Builders FirstSource, Inc. Q4 FY2020 Earnings Call

Thank you, Keith. Good morning, and welcome to our fourth quarter and full year 2020 earnings call. I hope you and your families continue to remain safe and well. With me on the call are Chad Crow, CEO; Dave Flitman, President; and Peter Jackson, our CFO. Today, we will provide an overview of our record fourth quarter results and full year performance, discuss merger and integration highlights as Builders FirstSource and BMC come together as one culture and company, and how we are positioning the company for continued success in 2021 and beyond. Since we closed the BMC merger on January 1, 2021, the results reported today reflect standalone BFS' record results for both the fourth quarter and full year. On the last page of the earnings release, we have provided select pro forma financial information to show the record results for the combined company as though they operated as one entity in 2020. A slide deck and this morning's press release are all available on our website at investors.bldr.com. The results discussed during the call will include GAAP and non-GAAP results adjusted for certain items. We provide these non-GAAP results for informational purposes, and they should not be considered in isolation for the most directly comparable GAAP measures. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to the corresponding GAAP measures where applicable and a discussion of why we believe they are useful to investors can be found at the back of the press release and in the slide presentation. Our remarks in the press release, presentation, and on this call contain forward-looking and cautionary statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act and projections of future results. Please review the forward-looking statements section in today's press release and in our SEC filings for various factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially from forward-looking statements and projections. With that, I'll now turn the call over to Chad.

Thanks, Mike. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us. I wanted to start by saying our thoughts remain with all those affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. We remain diligent in keeping our associates, suppliers, customers, and community safe. Safety will continue to guide our operating strategy. Our thoughts are also with our fellow Texans. It has been a challenging time over the past 2 weeks, and we wish everyone a fast recovery. BFS and BMC together had an incredible and transformational year in 2020. We could not have done it without all our dedicated team members. They are a true testament of excellence in driving growth while still meeting the needs of our customers in an unprecedented environment. I want to congratulate and thank them for everything they accomplished last year. We closed our merger on January 1 and have formed the nation's premier supplier of building materials and services, with tremendous opportunity for continued growth. The transaction allows us to expand our footprint and enhance our local relationships in many of the nation's largest and fastest-growing markets. We are well positioned for long-term growth underpinned by a resilient and expanding housing environment, as well as a significant capital base for M&A. We expect to deliver above-market growth through our shared commitment to growing our value-add offerings, which allow us to closely partner and integrate with customers to streamline the construction process. In addition, this larger platform strengthens our ability to create and invest in best-in-class innovative solutions that deliver significant benefits to our customers. Our increased scale, combined with substantial synergies, will help drive EPS accretion and robust cash generation, providing even greater resources to invest in innovation, technology, and operational excellence. We expect this housing environment to fuel profitable growth and value creation for all stakeholders for the years to come. Over the past several months, Dave and I have traveled in many regions of the country to meet with team members while adhering to our safety protocols. We also held a socially distanced town hall in our Dallas office and shared the video with all our team members. The feedback has been very positive. We are seeing firsthand that our former stand-alone organizations share a passion for partnering together to serve our customers, and now we share an excitement about our future opportunities as the new Builders FirstSource. Dave and Peter will discuss the merger, integration, and specifics of the quarter and full year performance shortly. However, I would like to highlight the fact that legacy Builders FirstSource achieved top and bottom-line results for the full year 2020. Net sales were $8.6 billion, and adjusted EBITDA was $700 million, up 18% and 36% from the prior year respectively. Before I turn the call over to Dave, I would like to thank everyone who supported me during my more than 20 years at Builders FirstSource. When I joined BFS in 1999, it was, of course, much smaller, having only made a few acquisitions at that time. I couldn't have dreamed that this company would be where it is today: an industry leader, but more importantly, such a special place to work, filled with incredible people and where I have developed lifelong friendships. To all our shareholders and analysts, thank you for supporting our team. I've enjoyed the time with you and hearing your perspectives. Builders FirstSource is in a very strong position, and it's the right time to pass it on. I have total confidence in Dave, Peter, and the entire senior management team to lead this company into the next phase of growth and drive even stronger relationships with our valued customers. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Dave.

Thank you, Chad, and good morning, everyone. This is truly a very exciting time for our combined company. And I want to start by thanking Chad for his dedication, guidance, and support during this transition. It's been a real pleasure working with you, Chad. Although you'll be around for a few more weeks, I wish you all the best as you enter retirement and embark on your next journey. I will, however, keep your number handy. As Chad said, we continue to keep those affected by the COVID-19 pandemic in our thoughts. The safety of our team members, suppliers, and customers is our number one priority, and we remain vigilant in this regard. As a combined company, we started the year with strong momentum, closing out 2020 with record fourth quarter and full year results at both BFS and BMC. I want to personally thank all of our team members for their hard work and relentless determination during this unprecedented year, which led to those outstanding results. I'll cover three important topics on today's call that we believe will ensure that our already very strong performance continues well into the future. First, I'll provide an update on why we remain bullish on the macro backdrop in our industry and our even stronger position in the industry following the completion of our merger. Second, I'll share our new mission, vision, and values, which are critical ingredients to our strong culture, and I'll unveil the updated strategy of our combined company. Finally, I'll bring you up to speed on our integration efforts as well as the value capture opportunities we are seeing across the combined organization. The homebuilding market remains strong, resilient, and growing. An improved economic outlook for 2021 bodes well for our customers. We are bullish on the pent-up demand for housing amid what has been a long-term shortage of housing supply. Our analysis suggests that coming into 2020, the industry has underbuilt since the last downturn by 2 million to 2.5 million units. In addition, the U.S. added roughly 950,000 households in 2020. We believe there continues to be a long runway of underbuilt and demographically fueled growth in front of us. Improving housing starts, historically low mortgage rates, and a shift towards single-family suburban living are all positive trends that continue to support demand for our products and services. Together, as a bigger, stronger competitor, we are well positioned to capture a greater share of the increased demand in the single-family home market. As was the case with both legacy companies, we will remain disciplined in our pricing processes, and we will strike the right balance between profitability and volume growth, especially considering this highly constrained supply environment. We believe the strategic combination of our two great organizations is a transformational step forward for our teams, our customers, and our suppliers. Together, we have more than $12 billion in revenues and in excess of $1 billion in adjusted EBITDA. Even with our combined size and scale, we estimate our share in core product categories is only about 10%, paving a long runway of organic and inorganic growth opportunities for us in our $120 billion addressable market. We will benefit from our leading network of 550 distribution and manufacturing locations that span 40 states. That network includes 46 of the top 50 and 85 of the top 100 MSAs, covering most of the nation's fastest-growing regions. We have significantly enhanced our ability to service key high-growth markets in our South, Southeast, and West regions, which represent over three-quarters of U.S. single-family housing starts and approximately 80% of our current combined revenues. We will leverage the power of both companies' operating systems to extend our competitive advantage in the market. We expect our scale will yield continued productivity opportunities this year in addition to our deal synergies. We are still in the early innings of this important work in both legacy companies, and we have meaningful opportunities to drive productivity and efficiency across the combined company. For those who don't know me, I am relentless when it comes to ensuring the safety of our team members. We have put many processes in place to protect our associates during the pandemic, and I'm also encouraged by the 12% reduction in recordable injury rates for the pro forma combined company in 2020. To be clear, our goal is 0 reportable injuries, and we have more work ahead of us to accelerate our progress towards achieving that goal. For my second topic, I'd like to take a few minutes to talk with you about our updated mission, vision, values, and strategy. A core team of leaders from both legacy companies worked together to finalize the mission, vision, values, and strategic pillars that will serve as our guidepost as we continue to grow our share of customers in the specialty building materials production and distribution space. On Page 8 of the investor deck, you can see that our mission is to be the best supplier of building materials and services by having a people-first culture that delivers exceptional customer service and innovative solutions to help build more efficiently while at the same time creating superior value for our stakeholders. Also shown on Page 8 is our vision, which is to make the dream of homeownership more achievable for everyone, making Builders FirstSource the most valuable partner in the industry. And we rely on our values to guide our behaviors in achieving our mission and vision: safety, people, integrity, customers, and excellence, or as we like to say internally, SPICE, a blend of ingredients to produce a better outcome. Next, I'm excited to introduce the combined company strategy, which consists of four key pillars. The first is to expand our market penetration by leveraging and growing our portfolio of value-added products and services. Second, drive operational excellence to improve our profitability, invest in innovation and provide outstanding service to our customers. Our third strategic priority is to cultivate, build and empower a high-performing culture. And the fourth, we will continue to pursue a disciplined approach to strategic acquisitions with many opportunities in our pipeline and one of the strongest balance sheets in our industry. The investor deck has a slide that highlights the details of our strategy on Page 9. Importantly, you should recognize that this strategic framework is similar to one shared by both legacy companies over the past several years, which just underscores my confidence that executing it well will result in strong and sustainable future comp and bottom line growth. We will leverage our significant free cash flow generation to drive growth while preserving a strong balance sheet, enhance our double-digit return on invested capital, and return capital to shareholders. We have brought together two very strong companies with complementary capabilities and cultures. As we look ahead, I have no doubt that together, we will be able to accelerate profitable growth through our customer-centric service model. Finally, I'd like to briefly share with you how our important work on integration is proceeding. Back in September, we officially launched our integration management office, or IMO, a cross-functional team comprised of strong leaders from both organizations who are responsible for leading our integration efforts. In addition, executive sponsors were assigned to lead the nine functional work streams responsible for developing detailed initiatives to integrate, optimize, and transform the combined company once the merger was finalized. Back in October, we launched an organizational survey for both companies to better understand any culture-related issues that might affect our success as a combined company. Encouragingly, the survey showed that the cultures of the two companies are remarkably similar. This, along with the fact that most of our associates have been through the integration process before, has given us a high level of confidence that our integration plan will be implemented successfully and on schedule. On day one post-close, the teams came together to discuss growth opportunities and the many ways our combined company will create value from the merger. As I said before and firmly believe, at the heart of this merger is growth, expanding our geographic reach in a highly fragmented industry, enhancing and growing our suite of value-added offerings, pursuing strategic acquisitions, and giving our people the resources needed to deliver results and grow their careers. Since we closed the transaction early last month, we have been seamlessly executing our plan. The integration is on track, and I feel even better today about our prospects for the future than I did in August when we announced the transaction. Over the next three years, I have complete confidence in our ability to deliver $130 million to $150 million of run rate cost synergies, and we are on track to realize $60 million to $70 million of those cost synergies in our 2021 results. Before I turn the call over to Peter, I would like to highlight one of our many valued team members, Beto Valdovinos, a trust production manager at our Colorado Springs location. Beto joined the company out of high school. And 19 years later, he is a top operator and a respected mentor. Thanks to his leadership, Beto's location earned one of the highest efficiency ratings of any trust plant at our company last year. Beto truly grew up in the trust world. His colleagues praise his success due to his hard work, dedication, and incredible attitude. He is also a leader in safety, taking great pains to ensure facilities are clean and that everyone is well versed in proper protocol. In large part, due to his guidance, the Colorado Springs location has been accident-free for nearly 10 months. Thank you, Beto, and the many incredible associates who have made the first several weeks of our integration so smooth while continuing to maintain the superior quality of service that our customers expect from us. It's an exciting time at Builders FirstSource as we execute our strategy and remain focused on serving our customers, growing our share, capturing synergies associated with our merger and driving shareholder value. With that, let me turn the call over to Peter to highlight our financial performance and our outlook for the year.

Thank you, Dave. Good morning, everyone. I would like to start by thanking our team for the incredible results and focused execution during this unprecedented time. I will cover three topics with you today. First, I'll review BFS' stand-alone fourth quarter results, then I'll discuss free cash flow, provide you with an update on our upsized revolving credit facility, and discuss our pro forma leverage. And finally, I'll give you the roadmap for how we see the market and our outlook for 2021. Standalone Builders FirstSource had $2.5 billion in net sales in the fourth quarter, a 43.5% increase compared to a year ago. Core organic sales increased by 15%, while commodity price inflation added 26.5% to net sales. Our latest acquisitions completed during the year contributed to a net sales growth of 2%. Value-added core organic sales grew by an estimated 10.8%, led by 16.9% growth in our manufactured products category and 5.3% growth in our windows, doors, and millwork category. We continued to experience accelerated and stronger-than-expected demand across the country throughout the fourth quarter. As a reminder, the fourth quarter is typically a slower part of the homebuilding season. Our gross profit of $669.2 million was an increase of 40% year-over-year. Gross margin of 26.4%, while slightly better than expected, decreased 60 basis points compared to the prior year period, primarily due to an inflation-driven shift in product mix towards our lower-margin commodity products. SG&A as a percentage of net sales decreased 480 basis points to 18% amidst cost leverage on commodity price inflation, higher core organic sales, and continued strong expense control, which more than offset higher variable costs related to the increase in net sales. Adjusted EBITDA grew $147.8 million to a quarterly record of $257.1 million, an increase of 135%. The increase was primarily driven by organic sales growth across all three of our customer end markets and commodity inflation. Adjusted EBITDA margin improved to 10.2% of net sales compared to 6.2% in the same period a year ago. I'm extremely proud of our team for delivering these very strong results. Our continued focus on and efforts to improve our mix and carefully managed pricing levels supported our record gross profit, adjusted EBITDA, and adjusted net income for the fourth quarter. Let's turn to our cash flow. For the full year, we generated operating cash flow of $260 million, while investing over $260 million in working capital. We also invested $104 million in capital expenditures, including two new greenfield trust manufacturing facilities among several growth initiatives, refreshing vehicles and equipment, and investing in technology and automation to support operational excellence and increased sales volume. On a pro forma basis, the combined company's operating cash flow was $468 million, less CapEx of $181 million. Last month, we amended and extended the maturity of our existing $900 million revolving credit facility. The amendment increased total commitments by $500 million, up to $1.4 billion in total, while extending the maturity by an additional 26 months. The increase and extension of this facility provides us with an improved capital base that better represents our larger reach and scale going forward. Earlier this month, we gave notice that on March 3, 2021, $82.5 million of the 2027 notes will be redeemed at a redemption price equal to 103% of the principal amount of the notes plus accrued and unpaid interest. At the end of the fourth quarter, our pro forma net debt was approximately 1.3x our LTM adjusted EBITDA. In addition, we have no long-term debt maturities due until 2027. Our strong stand-alone and combined results in 2020 demonstrate positive momentum for the new Builders FirstSource and the broader homebuilding industry, where demand continues to outstrip supply. Turning to our outlook. We continue to see robust underlying demand in the single-family and remodeling sectors. Most builders are seeing increased buyer traffic and new home orders. Our business momentum continued in January, reflecting another month of double-digit sales and organic growth as compared to the prior year period on a pro forma basis. Although housing starts were strong in the fourth quarter of 2020, homebuilders continue to experience an extended construction cycle. This shifts the timing of a new start to our sales, as evidenced by houses under construction growth of approximately 17%. We expect this dynamic to continue throughout 2021 until homebuilders work through their elevated backlogs, as we see these backlogs providing a strong foundation for our business and the industry throughout 2021 and into 2022. We, therefore, expect net sales for the full year 2021 to be in the range of $13.9 to $14.6 billion, or an approximate 9% to 14% increase from our 2020 pro forma net sales of $12.8 billion. We expect adjusted EBITDA to grow 20% to 25% over our 2020 pro forma adjusted EBITDA. As Dave mentioned, we expect to realize $60 million to $70 million of the cost synergies this year. The dimensional lumber index averaged $676 per thousand in the fourth quarter and hit two quarterly all-time highs during 2020. We have seen commodity costs remain at elevated levels in January and February, and futures have even reached new all-time highs. Despite elevated levels in 2021, we do anticipate commodity prices to normalize in the back half of the year. As in the past, we remain highly confident that we will successfully manage through the inflationary and deflationary environments and will exceed the guidance if commodity prices stay at elevated levels. Our outlook is based on several assumptions, which are outlined in the earnings release, including growth in single-family starts across our geographies in the high single digits. While demand for single-family starts remains extremely high, we believe actual starts will be constrained by material and labor availability. Multifamily starts declined in the low single digits and R&R growth in the low single digits. Our free cash flow is projected to be in the range of $800 million to $900 million this year. Our significant cash generation and low leverage give us the ability to invest in growth initiatives and deploy value-creating capital. Our capital allocation plan includes reinvesting in the business in both growth and maintenance capital expenditures. We also have a solid pipeline of M&A candidates. As you heard from Dave, we believe the long-term underlying industry fundamentals remain very healthy, as evidenced by strong homebuyer demand and continued adoption of value-added products. The factors under our control further support our ability to drive results in this environment. These include continued expense management, delivering deal-driven cost synergies, and ongoing operational excellence initiatives. With our strong flexible balance sheet position, we have a significant opportunity ahead of us to continue to be a consolidator within our $120 billion addressable market. Overall, the new Builders FirstSource entered 2021 on exceptionally strong footing, and we are excited to deliver another year of record results. So with that, operator, let's open the call to questions.

The first question is about capital allocation. It sounds like the integration is progressing smoothly, although it's still early days for the combined balance sheet, which already has relatively low leverage, alongside the cash flow guidance you're providing. Your commentary indicates there's still a long runway for growth through mergers and acquisitions, and it may be even more programmatic than before. I'm curious about how we should consider the pace of smaller M&A activities while you're integrating these two companies, and given the excess cash flow, how you plan to return capital to shareholders.

Great question, Mike. This is Dave. We're excited about the balance sheet, as you point out. And as you heard Peter say, we have a lot of opportunities to invest capital inside the company to support our growth. I love a lot of things about the culture of the two companies. The millwork business that we have combined, the trust and offsite component manufacturing, both companies were investing heavily in those. We will continue to do that, including automation of our facilities. You’d heard me talk at BMC about that over time. Chad and Peter had also talked about that. So a very good alignment around that. And as you think about just from a legacy BMC standpoint, the 150 locations, which are now 550, I get excited about that. I get excited about things like READY-FRAME penetration and the opportunity to take that across the country and three times the number of facilities that we have. So a lot of exciting internal investment opportunities. To your point around M&A, we've got one of the strongest balance sheets here in the industry. And that wasn't by accident, as you know, from both legacy companies’ perspective. You heard me say in my comments, as excited as I am about our platform and our growth potential, we still have a relatively small share. And this industry remains highly fragmented. As Peter said, we've got a strong M&A pipeline. And we're 57 days into the integration. So we've got a lot of work ahead of us here. But you will see us continue to be an aggregator in this industry over time because there are a lot of opportunities to do so, and we're well positioned for that.

Okay. And the second question, or kind of a two-parter on the lumber environment. First, I guess I'm curious, your margin performance, the margin guide, it's very strong and clearly a number of things playing into that. But I'm wondering, just given the tightness in the lumber supply chain as well as the backlog that these builders are trying to work through. Has the relationship between commodity inflation and margin changed in a way that even in a more inflationary environment, you're able to achieve higher margins than you'd normally expect, just given the bottlenecks and kind of the urgency from the customers to get product on the job sites. The second part is just a clarification. When you talked about normalization, I think there's a lot of different views on what normal may or may not be, given what's transpired. So any sense of just when you say normal, is that true long-term trend line price? Or how do you think about what that normalization looks like in the second half?

Yes, that's a great question, Mike. I'll turn it over to Peter shortly, but I want to highlight that both legacy companies have successfully navigated a high inflationary environment in 2018, followed by deflation in 2019, and then faced unprecedented inflation and supply constraints in 2020. We have developed significant expertise in dealing with these challenges. I am very confident that we will effectively manage whatever the market presents regarding inflation and deflation. The challenges we experienced over the past couple of years have helped us refine our approach, making us better at managing our margins, which is evident in our performance over that period. Peter?

And exactly right, the work that we've been talking about over the past few years on pricing management and training within the organization. I think it was true in BMC, just like it was for BFS. It really has come into play as you've seen such dramatic increases in the price of commodities. Our ability to react has gotten better. Our disciplines around the management of that has gotten better. And I think you've seen that in the gross margin results. I would also say that there's some truth to the idea that a move that dramatic has forced everyone in the industry to take stock of pricing more aggressively. This isn't something you could ever hope to protect your customer from when you're up 100-plus percent in some products. So certainly a respect for the need to change pricing quickly and we participated in that. And I think we did, as you mentioned, far better than usual as a combination of those two factors. As for the long-term estimate, you're right on. We did revert to a long-term average. There's certainly a lot of debate about whether or not there's going to be a new normal. I think that's fair. There are some legitimate questions out there. But at the end of the day, the game of prognosticating commodity prices is not one we really like to participate in. We've proven an ability to make money on the way up. We've proven an ability to make money on the way down. And for us, we think, a modest forecast on normalization in the back half of the year is just a smart and prudent way to communicate the business. We're just excited about the core, but we think we've got a great platform here and the growth we have for the year looks really fantastic.

I'd like to offer my congratulations to everyone. And to Chad as well in retirement. So I guess the first question on the guide, the core organic outlook. It seems like based on all the pieces you've given, you're implying kind of mid-single-digit organic growth within the 9% to 14% total. Peter, you mentioned completions and units under construction really ramping. I think you said 17%. And you even gave a little bit of view into '22 just in terms of confidence of having some builder backlogs driving that. So I'm just trying to reconcile that versus the mid-single-digits. And is the expectation, I guess, cadence wise that the growth should be sort of flat or even down into the second half of the year?

Great question, Matt. And I'll just say to Peter's comments earlier during the prepared remarks, there's been an increasing challenge here to go from start to completion based on what's been going on in the supply chain. As you look at lumber, we just talked about lumber, OSB is as tight as it's ever been, even getting windows and doors, and we've all talked about a lot of those challenges in the past. And the result of that has been just extension of the time from start to completion of the home. Now having said that, we're projecting starts in the mid upper single digits. We are going to capture absolutely as much of the core organic growth as can possibly be had here. We're well positioned for it. Our customers have large backlogs, which underscores the confidence that Peter outlined in terms of our performance throughout 2021 and even into 2022, given the reality of where we are in the market. Many of these product categories are not improving from a capacity standpoint anytime soon. So we've got a lot of confidence in our performance. As you've seen, you heard Peter talk about double-digit core organic growth here to start 2021. And we're going to outperform the market regardless of what's going on.

And like you said, the comps do get more challenging in the back half of the year, but I just want to reiterate, our assumptions around both commodities and single-family starts are but our attempt to give you a modest and reasonable, a thoughtful look at what we think the market can do, given the dynamics at play. If the market does better than that, we're going to do better than that. No hesitation in saying that. We're just trying to give you what we think is a thoughtful view. We're certainly very bullish on the overall strength of demand. This is not a demand commentary. We think consumers are strong. Trends are solid. We like what we're seeing, and that's sort of the hint you saw for 2022. The inability to deliver on the products that demand is asking for is really just an extension of the build cycle, and we think that bodes very well for us and for the industry.

Congratulations on a strong start. Can you provide insight into the potential for growth with READY-FRAME? I’m not asking for specific numbers, but is there a way to gauge the opportunity there? Would capturing that growth require any additional investments on your part?

Yes, great question. And I can talk about READY-FRAME for a long time because in legacy BMC we were continuing to invest in it, and we're excited about the growth, which, as we've talked about over the past couple of years, has been from a house penetration standpoint in the double-digit growth arena. I would just tell you, in legacy BMC in the fourth quarter, that house penetration was nearly 20% as we continue to grow strength and momentum. The really exciting part about READY-FRAME and that investment to your question is it's a relatively minor investment. We're talking about saws and some computer-aided design and capability. But it's a relatively minor investment to extend that across the markets. And it is in large part driven by the know-how of our people, to not only design the homes and put that in a READY-FRAME model but also how we deliver it to job sites and unload it in a way that's very effective for the framer, so they can do their work most efficiently. So a minor investment as we expand to new markets, and we will continue to be aggressive at doing that.

Yes. No, that's a great question. It's been a difficult time, obviously, not just for us, but for the whole state. We had some interruption. As you might imagine, we had some shutdowns. The initial read is that it's probably around $40 million in sales that were delayed as a result of those shutdowns. We'll see how it plays out through the rest of the quarter. For a company of our scale, obviously, that's not material, but it's impactful to the folks in the state. So we've done some work with our employees to make sure we're supporting them and those that were impacted, and we're continuing to bring all of our facilities back up, and candidly, they're running quite well. Now as you can imagine, there's a lot of pent-up demand. There was any way in a very, very busy market, and they're rolling hot right now. It's fun.

So we are guiding to approximately $135 million in total quarterly depreciation and amortization. I assume that most of that resides in SG&A in your combined P&L. Is there a piece of that depreciation that resides in cost of goods sold, first off?

There is a little bit, yes, attributable to the manufacturing facilities.

And breaking their bread box, less than 10% of it?

That's a great question. I don't know we've ever broken that out before. I don't have it handy on me.

So I just wanted to start on the EBITDA margin expansion. The guidance implies about 100 basis points of EBITDA margin expansion. I was just hoping you could walk us through how this might show up on your P&L, gross profit or SG&A? And just given where lumber is now and the capturing of synergies, can you just talk about the cadence of this improvement throughout the year?

Sure. Generally speaking, we mention that the fall-through on our incremental sales is typically in the range of 12% to 15%. There will be some fluctuations above or below that, but it serves as a solid guideline for how our business expands over time. As we see volume growth and commodity price changes this year, the fall-through will occur, allowing the gross margin to be reflected in the impact on SG&A, which will then influence the EBITDA number. Broadly speaking, we welcome high prices. As a distributor, this is a favorable season for us regarding the prices and growth we are experiencing. Our business leverage is quite strong, which explains the significant fall-through to these high figures. Additionally, we expect to generate increasing synergies as well as productivity savings and improvements throughout the year. While it may not be a linear progression, this approach offers a reasonable perspective for this discussion.

Okay. Great. And just on the lumber prices being at all-time highs, there's been a lot of headlines just about the impact on home prices and the ability of buyers to get appraisals. It doesn't seem to have an impact in the near term, but have you heard from any of your customers that things could slow down as we start to look out like 6 months to a year if lumber prices don't normalize? Or do they just think that the low interest rates and the underlying fundamentals in the industry from a demographic standpoint can really sustain this even in this high lumber price environment?

Yes. I think it's far more the latter. The demand is so strong. The problem is our ability to build the homes that people want as an industry. So while there could be on the edges, some headwinds, framing really isn't anywhere near an important part of the cost of the home as many other factors. Sure, there's a component there is inflation in a couple of other areas that in the long term may drive demand down. But at this stage, I'm not sure we're going to be able to see it, and as time passes, I think we'll be able to fix some of the constraints in the industry that will normalize that as well, which I think will then feed back into a stronger demand profile as well.

On the D&A estimate you have for the year, the $540 million to $550 million, how much of that is deal amortization? How much of it is just more traditional depreciation?

Yes. Well, I mean, like I mentioned, it's still a work in progress, but a pretty substantial step-up on the purchase accounting, as you can imagine, right? That will burn off over a few years. But as it relates to the valuations that we'll do as part of that purchase accounting, we'll see a pretty substantial step up.

Congratulations to everyone on finalizing the deal, and best wishes to Chad on your retirement. My first question is regarding your guidance, which historically has not factored in any sales synergies between the two companies. With the rollout of READY-FRAME to more Builders FirstSource branches, where do you see potential opportunities for benefits in terms of sales synergies? Though I understand it's not included in your guidance, it seems there could be opportunities. Could you provide an update on where you believe there might be some easy gains?

Yes. Thanks, Keith. And as I mentioned, we've got nine work streams on our transaction here focused on integration. One of those is growth, as you might expect. We've talked about READY-FRAME, and we're seeing a lot of opportunities. As we talked about when we announced the deal, one of the exciting parts about the deal is the fact that we will have a broader offering. And even in the local markets where we're individually very strong, one of the other legacy companies might have been stronger in millwork versus components. As we brought this thing together, we're very excited about half in that full breadth of offering across the footprint. So we're seeing a lot of opportunities like that in terms of growth potential across our value-added segments with several others. But it's early days. The team is working hard on it, and we're very excited about it.

Thank you. We appreciate everyone joining the call today and for the continued support of our company. I'm personally looking forward to watching what this new management team and all of our incredible team members will accomplish in the years ahead. As you heard throughout the call today, there is a lot of excitement around the future of our company. I certainly share that excitement and truly believe BFS is in the strongest position it has ever been. I am proud to have been a part of this amazing journey over the past two decades. If you have any follow-up questions, please reach out to Peter or Mike. Thank you. Stay safe, and adios.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference. We appreciate your participation. You may now disconnect.