are at a hold. A price target of $164. I think yesterday we were trading somewhere around $147-ish, so certainly room to grow. Our highest target from one of our sell side has us at $200 share price and a very strong return on equity. And you, again, can see the adjusted, diluted EPS trajectory in the business. And, you know, some of the drivers, as you look at the stock, you'll see, you know, I can't emphasize enough the tremendous strong free cash flow that we have and the ability to deploy that back into the business in a number of ways to continue to invest in growth. Very focused as an industrial company. You know, we're certainly compounding earnings. We've got organic and inorganic drivers and opportunities in front of us that we're executing on. A very sustained EBITDA story, and the balance sheet, as I mentioned, has never been stronger. So I encourage you to take a look at it and do your own analysis, obviously, but certainly a company that's got some room to run. And I'll leave you with some of the risks and why we think they're manageable. One of them that we often get asked about is just construction and residential softness on the on the pre-cut side uh really what's offsetting that has been the growth that we're seeing on the industrial side particularly with infrastructure utility gas bridge and highway data center projects all of that is more than offset any softness we're seeing in the residential side so so net net it's positive for us there we often get questions about zinc and paint and acids and freight as i mentioned we're a toll processor so our costs are highly variable we're going to you know a purchase those things as we need to consume them and b our fifo accounting methods allow us to capture those costs as we're we're moving through and limit the the exposure we have on commodities so not too concerned about you know any risks and some of our our input costs tariffs and substrate availability as i mentioned we do not buy steel we do not buy aluminum that is for our customers to to deal with we're just buying zinc and paint and natural gas and labor that's it and so that profile sets us up very well for very quick turns small lot again i mentioned the late point identification on the pre-coat side where at the very last minute they're choosing what color they want and that makes us you know an ideal partner for them and then last but not least uh you know any execution risk on on the missouri plant as well as bolt-on m a's i think that i left you with um hopefully a good story along around the the washington missouri plant and that it's well underway doing quite well and uh you know acquisitions are certainly a part of our playbook and we've accomplished one of those this year so kind of in closing you know why take a look at az why dig in a little bit deeper uh again uh number one footprint um irreplaceable and when you think about infrastructure and what's happening uh in the u.s in terms of infrastructure investment we're going to be around for a long time uh galvanizing steel and and painting steel so uh i would say take a look at us as you're you're making a choice on on investments. Very strong adjusted EBITDA. The net leverage never better. A ton of tailwinds in the end markets that are going to be around for quite some time. And we've posted five years now of record growth and are on track to post a sixth consecutive year as well. So with that, I'll leave it to any questions. Yes, sir. Yeah. So a couple of things. On the backlog, we're actually not a very big backlog business and the reason for that is that quick turn three to five day turnaround time so we don't have a as you look through the financials and you won't see us have a backlog that's quoted so then the question naturally becomes well how can you be so sure about your outlook what we do have is some some very large customers in the both sides of the segments that do have quotable backlog so when you think about some of the large steel producers some of the large fabricators that are out there the you know the Valmont's the new cores the Arcosas Trinity you know just to name a few those are some of the folks that have backlogs and they share that information with us and then also on a weekly basis our sales team is rolling up a forecast from our customer base so we look at that every Monday and that gives us some some really good confidence going forward and we plan around that. When you think about, you know, the second part of that question, you know, in terms of growth, you know, we believe and we've commented that, you know, our growth rate is going to be high single-digit growth rate over the next several years, growing again at 2x GDP. So, you know, if you want to just plug, you know, what GDP is over the next few years and double it, that's a good place to start when we'll probably do even better than that so that's what we're looking for and then on the margin side which was the third part of your question I think when you look at the margins what we've targeted is that we've got that 22% consolidated adjusted EBITDA margin we want to grow that one so we've said you know that or higher has been really the target and that's about as far as we've gone in terms of communicating you know margin growth expectations. Yeah, I didn't hear the second part, but I'll take the first part. So the question was around the growth CapEx and maintenance CapEx. So when you look at it, we'll spend 80 to 100 million a year in CapEx. And about, call it 80% of that is going to be maintenance CapEx and the The rest will be growth CapEx. Sure. Residential construction mix in the business is, and we talked about early on, you know, on the slides that, let me just run back to that one real fast. I think it's back up in the front. There we go. So construction is 59% overall. And when you look at construction, residential is going to be about one-third of that 59%. So about 15% to 18% overall. Thank you.