Sherwin Williams Co Q1 FY2022 Earnings Call

Good morning. And thank you for joining The Sherwin-Williams Company’s review of the First Quarter 2021 Results and our outlook for the Second Quarter and Full Year of 2022. With us on today’s call are John Morikis, Chairman and CEO; Al Mistysyn, CFO; Jane Cronin, Senior Vice President, Corporate Controller; and Jim Jaye, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations and Communications. This conference call is being webcast simultaneously in listen-only mode. An archived replay of this webcast will be available beginning approximately two hours after this conference call concludes. This call will include certain forward-looking statements as defined under U.S. federal securities laws concerning sales, earnings and other matters. Any forward-looking statement speaks only as of the date on which such statement is made and the company undertakes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statement. A full declaration regarding forward-looking statements is provided in the company’s earnings release transmitted earlier this morning. After the company’s prepared remarks, we will open the session to questions. I will now turn the call over to Jim Jaye.

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. Sherwin-Williams delivered first quarter results in line with our expectations in an environment characterized by strong demand, ongoing cost inflation and choppy raw material availability, which began improving meaningfully in the final weeks of the quarter. Sales in the quarter grew by a high single-digit percentage against a double-digit comparison a year ago, and we delivered sequential improvement in consolidated gross margin and segment margins in all of our businesses. Our margins remained under pressure on a year-over-year basis as significant pricing actions previously announced in all businesses have not yet fully caught up to highly elevated raw material costs near-term. This remains an area of volatility. Our team is operating with confidence and momentum as we begin to enter the painting season. Our strategy is clear, and we remain focused on delivering solutions that help our customers succeed. Let me briefly summarize the quarterly numbers before turning to John Morikis for additional commentary on the quarter and our outlook. Comparisons in my comments are to the prior year period unless stated otherwise. Starting with the topline, first quarter 2022 consolidated sales increased 7.4% to $5 billion. Pricing was in the low double-digit range. Volume was lower in the Consumer Brands Group and The Americas Group, primarily due to challenging prior year comparisons, along with anticipated raw material availability challenges, which are largely behind us now. Consolidated gross margin decreased to 41.1%, driven by lower sales volume, primarily due to raw material availability issues and cost inflation outpacing our price increases near-term. Our gross margin improved each month during the quarter and compared to last year. On a sequential basis, gross margin improved by 160 basis points, due primarily to additional pricing actions taken in the first quarter. SG&A expense decreased to 28.2% of sales. Our SG&A expense was 2.3% below fourth quarter 2021 and on a sequential basis was 200 basis points better. Consolidated profit before tax decreased 9.4% to $461.1 million. Sequentially, profit before tax improved by $152.2 million or 49.3%. The quarter included $70 million of acquisition-related depreciation and amortization expense, compared to $75.6 million a year ago. Diluted net income per share in the quarter was $1.41 versus $1.51 per share a year ago. Excluding acquisition-related depreciation and amortization expense and the Wattyl divestiture, first quarter adjusted diluted net income per share was $1.61 versus $2.06 per share a year ago. On a sequential basis, adjusted diluted net income per share increased 20.1%. EBITDA in the quarter was $693 million or 13.9% of sales. Moving on to our operating segments, sales in The Americas Group increased 5.6% against a high single-digit comparison, as low double-digit pricing offset lower volume related to challenging comparisons and raw material availability, which improved significantly over the last few weeks of the quarter and has continued to improve as we enter the second quarter. DIY volume was impacted the most as we prioritize serving the professional contractors, which make up the largest part of our business. Segment margin decreased to 16.8%, resulting primarily from lower sales volume and higher raw material costs, partially offset by selling price increases and good cost control. Segment margin improved 170 basis points sequentially. Sales in the Consumer Brands Group decreased 10.1%, due primarily to lower sales outside of North America and an impact of 6 percentage points related to the Wattyl divestiture. This was in comparison to an extremely strong quarter a year ago, where sales were up 25%. Adjusted segment margin decreased to 12.1% of sales, resulting primarily from lower sales volume and higher raw material costs, and supply chain inefficiencies, partially offset by selling price increases. Segment margin improved 580 basis points sequentially. Sales in the Performance Coatings Group increased 20.4%, against a double-digit comparison and were driven by volume and price increases. Adjusted segment margin decreased to 11.8% of sales, as operating leverage from the higher volume, selling price increases and good cost control were more than offset by higher raw material costs, where inflation was highest among the company’s three operating segments. Adjusted segment margin improved 290 basis points sequentially. Let me now turn the call over to John for some additional commentary on the first quarter along with our outlook for the second quarter and the full year 2022.

Thank you, Jim, and good morning to everyone listening. Before getting into some color on our three segments, I’d like to frame today’s call with some themes we are seeing across the business. First, demand remains very strong across most of the business. Our teams are highly engaged and focused on growing volume through new accounts and share of wallet, as well as reactivating customers that may have shopped elsewhere to meet the needs of a specific project over the past year due to product availability challenges. Second, raw material availability improved meaningfully late in the quarter and this has continued into the second quarter. We do not expect lack of raw materials to have a material impact on sales going forward. To be clear, the supply chain has not completely recovered, as the bottleneck has now largely moved from suppliers’ production to their transportation and logistics. In the near-term, we are speeding this recovery by employing our own fleet and tank wagons to supplement suppliers’ delivery capabilities. Our ability in this area is unique among our competitors. We are also focusing on SKU prioritization and formulations to make the most of the raw materials we have available to us. Additionally, the Specialty Polymers acquisition is meaningfully contributing to our resin needs. Third, inventory in our stores and distribution centers is in a markedly better place than it was at the end of December. The 50 million gallons of incremental architectural capacity we brought on in the fourth quarter is up and running. As the supply of raw materials improves, we are quickly converting those materials to paint. In fact, we made more architectural paint gallons in March than in any previous month in our company’s history. We expect to run this additional capacity at a high rate to keep up with demand through the painting season and then begin building inventory in our fourth quarter as we typically would. And looking to the future, we announced a $300 million investment to begin expanding production and distribution at our Statesville, North Carolina architectural facility that serves both TAG and CBG, which will be completed in 2024. Finally, inflation remains significant and is trending toward the high end of the guidance we previously provided. In addition to raw materials, we have seen increases in other elements of the cost basket including freight, energy and labor. As we have said in the past, our continuous improvement efforts are focused on offsetting these increased costs. Additionally, we have been aggressive with pricing actions in all of our businesses to offset these costs and we will continue to do so as necessary. As far as our first quarter, I will keep my comments brief in order to get to our outlook. The Americas Group, sales growth in the first quarter was led by Protective and Marine and Property Management, both of which were up by a double-digit percentage. New residential, residential repaint and commercial were up by a mid single-digit percentage. DIY was down double digits, as we faced a strong double-digit comparison and prioritize sales to professional contractors. We have also begun to see margin recovery in the business as segment margin expanded sequentially. From a product perspective, exterior paint sales performed better than interior sales, with interior being the larger part of the mix. We realized a low double-digit increase in price in the first quarter, with volume remaining under pressure. The 12% price increase we announced February 1st is going in as planned. We opened four net new stores in the first quarter and still plan 80 to 100 for the year. We also continued our growth investments in sales reps, management trainees, innovative new products, ecommerce and productivity-enhancing services. Moving on to our Consumer Brands Group. While this business faced a very challenging comparison, we are encouraged by our sales in North America, which were nearly flat as we continue to focus on supporting key strategic retail partners and growing our pros who paint initiative. Sales were softer in Europe and China, as we faced double-digit comparisons and COVID-related lockdowns. Note that we have now anniversary the Wattyl divestiture, which was a drag on Group sales of about 6 percentage points in the quarter. Pricing was positive in the quarter and in the high single-digit range. Segment margin expanded significantly on a sequential basis benefiting from increased volume, leverage on SG&A and incremental pricing. Lastly, let me comment on first quarter trends in Performance Coatings Group. Group sales increased by 20.4% in the quarter, including high single-digit volume growth against a double-digit comparison. Price realization was in the low teens range, and all regions and all divisions generated growth. As in the other groups, we saw meaningful sequential margin improvement during the quarter. Regionally, sales in the quarter grew fastest in North America, followed by Latin America, Asia and Europe. Every division in the Group grew, with nearly all by double digits, driven by robust underlying demand, new customer wins, share of wallet gains and pricing. Packaging was strongest, followed by coil, general industrial, auto refinish and industrial wood, respectively. Before moving to our outlook, let me speak to capital allocation in the quarter. We returned approximately $558 million to our shareholders in the quarter in the form of dividends and share buybacks. We invested $407 million to purchase 1.45 million shares at an average price of $280.77. We distributed $150.9 million in dividends. We also invested $106.3 million in our business through capital expenditures, including $77 million in core CapEx and $29 million for our building our futures project. Additionally, the acquisition of Sika's European Industrial Coatings business closed on April 1. We ended the quarter with a net debt-to-EBIT ratio of 3.3 times, as we increased short-term borrowing to fund our share repurchases and the Sika acquisition. We expect to be closer to the high end of our 2 times to 2.5 times range by the end of the year. Turning to our outlook, as I referenced earlier, we continue to see very strong demand in North America, Pro architectural end markets, though we are facing a comparison to a strong double-digit growth quarter that was driven by very robust post-pandemic recovery. Comparisons will ease in the back half of the year. Rising mortgage rates have not made an appreciable dent in the demand for our new residential customers to this point. Should the residential demand slow, we remain extremely well-positioned in multiple architectural segments, including residential repaint and property management, which have proven to be more defensive in nature. We expect industrial demand will remain strong as the year progresses based on the outlook our customers have shared with us. Comparisons will be challenging over the remainder of the year. Demand remains strongest in North America, our largest region. European demand also remains strong, although we continue to closely monitor for potential impacts from the war in Ukraine. For the record, our sales in Russia and Belarus are well below 1% of the total company sales and we are suspending operations in these regions. In Asia and in China particular, demand has been dampened near-term by the latest COVID-19 wave. On the architectural and industrial sides, we will continue to leverage our strengths in innovation, value-added services and differentiated distribution, as we expect to grow at a rate that outpaces the market. From a supply chain perspective, we believe we are through the most challenging aspects. As I described in my earlier comments, we expect this to continue improving and to have a minimal impact on sales going forward. On the cost side of the equation, we are maintaining our low double-digit to mid-teens raw material inflation guidance. Though, we are trending toward the high end of the range, driven primarily by Performance Coatings Group. There is considerable short-term volatility in the market and our visibility beyond the quarter or two is limited. We do expect the level of year-over-year inflation to remain elevated, but to moderate in the back half of the year. Our pricing actions remain on track, and we are prepared for additional increases if necessary. For the second quarter of 2022, we anticipate our consolidated net sales will increase by a low double-digit to mid-teens percentage compared to the second quarter of 2021, inclusive of a low double-digit price increase. We expect The Americas Group to be up by a high single-digit to low double-digit percentage. We expect Consumer Brands to be up by the high-teens to a low 20 percentage. And we expect Performance Coatings to be up by a low double-digit to mid-teens percentage. Our full-year guidance is heavily second half weighted due to stronger volume, the impact of pricing actions and weaker second half 2021 comparisons. I will remind you we began 2021 with great momentum, including first half sales growth of 14.7% and adjusted EPS growth of 26.6%, before the natural disasters, supply chain and COVID issues derail the second half of the year. For the full year 2022, our guidance remains unchanged. We expect consolidated net sales to increase by a high single-digit to low double-digit percentage. We expect The Americas group to be up a mid-to-high single-digit percentage, with North American paint stores at or above the high end of the range. We expect Consumer Brands Group to be up a low-to-mid single-digit percentage and Performance Coatings Group to be up by a high single to low double-digit percentage. We expect diluted net income per share for 2022 to be in the range of $8.40 to $8.80, compared to $6.98 earned in 2021. Full-year 2022 earnings per share guidance includes acquisition-related amortization expense of approximately $0.85 per share. On an adjusted basis, we expect full-year 2022 earnings per share of $9.25 to $9.65, an increase of 16% at the midpoint over the $8.15 we delivered in 2021. The additional data points we provided last quarter on full-year currency exchange, tax rate, CapEx, interest expense, depreciation and amortization are unchanged. As we enter the heart of the painting season, we remain confident in our strategy, our capabilities, and the differentiated product and service solutions we bring to customers. The 61,000 employees of Sherwin-Williams are focused on the tasks at hand and there is no better team in the industry. Our business remains extremely well-positioned, and we are emerging as an even stronger Sherwin-Williams following the challenges we faced the last two years. I am excited by the momentum we are gaining as we progress towards what we expect will be a very strong second half of the year. In addition to today’s call, I will remind you that we will provide additional commentary on the market and our business at our upcoming Financial Community Presentation event scheduled for Wednesday, June 8th in New York City.

Thank you, John. And that concludes our prepared remarks. We will be happy to take your questions at this time.

Your first question is coming from Vincent Andrews from Morgan Stanley. Your line is live.

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. I am wondering if you could just talk about your volume possibilities in TAG in the second quarter. If I back out the prices, I think you are going to get in the second quarter to sort of imply some volume. I am just wondering how much better you might be able to do versus that and if you are concerned that maybe, I know you had big volume production in March. But is there any limit at all for how much volume you could flow through the stores in the second quarter?

Yeah. Vincent, maybe the way I will tackle this is, just to take a quick run through the different segments and give you a little bit of color on the demand, because I think that speaks to what you are asking here. So let me start with The Americas Group. Our customers are experiencing really strong backlogs. There’s a positive mix shift in quality that’s also taking place and we believe that plays really well to our advantage. So when you talk about volume, our ability to grow our volume faster than market also includes the ability to drive greater productivity through our contractors. If you look at this area, you would clearly see home appreciation driving demand. If you look at the NAHB Remodeling Index, it's strong and well above 50. And existing home sales have slowed year-over-year against a very strong comp, but overall it’s a very strong market for us. So we expect to continue to see a good strong demand market in residential repaint. Our contractors are telling us that many of them are looking through the end of the year with a solid backlog of projects, and we are going to grow with those customers. But this is an area that we absolutely expect to continue to grow our market share at a pretty aggressive rate. Property maintenance is solid as well. There’s been delayed maintenance that’s now being addressed, and we see improved areas and apartment turns along with the return to travel. Commercial demand is also solid. Projects are resuming, albeit at varying paces, but the starts are positive. Customers are reporting labor constraints and material shortages, which are acting as governors of growth. I’d say the underlying demand is strong and projects are resuming. We’ve also seen a significant pricing action and the 12% price increase we announced February 1st is going in as planned. We opened four net new stores in the first quarter and still plan 80 to 100 for the year.

Thanks so much.

Thank you, Vincent.

Thank you. Your next question is coming from Jeff Zekauskas from JPMorgan. Your line is live.

Thanks very much. Can you comment on the effects of raw material shortages on volumes in the first quarter? And can you talk about your volumes in the first quarter in residential repaint and new residential, commercial, what was the business like excluding the volume contraction in DIY?

Yeah. Jeff, on raw material availability, I would say we saw some choppiness in January, which improved in February. As John talked about, it was significantly better in March and continues to improve. And in the data points that I have to show that, March was the single largest architectural production volume in the company’s history, significantly improving architectural gallons from December year-end. I think to pinpoint exactly how much availability had on the quarter is really tough because it’s hard to quantify between what would have been in sales versus what we could have put in inventory. The fact is, we have a lot of confidence in filling our additional capacity along with the help of SPI.

The only thing I would add is that the trend of manufacturing will continue. We will run our assets hard to build that inventory back up.

Were they higher for the quarter or lower?

Jeff, they would be lower, primarily because of the more difficult comps that we had.

Okay. And for my second question, are you done with price increases in The Americas Group?

I wouldn’t say we are done. We will monitor those input costs closely and if we see a meaningful change in them, we are prepared and disciplined to go out with additional pricing.

Great. Thank you so much.

Thanks, Jeff.

Thank you. Your next question is coming from Josh Spector from UBS. Your line is live.

Yeah. Hi. Thanks for taking my question. I was wondering how much of the 20% growth would you say is a volume refill versus pricing moving up from the high single-digit level?

When you look at high-teens, low 20%, you can expect price to be up a similar amount. We have a significantly easier comp, which was down strong double digits. As you would expect, we had to build some inventory in our first quarter in our retail partners.

Thanks. Are you seeing any change in the Consumer channel or in the DIY channel, either your own stores or in your Consumer Brands group?

I’d say they are pretty stable. As it relates to the Consumer side of our stores and in our Consumer Brands customers, I’d say in our Professional side, we are seeing more of a positive mix shift moving into higher quality rather than a shift down. Sure. When I look at the funding for growth and my previous calls, increasing our focus on our Pro, we are more than just paint. We are building relationships and that's how the volume growth comes.

Thank you. Your next question is coming from Chris Parkinson from Mizuho. Your line is live.

Great. Thank you so much. Can you hit on your own, as well as the industry’s efforts to further backward integrate into certain resins and also some additives?

Our strategy has always been to leverage acquisitions that fit strategically into the company. We are not looking to get into additives or TiO2 business. We believe manufacturing resin has been as important part of our business, and we have a strong position there. The productivity of our past investments into SPI is certainly adding to those needs as we speak.

What’s your public response to the debates of potential market share shifts?

I’d tell you that our confidence level is very high. Competition makes you better. We are blessed with a controlled distribution model that serves us well. We have the best people in the industry and I am confident that we are going to win against our competitors.

Thank you. Your next question is coming from Ghansham Panjabi from Baird. Your line is live.

Thank you. The macroeconomic backdrop seems a bit less certain, especially in Europe and China. What would be the incremental positives relative to the initial view that are offsets to some of the risks on the global macro? Is it just better raw material access visibility?

I’d say first, we just talked a lot about people. That’s a third advantage. Our Chief Procurement Officer and his team are working well with our customers. Once you have that supply and we demonstrated in March we had a record month in producing products, so we are positioned well.

The hard work that those teams have done has clearly shown. Expect to see sequential improvement in our gross margins.

Okay. Thanks for that. And any thoughts on Performance Coatings?

We are really excited and have a lot of momentum in the Performance Coatings Group. We expect it to continue.

Thank you. Your next question is coming from Greg Melich from Evercore ISI. Your line is live.

I want to follow-up on the gross margin progression in the quarter. Can you give us the number on that and do you think that continues for the second quarter?

If you look at our first quarter, price cost remains tight. We expect to get on top of that by the end of the second quarter.

If we need to, we will implement additional pricing when necessary.

When we look at the back half, do we need another round of pricing to stay on top of the costs?

We will continue to monitor that based on market conditions.

I think we would be moving quicker if needed. We need to monitor the market closely.

Thank you. Your next question is coming from John McNulty from BMO. Your line is live.

You mentioned using your own fleet to help your customers. Is that something you incrementally charge for, or is it part of the service?

Our focus is on taking care of the customer. Right now, we want to ensure we have the product when we need it. There’s a discussion about costs but ensuring we meet customer needs comes first.

We are doing whatever it takes to ensure customer satisfaction.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you. Your next question is coming from Steve Byrne from Bank of America. Your line is live.

The inventory build at the end of the quarter is noteworthy. Is that largely driven by the raw material costs or is it really because you had much more volume than previously? How much of this reflects what your Pro contractors have as backlog?

We have incredible confidence in the second half. As the supply of raw materials improves, we are quickly converting those materials to paint. We have product coming to serve our customers steadily.

How much stronger do you think second half this year could be?

It’s going to be a much stronger part of our success this year as we come off the comparisons of the previous year.

What fraction of your consumer sales are Pros that paint?

We are not going to comment on our customers’ mix of business, but we are prioritizing investments there.

Thank you.

You bet.

Thank you. Your next question is coming from P.J. Juvekar from Citi. Your line is live.

Do you think adding 80 new stores is going to add to that complexity or do you think you have this new capacity and excess inventory that you can load into these new stores? What’s the cadence of new stores?

We believe in our model and we are investing, despite challenges. Adding stores is about long-term growth, and we see the opportunity there. The cadence will ramp up throughout the year.

Great. And have you seen any impact from a competitor’s new partnership at Home Depot?

We welcome competition. We believe painting contractors thrive in our specialty store format. We have confidence in our model. I am confident in our efforts and our ability to continue to succeed.

Thank you. Your next question is coming from Mike Leithead from Barclays. Your line is live.

When you talked about supply chain challenges being behind us, was that mostly a U.S. architectural comment or are you seeing conditions improve internationally?

The impact on our architectural business outside of the U.S. is a smaller part of our business and is not significantly impacted by this situation. Confidence in our procurement team is high to continue to manage the supply.

And what's been the market looking like for raw materials?

We have seen inflationary pressures from strong demand leading to tight inventories in raw materials. We remain in a good place with our suppliers.

Great. Thank you.

You are welcome.

Thank you. Your next question is coming from David Begleiter from Deutsche Bank. Your line is live.

There have been some reports that Sherwin is discounting paint prices in the U.S. Are those reports inaccurate?

Yes, they are inaccurate.

How is the pricing compared to historical levels?

The effectiveness has been maintained and improved as the months went on is very favorable.

Thank you. Your next question is coming from Kevin McCarthy from Vertical Research. Your line is live.

First on the margin side, at one time you had a goal of high teens or low 20s. What do you think the path is to get there over the medium-term?

I want to be clear that our confidence is there. We are working diligently to improve margin performance, and we will achieve our medium-term targets.

Can you speak about the acquisition of Sika’s Industrial Coatings business?

It’s a terrific opportunity to strengthen our position in fire protection as we leverage both companies' strengths to drive new sales together.

Thank you.

You’re welcome.

Thank you. Your next question is coming from Arun Viswanathan from RBC Capital Markets. Your line is live.

Just curious if you expect mid-to-high single-digit sales growth for the year. Are you seeing that reflected in your overall volume growth?

Yes. It will improve as the year goes on, reflecting the adjustments in pricing and inventory management.

Thank you.

We are focused on leveraging our strengths in innovation and customer support.

Thank you for your questions. We will now move to wrap up the call.

Thank you. That concludes our Q&A session. I will now hand the conference back to Jim Jaye for closing remarks.

Thank you for joining the call. We are excited about our momentum and confident in our strategy moving forward.