Conference Transcript - SSD 2026-06-10

Sam Reed, Analyst — Wells Fargo

Thank you so much, everybody. My name is Sam Reed, Reed Home Building, Building Product and Distributor Analyst here at Wells Fargo. I'm joined here by the Simpson manufacturing team, Michael Oski and Matt on the CEO side, and Matt Dunn on the CFO side. We're very happy for these gentlemen to join us today. We're going to start off probably with a quick slide presentation. And then we're going to dive into fireside Q&A. And then I'll leave an opportunity at the end for anybody in the audience who wants to ask questions. So anyway, gentlemen, how about let's get started? And I believe we can kick off with the slides.

Michael Olosky, CEO

Super. Sam, thanks for having us. So I'm going to do a, Matt and I are going to do a 30,000 foot kind of high level company overview. Handful of slides. So let me start with the big picture. So Simpson Strongtie, we are a leading provider of structural solutions to the building and construction industry. Our products are typically less than one percent of the bill of material, but critical to the structural integrity of the building that they go into. We believe we've got the broadest and deepest product line. We've got the broadest and deepest product line in the industry, making us really a one-stop shop for structural solutions. So we've got six different product lines up there, but at a high level, really we're talking about three main product lines. The first one's connectors. So these are highly engineered, thoroughly tested, stamped steel components that connect pieces of wood. Our founder developed this industry 70 years ago, and we believe we've got a leading position in this space with approximately 75% market share. The second major product line for us is Fasteners. It's roughly a $500 million business. These are patented, highly engineered, again, thoroughly tested products. We've got roughly 180 patents on our products. We've got eight code reports covering 30 different product lines. These products, they're differentiated. They perform better than the others in the pier, and that's our fastener product line. And then the next are mechanical anchors and adhesive anchors. So these are typically very large fasteners, very large screws, heavy-duty products that connect wood to concrete would be a good example. So think of wall panels being built, you've got to attach that to the concrete, and our mechanical anchors would be a good way to do that. But the red thread on that whole thing are structural solutions that result in safer, stronger structures. So we go to market with five market-facing sales teams in North America. In North America, the business is roughly 75 percent of the total business. So our first market segment is the residential segment, and we think roughly 50% of the total business is linked to U.S. housing starts. So this would be single-family, multifamily homes. Also kind of targeting that residential space is our component manufacturing business. So this is predominantly selling to people that make trust systems, wall panels, and roof systems. So the component manufacturing is a good business opportunity for us and one of our best opportunities going forward. both of those market segments directly linked to single-family and multi-family. The next one is commercial manufacturing, so commercial construction. So this would be really an extension of our current products into primarily stick-built commercial applications. So think retail space, think hotels, think gas stations, think dorm rooms. So really an extension of our wood connection business into the commercial constructions. space. And then national retail is a further extension of that product line really into the DIY space and the pros that you hear about with Home Depot and Lowe. Similar product line, we're selling fasteners and connectors and anchors into that national resale space. And then the OEM space for us is relatively new, one of our faster growing segments. These are areas where we tend to go direct to the customers, and it's things that are built in a factory. That could be a tiny shed, that could be tiny homes, that could be packaging, that could be kitting systems for racking systems that go into big warehouses. But it's a relatively small business source today, been fast-growing, things that are built in a factory. So three major product lines, broadest, steepest product line in the industry, five major market segments. But the piece that I think really differentiates us is our strong business model. So we take that very broad and deep product line, and we work a lot with building code officials. And we talk with them how to build right code that results in safer, stronger structures. And we have all kinds of perfect examples of that in Florida. If you look at neighborhoods that are built to the newer codes, when the last hurricane went through and you compare those newer neighborhoods built to the newer codes to the older neighborhoods, most of those newer neighborhoods came through in great shape, a little bit of landscaping damage, while neighborhoods built to the older codes had significant structural damage. So, lots of examples of how those codes really make a big impact. But we also do continuing education credits for the building code officials. We're training them on a regular basis. We're walking job sites with them. We're doing a lot to make sure that the homes are constructed in the right way to meet the codes. Then we take that solution set and our knowledge of the building codes to architects and engineers and talk to them how to design single-family, multifamily construction to meet those building codes. We also talked with them about how to use our solutions to have these great indoor outdoor areas or these big three, four car garages where in hurricane areas or seismic areas, the structural integrity of those buildings are kind of complicated and you need pretty complex structural solutions to make sure those buildings meet the codes. But that work that we do with the building code officials and that work that we do with the engineers and architects means that when the blueprints come out for that particular building, our names are all, our products are all over. We are very much a specified business, and that creates a lot of demand for our product. Next, we work with the builders, and I believe we're pretty much on every start would be my bet, but we're working a lot with the very large builders, especially the national builders. And we have rebate programs with them where we pay them a rebate, and they make sure that our products, specifically our connectors, are used in their housing starts. And we have agreements with roughly 250 builders representing roughly 50% of the housing starts where they're telling the supply chain, hey, we only want Simpson connectors. So what that does is that pulls through that demand that's created by the building codes and the specs. and by the way we're doing a lot of other work with those builders for value engineering and other things to help them with the challenges we have a good relationship with them as well but that that pulls that demand through so then we work with the the our channel partners in the middle the the contractor distributors the pro dealers the lumber yards they know that we're creating demand they know we're pulling the demand through they don't have to carry that big broad product line because we have fantastic service and delivery to them if they place an order in the morning the vast majority of the time we ship it out that afternoon they get it the next day and we believe we can reach roughly 95 percent of our ship to locations within one day and then we over the top of that business model we layer a lot of digital services and solutions that just make it easier for our customers to figure out which product they need how to engineer it all the data maybe design a custom fabrication of a part for a unique connection and in some cases is even use our digital solutions to run part of the businesses. But that creates that very, very sticky business model that makes us a leader in structural solutions. And that has really helped us develop the business over time.

Matt Dunn, CFO

Yeah, and I'll hit this slide really quickly. This is just our progress in the last five years. So starting in 2020, ending in 2025, you can kind of see on the bottom there, basically the same level of housing starts in 2020 as it was in 2025, just under 1.4 million housing starts in that time period. Simpson added roughly a billion dollars in revenue to the top line and a couple hundred million dollars roughly of operating income. Of that billion dollar top line, a little over half a billion dollars of pricing, some of that early in the time period, but also about 60 million of that in 2025. We did acquire a business in Europe called Atonco, which basically tripled the size of our European business in 2022. And then we had about 200 million dollars of volume or share gain. So this is something we like to aspire to, which is continue to outperform the market on a volume basis. We've averaged about 300 basis points a year over the last 10 years versus the market. And that kind of got us to where we are today. So we'll stop there, and I'll let Sam take it away from here.

Sam Reed, Analyst — Wells Fargo

Absolutely, guys. No, really helpful context. Let's dive in and talk a little macro here for a second. You guys sit in the thick of things servicing the home builders. We'd just love your perspective on what you're seeing on the ground at a very high level and then any perspective you might have on forward start expectations.

Michael Olosky, CEO

Yeah, good question. So, as you know, Sam, super mixed environment. And it looks like five years in a row we came into the year thinking it was going to be at least flat, hopefully with a single-digit growth. I think our budgeting and planning assumptions, part of our guidance at the beginning of the year was roughly a flat to slightly up market. With an incredibly diverse customer base, we use local market forecasters. Zonda is our partner of choice because they can give us really granular level detail to help us better understand the market. We're also interacting with all the major forecasters and all the major builders. Add all that up, it looks like this year is probably going to be five years in a row of a declining market. we think it's going to be based off the forecast we're getting a low single digit down. It's a mixed story. So Midwest, Northeast tend to do a little bit better. West Coast, Florida tend to do a little worse. I would say the Southeast a little less worse. So maybe starting to bottom out. We also see some pockets where multifamily starting to pick up. The multifamily project backlog in Southern California, which is an important area for us, a lot of content there. We've seen that project back load build, and we've heard that from a lot of our customers. We have not seen that flow through yet, so we're a little bit optimistic here. So in the meantime, Sam, the story for us is really focus on the things we can control, and that's trying to drive volume by making the market bigger, getting more content on houses, new products, new applications, trying to find pockets of growth and leverage those pockets going forward.

Sam Reed, Analyst — Wells Fargo

A lot of head fakes over the last few years, for sure. You have a lot of visibility into the space, just given that you service both the production builders and the custom home builders. Maybe just talk through some of the differences you're seeing across those two builder cohorts.

Michael Olosky, CEO

Yeah, so if you separate the two, and just fun fact, the median number of homes, the medium home-sized builder produces six homes a year. So you think single-family homes is called a million. So you've got the larger production ones driving 40, 50% of the market, and you have a huge tail, big tail. So the production guys and the large publicly traded builders have been able to use their balance sheet and a little bit their P&L to help subsidize loans. There's mixed stories there. You have lots of examples of the bigger builders offering loans in the 4-ish percent range and really not seeing an increase in traffic. So their view is it's more of a consumer sentiment, consumer confidence story. You have the smaller builders that are probably on average building bigger homes, because there you get into the custom areas. They've got a little bit of a different story, but just trying to aggregate that across so many different markets also kind of complicated. But the fact that the smaller builders that don't have the P&L and don't have the balance sheet to subsidize has created some challenges for them. So a lot of the ones that were maybe doing the smaller homes that were a little bit more price sensitive have either stepped out or instead of building three or four, maybe doing one or maybe even moving more into the home improvement area. So, again, kind of a mixed story across the board.

Sam Reed, Analyst — Wells Fargo

Absolutely. And when you think about those smaller builders that might be having a tough time in this environment, kind of walk through the role you play in terms of making their jobs easier.

Michael Olosky, CEO

We do a lot of work trying to help our builders build safer, stronger structures more efficiently. So we have all kinds of training programs on how to use the right product for the right application. We've got programs that can help them lower install the cost. There's a lot of work we're doing there. We are working with our engineers and explaining how our products can help them build better structures. We're also working on the digital solutions to help them do their jobs easier. Matt, you want to talk maybe a little bit about our digital solutions?

Matt Dunn, CFO

We've got digital solutions in the component manufacturing space, which I'm sure you'll ask some questions on later maybe. But then we've also got a number of digital tools that we have that really help our customers select the right products. So we have like fastener selector tool out of the thousands of fasteners. What's the right fasteners you can use in the right application? We've got tools that help our customers with estimating. So we provide software and in some cases sell software to lumberyards to help them make better, more accurate, more timely estimates, which is a key part of what they do in the lumberyard. We've got other tools that kind of help them to design, builders design and manage options on a home in a simpler way rather than, you know, having huge exploding CAD files. So just a number of ways where we try to make it easier for them to find the right product, you know, be efficient in the work they do, and then ultimately try to make our business model sticky.

Sam Reed, Analyst — Wells Fargo

One of the phenomenons we've seen in home building over the last few years is this concept of decontenting, and it's an area where some product manufacturers have struggled. Some have done quite well in terms of navigating through it. Just maybe walk through how you approach builder decontenting, how you perhaps are less vulnerable to it. Just love your perspective on that.

Michael Olosky, CEO

Yeah, so if you're in a hurricane-prone area, are you going to want less structural connections on your house? Absolutely not. Probably not. So the reality is that there's a code, and there are a lot of people that build code plus just to make sure that the house is even stronger in those areas. So I wouldn't say never, but for the most part, a lot of our products are dictated either by a design, where you've got big openings and there's some structural challenges associated with that, or the building code as a whole. That being said, we do do a lot of work doing value engineering with our customers, trying to figure out how to set it up and construct it the most efficient way, how to use the right products, how to use products that are fast to install. And one example of that is our acquisition strategies have been kind of a tuck-in story. We acquired a company about two years ago called EasyFrame. And EasyFrame is a saw system that enables lumberyards to provide cut packages to builders. So everybody's trying to solve the affordability area. Everybody's trying to get more efficient. There's some labor pockets issues out there. So anything you can do to speed things up is a good thing. So our EasyFrame saw can take that. Let's say we do an estimate for a house, can take that design of the wall panel, we can send that file to the easy frame saw and it'll optimize the cutting of the timber to minimize waste and then it will also print directions on that timber to facilitate faster assembly Instead of doing all of that on the job site, that cut package comes delivered, it's dropped down in that particular area of the house. people that are used to these systems and they know how to do it we believe they can save roughly one day a week so a nice 20% savings that can kind of help speed things up and instead of taking more content out to have a less safe house there are other things that we're doing to really try to adjust the

Sam Reed, Analyst — Wells Fargo

affordability story absolutely and you play in a lot of different categories and we're going to talk through some of those categories in a little bit what I wanted to drill down on was your TAM. Just roughly give me a sense as to kind of how large the market is and then perhaps talk through some of the competitive dynamics within that market.

Matt Dunn, CFO

Yeah, I can take that one. I mean, we kind of have three different TAMs based on the three product segments that Mike talked about. The first would be connectors. And if you take like the big picture TAM of connectors, it's roughly three and a half billion dollars. And that kind of breaks down into three kind of sub markets the first would be i would say traditional connectors which is the category that our founder invented you know 70 years ago this year these are stamped steel products that are part of the structural integrity of the home that market's about a billion and a half and i would estimate we're you know 80ish share and maybe 80 plus share of that market the second biggest sub market in that connector tam would be component manufacturing or trust plates, which is also roughly about a billion and a half market. There's some, some larger players in there. We're probably number three in that space today. And we're less than a 10% share. Although we, you know, we know the customers in that space because we interact with them and sell them, you know, connectors, fasteners and anchors already. And then the remaining piece of that TAM in connectors would be primarily lateral systems. So shear walls, kind of big prefab walls that go into structures, particularly around, you know, big openings, garages, things like that that market segments you know call it roughly half a billion the second tam would be fasteners so big picture the fastener you know market is probably six billion dollars if you kind of segment that into kind of more premium load rated structural kind of often specified fasteners that's probably half the market at the upper end and then you have the other half of the market that's a little bit more you know kind of resident you know homeowner slash less structural more commodity type fasteners. We play in the top space. We've got about a half billion dollar business in fasteners. So, you know, kind of roughly probably a 20% of the upper half of the share, maybe a 10% if you look at the whole TAM. And then on, and there's more competitors in that space. You know, you have some other players that are in the fastener space. And then on anchors, again, we're probably in that, you know, 10, 15% share range. We compete in two main categories, which would be mechanical anchors so kind of threaded rods that anchor things to concrete and then adhesive anchors kind of two-part epoxies and things that are you drill a hole and put the adhesive in there to anchor something in so you know certainly more shared development opportunities in anchors fasteners and component manufacturing and then you know obviously a large share in the

Sam Reed, Analyst — Wells Fargo

connector space and then when i think about what i hear from some of my production builders you they are very cost sensitive just talk through how those conversations work with some of your larger

Michael Olosky, CEO

builder customers and how you get paid for lack of a better term yeah yeah it really it's a it's a value story so we come back to what i talked about in the very beginning we're less than one percent of the material critical structural integrity we provide we believe fantastic service and support we do a lot of value engineering we're doing things like the easy frame saw to try to drive down costs so we're really just trying to have a long-term partner approach to them and make sure that they're they know how we're helping them red tag jobs train their framers and do all kinds of the small things that help add value to our to our overall product line so the affordability story is a challenge so the the pricing discussion around that is not easy

Sam Reed, Analyst — Wells Fargo

but we're we're sticking to the value story and talk through your role in off-site construction it's become quite topical obviously a lot of investors are interested in it just in terms of hey what could it do to revolutionize home building so just talk through your role in

Michael Olosky, CEO

off-site yeah i think we're on the fifth iteration of this sam maybe sixth seventh somewhere in there so the industry's tried multiple versions of this and the whole whole idea is instead of building everything on a job site can you build in a factory if you build in a factory can you be more efficient on it and over the last two decades there's been multiple versions that have tried that haven't quite panned out yet we are doing some work with a startup where we're working on multi-trade wall panels so we think that could be a little bit of a unique twist on it uh this the pitch here for the most part is a cycle time reduction because there's some critical mass challenge is you can't put factories everywhere so part of the thing we like about the startup that we're working with called tech time is that they leverage uh pro dealers current wall panel manufacturing and they're trying to embed multi-trade panels into it and we've seen some nice stories where we can really reduce cycle time uh i i think that's still some development work we're running some pilot with uh some some different customers we're feeling good about the pilot again some work to do to get that critical mass to really drive the cost down currently definitely a cycle time reduction and we're working with the builders to figure out the

Michael Olosky, CEO

best way to help them out and then you obviously have a lateral system business you know where you are you know for lack of a better term solving for you know natural disasters whether it be wind earthquakes etc maybe just talk through some of the technologies that you've introduced to the category and the role you play in sort of making homes more safer yeah uh go ahead okay so first

Michael Olosky, CEO

of all we have some pretty large accredited labs that can do not only individual component system but full system full system testing as an example in our northern california lab we have the ability to construct basically a two-story wall system and shake it a hundred different ways from sunday and see how that whole system performs, and then we can also do testing on individual components. And so that gives us a couple of different insights. It gives us the ability to how does that individual product perform in that particularly unique application, but also helps us kind of think through how does that work in the whole system. For mass timber, which is a new construction method using big, large wood cassettes, we ran a program in Southern California. I cannot remember the name of the university. We constructed, I believe, was a 10-story building, all mass timber, so basically a 10-story wood construction building of these big wood cassettes. We put all kinds of different connectors in there. We put all kinds of different sensors and cameras to just help us get a feel for it, shook that 100 different ways from Sunday, got all kinds of data on it. and all that data on a component level and on a system level just helps us really provide what i truly believe is the industry's most trusted set of structural solutions and that's just not for the connectors that's the fasteners anchors and lateral systems in the lateral system technology in general so if you have a very skinny part of a of a structure followed by a very large opening, if that incurs a seismic event or a wind event where there's some lateral side-to-side movement, that's a pretty challenging structural situation. So our latest products that we're launching in the strongwell space have even higher loads. We think they're even easier to install. There's some things that we can do to help our customers install them faster. And again, we expect a little readiness to go up. So it's one of hundreds and hundreds of examples of where we're doing deep engineering work to help our customers understand the structural part related to the building codes and how to meet things that not only meet those codes but exceed those codes that keep people safe in the house absolutely and i feel like

Sam Reed, Analyst — Wells Fargo

we're touching on this a little bit but just talk through your commercial and market exposure in a bit more detail we've talked a lot about resi but i know you you play in multiple different in markets so let's talk a little bit about your commercial and where you play there sure for us

Matt Dunn, CFO

commercial our commercial business predominantly stick frame commercials so things built with wood so this would be kind of lower rise you know retail hotels dorms restaurants those types of things so typically the products that are used and those are the same products that are used in the residential space they just have a different in market go through different channels we also have some products that in the commercial space that are that are different than that where you know you often find our anchors in a commercial building so this is where they've got a foundation a concrete slabs, something needs to be anchored to it, whether it be racks in a warehouse that get anchored into concrete or something gets pre-embedded in the concrete when it's poured to be able to anchor to it later. So lots of anchors. We have different types of fasteners that can work on cold form steel. So cold form steel would be kind of steel studs that are used to build a building. There's different types of connectors that can be used in that. You know similar products to what we use in ResiSpace but with different application. And then we've got a couple other unique items in commercial that we're we're excited about one is an acquisition we did i guess 18 months or so ago called quick frames quick frame is basically a prefabricated bolted solution for when you have to put something on the roof of a commercial building so think like an hvac unit that goes on the roof today if you're not using a quick frame you're you've got someone cutting a hole in the roof you're doing some welding to create some support quick frames makes it much easier and much more flexible to create that opening and then support that so we don't have a ton of exposure to we're much at all to data centers uh you know the occasional fastener anchors maybe we believe quick frames has the has that potential to you know make that easier maybe even potentially when you know data centers are running mep kind of corridors through the middle of the building that needs structural reinforcement so um it's a fairly recent acquisition but one we're pretty excited

Sam Reed, Analyst — Wells Fargo

about i preempted the d word question so but no glad you did let's maybe talk through some of your recent capital investments i know you've opened up a few facilities over the last few years would just love to hear kind of what those facilities do and maybe talk through how they make your

Matt Dunn, CFO

business more efficient. Sure. Yeah. So we were in a period of a couple of years of pretty heavy capex. We had two pretty significant expansions going on. One was in Gallatin, Tennessee, which is a fastener facility. And then we expanded our facility in Columbus, Ohio. I'll talk Columbus first. Columbus, Ohio is kind of our main manufacturing and distribution hub for what we would consider kind of the Midwest and the Northeast United States. So a lot of the national retail, home centers. And basically, we were out of space there. We were using outside warehouses around Columbus. We had the opportunity to acquire the property next to us and basically sort of doubled the size of our facility, got all of our warehouses back under one roof, and we have future runway to add additional production equipment as volume dictates. So for me, that's a little bit longer of a story. There's definitely a savings of getting back into kind of one space from an efficiency and synergy standpoint, as well as getting out some of those leases but certainly gives us room to run you know over the next decade plus gallatin's a little bit different story we had a factory in gallatin tennessee which is suburban nashville that made fasteners that space that facility was out of space we weren't able to do a lot of all the steps of the process that we wanted to do in that space we had to leverage some third-party vendors so we greenfielded a site across town in gallatin which opened late last fall, officially opened in January. In that facility, we make fasteners, so it's the only fastener plant in the United States where we make fasteners. The rest of our fasteners come from Taiwan, which is pretty much the fastener capital of the world. Previous to this facility, we made about a third of the fasteners we sell in Gallatin and imported about two-thirds from Taiwan. That mix is going to shift more 50-50, U.S. versus Taiwan. This facility also gives us the opportunity to do all the steps of the process of making a fastener so not only forming the the fastener from the wire but heat treating it and coating it which is a process we used to have to send out we were able to do that inside so kind of vertically integrated there and then also gives us the opportunity to improve lead times particularly in some segments where you need a little bit quicker lead time on think mass timber jobs you're making some pretty heavy duty custom type fasteners we used to buy those from taiwan which had a 9, 10, 11 month lead time, and being able to make them in Gallatin is more like a 5 or 6 month lead time, which gives us the opportunity to quote more jobs than we were before because of lead time. So again, I think expansion, room to grow over time. We talked about in our Q1 release, a little bit of startup pain on heat treating coating, which is kind of the first time we've done that in-house, but we'll work through that. And ultimately, we think this has a long way of growth for supporting fastener business in the US.

Sam Reed, Analyst — Wells Fargo

Maybe sticking on the theme of growth, you've added some categories to your mix over the last few years. Let's maybe talk through some areas where you think you could see some growth in the future or perhaps some holes in the portfolio that you'd like to fill.

Michael Olosky, CEO

Good question. First of all, we are in a very specialized, very decentralized industry. The way we run the business is by market and product playbooks. So the five market segments that we talked about, we've got very specific plans on customers we want to go after, products we want to develop, merchandising changes we want to make, packaging changes, just everything specifically that market segment. We also have it on the product side, so there's an interaction of how those two relate. So when we add all that, you know, we're always looking for tuck-in opportunities. We're all always looking to how we can extend our product lines. If you take a look at where it kind of lines up to some of the bigger opportunities, we think the component manufacturing story is a good story for us. Current customers, they know us. We've got a good solution there from a software perspective that we're making a lot better. So we think there's some opportunity there from an innovation perspective. Just ramping up our innovation machine, getting better at running out these products that help us extend the product lines, there's some work there. You know, Sam, to give you a very specific example, when we look at some pockets of areas where we think we could get some good growth and there's a little bit of a tailwind, we think all things backyard is a good story because people don't need to move and switch mortgages. They don't need to maybe do a huge project and tap into a home equity loan at a high interest rate. And we've got solutions that help people build decks and pergolas and fences, and we continue to add to that product line. So we've just recently launched some product to help people build a pergola in one day. It's kind of big, chunky, black hardware. We've got some other products where if you've got a walkout deck, which is common in Midwestern, and you look up and you typically see that it's kind of stamped steel. Now we paint it black. We get a nice little premium for it. It looks a little bit better on it. We can broaden out that product line. I always use a baseball analogy. Lots of singles and doubles to kind of extend things out and make sure that we've got a broad product line for all those markets where it makes financial sense. Another example is moving into maybe a little bit of a side market for us, which is around post frame. Pole barns, same thing, big connections in there. We have some products for that space. We think there are some other things we can do to make those buildings safer, stronger, and more efficient. So we're looking at some new connections in that area. And it's just lots of singles and double sand trying to help us grow the business.

Sam Reed, Analyst — Wells Fargo

Honestly, it sounds like a lot of cool potential products. So really quickly.

Michael Olosky, CEO

We can help you build sand.

Sam Reed, Analyst — Wells Fargo

No, I don't want to give up my low rate mortgage. So you might have to.

Michael Olosky, CEO

At least a deck.

Sam Reed, Analyst — Wells Fargo

Quickly, if anybody in the audience has questions, I've got one or two more. But I wanted to at least give anyone the option. If not, we've got just. All right. We'll switch back over to the other side of the pond. You do have a business in Europe, which is love the State of the Union of the European business. And walk us through what you do there.

Matt Dunn, CFO

Yeah. So we have roughly a half billion dollar business in Europe. We had a legacy Simpson business. So it was about 150 million euro going back a number of years. In 2022, we acquired a business called Atonco, which basically tripled the size of the business to get us to that, you know, 450 million euro business or so. So the Otanko business skews a little bit more commercial. So commercial and fasteners are kind of the wheelhouse for them. Our legacy business is a little bit more residential. We've been focused on getting our footprint right over the last couple of years. The market in Europe has been a bit of a challenge, you know, probably since a couple of months after we acquired Otanko when, you know, Russia invaded Ukraine. Some things changed in the European economy. We're starting to see the European outlook for housing and commercial starts to be a little bit better. in 26 may actually be a little bit better than the U.S., which has not been the case for quite some time. We're focused on getting the profitability up, so we believe we need to be at a 15% operating income in the midterm in Europe. Last year, we were in the mid-eighths. If you take out kind of the one-time restructuring costs, we were pretty much right at 10% last year. So seeing progress there and hopefully seeing some green shoots in the market, which gives us a little bit more opportunity to invest. But I think as far as that goes, getting to the 15%, need a little bit of market growth tailwind but a lot of it's within our control to get you know a good chunk of the way there ourselves i've got a minute left matt one quick

Sam Reed, Analyst — Wells Fargo

question on capital allocation we just love your perspective on where we stand there and any sort of objectives you're really trying to to target sure as i mentioned earlier we come through a

Matt Dunn, CFO

pretty heavy capex cycle so we're getting that back into kind of more normal capex range which is about 80 million dollars a year compared to close to double that for the last couple years We've got a little bit of debt remaining from the Ataco acquisition, pretty low leverage. Going to be chunking that down, but that leaves opportunity for M&A, of which there's not a lot of significant size opportunities in our space, more of the tuck-in variety that Mike talked about. So ultimately, it leaves cash to return to shareholders. So we've been ramping up our share buyback a little bit over the last couple of years. We started last year with $100 million authorization and ended up buying $120 million. We started this year with 150 million authorization, which is still the case, but we bought back 50 million in the first quarter. And so kind of making sure we maintain our optionality on M&A if one of the few that makes sense comes on. But other than that, you know, returning cash to shareholders.

Sam Reed, Analyst — Wells Fargo

Gentlemen, I think we are right at time. Thank you so much.

Matt Dunn, CFO

All right. Thank you very much.

Sam Reed, Analyst — Wells Fargo

Thank you for coming on here.