Sherwin Williams Co Q1 FY2023 Earnings Call

Good morning. Thank you for joining the Sherwin-Williams Company's Review of First Quarter 2023 Results and our Outlook for the Second Quarter and Full Year of 2023. With us on today's call are John Morikis, Chairman and CEO; Al Mistysyn, CFO; Heidi Petz, President and COO; Jane Cronin, Senior Vice President, Enterprise Finance; 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 call concludes. This conference call will include certain forward-looking statements as defined under U.S. federal securities laws with respect to 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, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. 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 up the session to questions. I will now turn the call over to Jim Jaye.

Thank you, Jim. I want to thank our teams for working hard to deliver a strong start to the year, especially the margin recovery we are seeing following the relentless cost inflation we've experienced the last two years. As we said in January, we expected to have a strong first quarter, and that's exactly what our team delivered. We also indicated that we would not be updating guidance after the first quarter. We know we have work to do, and we're under no illusions about the macro headwinds we're likely to face as the year progresses. We'll have a much better idea of how the year might unfold as we get deeper into the painting season over the next few months. As we enter the second quarter, we'll remain focused on what we can control. This includes leveraging our recession-resilient markets, growing new accounts and share of wallet, continuing appropriate growth investments in stores and sales representatives and managing price cost dynamics. We remain confident in our differentiated strategy, capabilities and product and service solutions, and we continue to expect to outperform the market. For the second quarter of 2023, we anticipate our consolidated net sales will be up or down by a low single-digit percentage compared to the second quarter of 2022, inclusive of a high single-digit price increase. For the full year 2023, we expect consolidated net sales to be flat to down mid-single digits, inclusive of a mid-single-digit price carryover from 2022. Our sales expectations by segment for the second quarter and the full year are included in our slide deck and reflect the move of the Latin American architectural business from Paint Stores Group to Consumer Brands Group. There is no impact on our sales guidance in the quarter or the year from the divestiture of the China architectural business at this time as the transaction has not yet closed. On the cost side, there is no change in our raw material outlook where we continue to expect costs to be down by a low to mid-single-digit percentage in 2023 compared to 2022. We expect to see the largest benefit occurring in the second and third quarters. We expect to see decreases across many commodity categories, though the ranges likely will vary widely. We expect other costs, including wages and energy, to be up in the mid- to high single-digit range...

Thank you, Jim. I'll begin with the Paint Stores Group, previously known as The Americas Group. We described this change on our last call and in this morning's press release. There is no impact to prior year consolidated results related to this change. First quarter Paint Stores Group sales were ahead of our expectations and increased 14.8%, driven by high single-digit volume growth and continued effective pricing. Segment profit increased by $97.9 million and segment margin improved 120 basis points to 18.4%. Our Pro architectural sales grew by a mid-teens percentage in the quarter. All Pro market segments increased by double digits, led by property management and followed by commercial, residential repaint and new residential, respectively. Sales in protective & marine and DIY also increased by double-digit percentages. From a product perspective, interior and exterior paint sales were both strong, with interior sales growing faster and representing a larger part of the mix. Moving on to results in our Consumer Brands Group, which now reflects the addition of a Latin America architectural business in the current quarter and prior year. Sales were well ahead of our guidance and increased by 2.4% in the quarter. Performance was better than expected in North America, where sales were down less than 1%; and in Europe, where sales were down low single digits. In other regions, sales were up strong double digits in Latin America and down double digits in Asia. Effective pricing led by Latin America was partially offset by a mid-single-digit decrease in volume and low single-digit FX headwinds. The tightness in alkyd resins impacting our ability to produce stains and aerosols improved significantly during the quarter, and we expect this issue to be behind us by the end of the second quarter...

Yes, Vincent, this is Al Mistysyn. Let me start with consolidated SG&A was up 14%. Paint Stores Group was just over 2/3 of that increase, and excluding acquisitions, was approximately 80% of the increase year-over-year. This is due to the increase in new stores and additional sales reps, which probably represented about 2/3 of the increase. Employee-related costs were higher year-over-year due to multiple merit increases beginning in the second half of last year and into the first quarter of this year.

Yes, thank you, everybody, for joining us today. I did want to remind you that please save the date for our annual financial community presentation that will be in Cleveland, as John said, on August 24. The event will also be webcast. Registration details on that will be available soon, and we look forward to seeing many of you here. To close out the call here, you heard today that we're off to a very good start to the year with today's results. And at that same time, our team knows we still have work to do, and we're prepared to do that. We know there's going to be macro headwinds as the year progresses, but we'll deliver strongly in those conditions. And we're going to remain focused on what we can control. So thank you for attending today. And as always, I will be available along with Eric Swanson for your follow-up phone calls. Thanks for your interest in Sherwin. Have a great day.