Earnings Call Transcript
WESCO INTERNATIONAL INC (WCC)
Earnings Call Transcript - WCC Q1 2022
Operator, Operator
Hello and welcome to today's WESCO's First Quarter earnings call. I would now hand the conference call to Will Ruthrauff, Director of Investor Relations to begin. Will, over to you.
William Ruthrauff, Director of Investor Relations
Thank you and good morning everyone. Before we get started, I want to remind you that certain statements made on this call contain forward-looking information. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of performance and by their nature are subject to inherent uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially. Please see our webcast slides as well as the Company's SEC filings for additional risk factors and disclosures. Any forward-looking information relayed on this call speaks only as of this date, and the Company undertakes no obligation to update the information to reflect the changed circumstances. Additionally, today we will use certain non-GAAP financial measures. Required information about these non-GAAP measures is available on our webcast slides and in our press release, both of which are posted on our website at wesco.com. On the call this morning, we have John Engel, Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer, and David Schulz, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Now, I'll turn the call over to John.
John Engel, CEO
Well, thank you, Will. And good morning, everyone. It’s a pleasure to be with you. Our first quarter results speak volumes about WESCO's foundation for accelerating growth and profitability. After delivering exceptional performance in 2021, we’re off to an even more impressive start in 2022. Once again, we have outperformed the market, and we achieved new company records for sales, profitability, and backlog. Each of our three global business units delivered double-digit sales and profit growth, with results that are now well above 2019 pre-pandemic levels. We also continued our rapid de-levering, which now stands at 3.6 times adjusted EBITDA compared to 5.7 times when we closed the Anixter acquisition just seven quarters ago. This is by far the strongest quarter since the new WESCO was formed by the transformational combination of WESCO and Anixter in June of 2020. With each quarter, the power of WESCO, its increased scale, expanded portfolio, and industry-leading positions becomes more evident as we build momentum and deliver superior value to all of our customers. As a result of our expanding start to the year and the accelerating momentum across our business, we're substantially raising our outlook for 2022 as well as increasing our cumulative sales synergy target through the end of 2023. Importantly, we continue to invest in our digital transformation effort, which will raise WESCO to an even higher level of performance, operating efficiency, and customer loyalty. Overall, our results continue to prove the extraordinary value of the WESCO Anixter combination and point to a future of sustained growth and market out-performance. Dave will review our financial results and address our substantially higher full-year outlook in more detail shortly. But before I hand it off to Dave, I wanted to address three additional items. First, it's WESCO’s results versus pre-pandemic levels. Second, our uniquely strong position to capitalize on the attractive secular growth trends in our end markets. And third, our new co-brand identity that we launched earlier this year. Turning to page five. The strength of the new WESCO and our accelerating growth and profitability is best measured by comparing our results to pre-pandemic levels in 2019. This page spotlights the comparisons versus WESCO plus Anixter 2019 pro forma results. Sales were up 21%, over $4.9 billion in the first quarter; adjusted EBITDA nearly doubled from $187 million to $364 million, with a trailing 12 months’ rate of $1.32 billion; adjusted EBITDA margin expanded 280 basis points to 7.4% in the third quarter. This reflects outstanding execution of our integration program and delivery of our costs, sales, and margin synergies. Finally, we deleveraged over two turns to 3.6 times since the Anixter closing in June 2020, which is well ahead of our external target. These results clearly demonstrate the power of the transformational combination of WESCO plus Anixter. Moving to Page 6, our focus on providing our global customers with the products, services, and supply chain solutions that they need is what drives us each and every day. We're executing at a very high level and we're exceptionally well positioned to capitalize on the strong secular growth trends and increasing investments in public sector infrastructure outlined on this page. These long-term growth drivers positively impact each of our three global business units. As I previously said, the new WESCO is becoming a growth company. We have a record backlog and accelerating cross-sell program, a growing opportunity pipeline, and very positive momentum overall. Most importantly, we are only in the early stages of unlocking our total growth potential. Now, turning to Page 7. The transformational combination of WESCO and Anixter in June 2020 created a new company with increased scale, a higher growth portfolio, and significantly expanded capability. We launched a new brand platform to better reflect our new company and amplify the key attributes that describe the new WESCO. Outlined on this page are forward statements that are central to our new brand. First, our mission. Our mission is to build, connect, power, and protect the world. Second, our vision. Our vision is to be the best tech-enabled supply chain solutions provider in the world. Operative word being tech-enabled. Third, our purpose. Our purpose is for life to run smoothly. It should run smoothly so we can create a world you can depend on. Finally, our promise. Our promise is ingenuity delivered. I'm very proud of our team’s continued commitment to realizing the vision and mission of the new WESCO. Our exceptional results are a testament to the ingenuity and solutions-driven mindset that are hallmarks of our culture. Our new logo in the center of this page is more than a change in design. It is a W with an embedded A and provides a visual representation of the coming together of WESCO and Anixter to drive growth and innovation, responsibly and sustainably. We will utilize our new brand through engagement with our customers and suppliers, as well as in our new employee recruiting campaign. I encourage you to visit our new website, which was launched a little over a week ago to experience our exciting new WESCO brand. With that, I'll now turn the call over to Dave.
David Schulz, CFO
Thanks, John. And good morning. I'll start on Slide 9 with a summary of our first quarter results compared to the prior year. As John mentioned, first quarter sales were a record and exceeded our expectations. We had anticipated sales would decline sequentially versus the fourth quarter, consistent with our normal seasonal pattern. Sequentially, organic sales were essentially flat from Q4 and up 21% from the prior year, as we experienced an acceleration of sales in the second half of the quarter. The primary driver of this difference relative to our expectations were stronger demand, more cross-sell revenue recorded in the quarter, and an increased benefit from price. On a reported basis, sales were up 22%. Currency and last year's required Canadian divestitures were a combined 80 basis points headwind to growth, offset by the benefit of an extra workday, which added 160 basis points to sales. We estimate pricing added approximately 8 points to sales growth in the quarter, which primarily benefited our EEF and UBS businesses. Pricing in the CSS business was a low single-digit benefit versus the prior year. Supply chain challenges have continued to impact certain pockets of our business. We believe our sales growth could have been 1% to 2% points higher if we were able to secure additional products from our suppliers to meet demand. We continue to strategically invest in our inventories in the quarter to address these challenges, as well as support our strong pipeline of sales growth opportunities. Backlog reached another record level this quarter and was up 25% sequentially from December, and up more than 9% from the prior year. Each business unit posted sequential backlog increases of more than 20% from the fourth quarter and increases of at least 70% above the prior year. As we start the second quarter, demand continues to be strong. Preliminary April results are very encouraging, with sales up approximately 22% year-over-year, on a same workday basis. Gross margin was at 21.3% in the quarter, up 120 basis points versus the prior year and up 50 basis points sequentially. This strong performance was primarily driven by our gross margin improvement program, including the effective pass-through of supplier price increases, and the absence of an inventory write-down related to PPE equipment in the prior period. Recall the impact of the PPE write-down was 20 basis points in the prior year quarter. Adjusted EBITDA, which excludes merger-related and integration costs, stock-based compensation, and other net adjustments, was 68% higher than the prior year and represented 7.4% of sales, an all-time high for the company and 200 basis points higher than the prior year. I'll walk you through the main drivers of this improvement in a moment. Adjusted diluted EPS for the quarter was $3.63, an all-time record, up more than 150% from the prior year. The primary driver of this increase was higher sales, as well as an $0.11 tailwind from lower interest expense due to refinancing activities last year. The combination of a higher tax rate, divestitures, foreign exchange, and a higher share count collectively represented a $0.29 headwind. The effective tax rate was lower than our fiscal year outlook but higher than the prior year due to less benefit from certain discrete tax items. Turning to Page 10, you can see that the higher sales expanded gross margin and integration cost synergies drove the $148 million increase in adjusted EBITDA. As you'd expect in the strong demand and inflationary environment, we continue to experience higher volume-related operating costs, including shipping and sales commissions, as well as higher expenses for employee benefits and incentive compensation. Finally, we incurred higher expenses related to our investment in IT systems and digital tools. Overall, we delivered strong operating leverage as we generated a 68% increase in adjusted EBITDA on organic sales growth of 21%, a greater than three times multiple. Moving through our strategic business units, beginning on Slide 11. Sales in our EDS segment were up 21% year-over-year in the first quarter on an organic basis, with double-digit growth in all operating groups. This growth reflects construction sales that continue to increase with the recovery of the non-residential market. We also continue to see increasing momentum in our industrial and OEM businesses, supported by the broader industrial recovery. Elevated bidding activity drove a further increase in our EDS backlog from its record level in the prior quarter. We also made progress on our cross-sell initiatives and are capturing demand driven by the secular growth trends that John discussed earlier. Adjusted EBITDA was at $190 million, a record level, and up more than 70% from the prior year. Adjusted EBITDA margin was 9.2%, 270 basis points higher year-over-year. This increase reflects effective price cost pass-through, strong cost synergy realization, and operating cost leverage. Turning to Slide 4, sales in our CSS segment were up 14% versus the prior year on an organic basis. We saw double-digit growth in both the network infrastructure and security solutions operating groups driven by data center and hyperscale projects. Continued investments in cloud-based application and audio-visual installations and increased return to workplace activities. Where strong CSS sales growth was not as robust as EEF and UBS was primarily due to supply chain constraints in select product categories within the industry. We're helping our customers to effectively navigate these challenges. Backlog increased 23% from year-end to another record level reflecting continued strong demand driven by our cross-sell program and the secular growth trends in our end markets. Profitability was also strong, with adjusted EBITDA of 8.6% in the quarter, 130 basis points higher than the prior year, driven by operating leverage, integration cost synergies, and the execution of our margin improvement initiatives. Turning to Slide 13, organic sales in our UBS segment were up 30% versus the prior year. Utility demand has remained strong as both our investor-owned utility and public power customers continue to invest in grid hardening and modernization. Demand in our Broadband business is capitalizing on the complementary portfolio of products and services, as well as the minimal overlap between legacy WESCO and legacy Anixter customers. The size of CSS allowed us to jointly win an award for $40 million of cable, powered cable, and network infrastructure products related to the construction of a new semiconductor fabrication facility in the United States. In another example, CSS was able to sell Anixter products to a legacy WESCO customer to support the build-out of the passive optical network of an entertainment theme park. In the third example, UBS sold an additional $10 million of Anixter wire and cable products through a long-term WESCO Utility customer. Our cross-sell momentum is building and clearly highlights the power of the combined portfolio. Turning to Slide 16. On the left side of the slide, you can see in the gray boxes that we realized cumulative run rate cost synergies of $188 million in 2021 and realized $63 million in Q1 of this year. We are on track to meet our expected target of $315 million by the end of 2023. Recall that these savings are relative to the 2019 pro forma base. On the right side of the slide, we've outlined the $315 million of cost savings target by synergy type, and in the chart, you get a sense for the synergies that have been realized to date in each category. For example, the estimated $45 million in corporate overhead savings have now been fully realized. The largest remaining synergies are those that take longer to execute, including those related to supply chain and field operations. Turning to Page 17, on the left side of this page, you will see a bridge from first quarter adjusted net income to free cash flow. The $6 million use of cash primarily reflects a combination of depreciation and amortization, interest, and income taxes which were add backs to net income in the quarter, offset primarily by incentive compensation payments accrued for 2021 performance and paid out in March. Working capital was a $339 million use of cash for the quarter, primarily driven by higher receivables of $325 million due to the strength of our sales and continued investment in inventory to support this level of growth, maintain customer service levels, and support projects in our backlog. Lastly, the CapEx and IT spend reflects our investment related to our ongoing digital transformation, consistent with our plan. On the right side of this page, you can see that we are gaining efficiencies in working capital on a trailing 12-month basis, using a five-quarter ending balance sheet average, networking capital improved by more than five days, compared to the end of the prior year quarter, driven by lower inventory days outstanding and days payable. Moving to Slide 18, reducing our leverage has been a top priority since we announced the merger gap. In the first quarter, we reduced leverage by 0.3 times trailing 12 months Adjusted EBITDA, and brought our leverage ratio down to 3.6 times. This represents a decrease of 2.1 leverage turns since closing the acquisition in June of 2020; this accelerated pace of de-levering reflects the strength of our B2B distribution model and our ability to rapidly return to our target leverage range. We now expect to return to our target leverage range in the second quarter of the full year earlier than we originally committed to at the time the acquisition closed. Moving to Page 19, we are updating our full-year outlook. Based on this quarter's results, strong demand trends, the continued expansion of our backlog, and the significant growth of our cross-sell synergies, we are increasing our full-year sales outlook from the previous range of 5% to 8% to a range of 12% to 15%. Our assumption for market growth is 9% to 11%, including the benefit of price. We expect the demand environment for our products, services, and solutions to continue to be strong. However, we recognize that supply chain constraints and the phase of inflation present some uncertainties. We are increasing our outlook for growth from share gains and cross-sell synergies from 3% to 4% as we expect to continue to outperform the market and that increased our expectations for higher cross-sell revenue as discussed earlier. Lastly, keep in mind that 2022 has one more workday than 2021 that occurred in the first quarter, which we estimate will add 0.5 points of growth in 2022. With regard to our business units, we expect that EEF and UBS will be towards the upper end of our sales range for the full year. CSS is expected to be at or slightly below the low end of the range. This outlook reflects our expectation that foreign exchange will be neutral. Also included in our outlook is a contract with a Utility customer that will shift from a full revenue model to a service fee model, which will negatively impact sales by approximately half a point with no impact on EBITDA. For Adjusted EBITDA margin, we are increasing our outlook for a range of 7.3% to 7.6%, primarily reflecting increased operating leverage on higher sales, as well as continued benefit from our gross margin improvement program. At the midpoint of this sales EBITDA margin range, our full-year outlook for adjusted EBITDA is $1.54 billion, which represents a substantial increase versus the midpoint of our prior outlook range of $1.33 billion. We're also reducing our effective tax rate to 24% for the year, primarily reflecting the lower effective tax rate in the first quarter. Our outlook does not assume any impact from these three items that we experienced in the first quarter. We are increasing our adjusted EPS outlook by 26% at the midpoint to a range of $14 to $15, which represents growth versus the prior year of 40% to 50%. Lastly, we are adjusting our expectation for cash flow towards approximately 80% of adjusted net income, which reflects the need for higher investment in working capital to support our increased sales outlook. I would like to point out that even though this reflects a lower percentage of net income, the increased outlook for net income implies that we expect WESCO to generate a similar amount of free cash flow dollars this year as reflected in our previous outlook. This outlook reflects a handful of assumptions that I would like to remind you of. Based on our first quarter results and outlook for the year, our short-term compensation structure is reflected in our margin outlook at an above-target payout, but lower than 2021 on a dollar basis. We expect this result in sales will be approximately offset by an increase in transportation and logistics costs that we mentioned last quarter. On cash flow, we still expect to spend approximately $120 million in combined capital expenditures in IT and digital investments. In the statement of cash flows, approximately $45 million will flow through capital expenditures and approximately $75 million will flow through changes in other assets. We expect to realize the full $18 million of annual interest savings related to the redemption of our 2024 notes that we completed in June of last year. Recall that in 2021, we realized approximately $2 million of the full $18 million annual benefit. Our outlook does not incorporate the potential effects of any further refinancing activity this year. Our outlook assumes an average diluted share count of approximately 53 million shares for the year. Lastly, the outlook does not reflect any potential changes to applicable tax laws. As we think about our sales profile by quarter, Q2 is off to a strong start. The base period comparisons on a sales per workday basis are tougher, and we would expect the monthly growth rates to moderate in May and June. We expect our sales profile by quarter will follow the historical seasonality pattern. Recall that in the fourth quarter of 2021, sales per workday increased sequentially versus the third quarter. We do not expect this pattern to repeat in 2022, consistent with typical seasonality. Moving to Slide 20 before opening the call for questions, let me provide a brief summary of what we covered this morning. This was an exceptional start to the year and we have accelerated momentum across our business. We delivered very strong financial results across the board, including record level sales, operating profit, adjusted EBITDA, and adjusted EPS, and the strongest quarter since the Anixter transaction closed in June 2020. Every segment of our business grew versus the prior year and compared to 2019 levels. We delivered adjusted EBITDA margin expansion of 200 basis points over the prior year, driven by the benefit of sales growth, our value-based pricing execution, accelerated cross-sell, and continued cost synergy generation. Our pace of de-levering has exceeded our expectations, and we're very close to being back within our target leverage range, just 21 months or seven quarters after closing the acquisition of Anixter. Lastly, we're making excellent progress on our IT and digital roadmap and are exceptionally well positioned to benefit from the secular growth trends and increasing public sector investments that John discussed earlier. With that, let's open the call for questions.
Operator, Operator
Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. Please limit your questions to one question and one follow-up. Our first question comes from Deane Dray of RBC Capital Markets.
Deane Dray, Analyst
Thank you. Good morning, everyone.
Operator, Operator
Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Deane Dray, Analyst
Thank you. Good morning, everyone. And congrats on an exceptionally strong quarter.
John Engel, CEO
Morning, Deane.
Deane Dray, Analyst
I got a couple, a near-term and medium-term question, if I could. So near-term, given the supply chain challenges that your manufacturing suppliers are feeling, and Dave commented about those uncertainties. And you could have shipped another one or two percentage points higher if it weren't for some of those disruptions, can you comment on product availability and fill rates in the quarter and how you are set up for a second quarter?
John Engel, CEO
I couldn't be more pleased with our partnership with our suppliers. We have very strong collaborations in place. While there are supply chain challenges, we believe it's our responsibility as a leading B2B distributor to address these challenges for the benefit of our customers. Regarding our operating KPIs, we are achieving high fill rates and availability that are consistent with what we consider normal business operations. This is positive news. Our stock inflow business is performing exceptionally well. We have strategically increased our inventory to support stock inflow as well as the project business, much of which is currently in backlog. In many cases, we are preparing kits, staging, and storing various components, modules, products, and subsystems to create complete solutions as suppliers deliver different parts to us. We then assemble them into full solutions for our customers. Despite the global supply chain challenges, all our operational KPIs are performing well and are in line with our historically high levels. We are clearly witnessing the advantages of our supply chain management, which includes our selective inventory investments and the significantly stronger relationships we have built with our supplier partners. This is a direct outcome of merging Anixter and WESCO.
Deane Dray, Analyst
That's really helpful. And more of a medium-term or just looking out for the balance of the year you've got another record backlog. How does it convert? And can you give us a sense of the implied margins in that backlog?
John Engel, CEO
We are not slowing down the backlog. We have a record opportunity pipeline, and our bid activity is at unprecedented levels, leading to a higher order securing rate compared to our sales rate. The backlog is increasing significantly, which I view as a positive challenge for the business. As supply chain challenges improve, we expect to execute at a higher shipping rate against the accumulated backlog. Our goal is not to slow down the input side of this equation; we are actively working to win new orders and execute our bids, and we are very satisfied with our cross-selling efforts and the wins we are achieving. Regarding margins, we monitor the margin rates of the backlog, which are on the rise. While I can't disclose specific figures, the positive trend in backlog margins aligns with the growth we've seen in our reported gross margins.
Deane Dray, Analyst
That's great. And if I could just sneak one more question in, I really like Page 6 and all the multiple long-term drivers. And on the right-hand side, this is something you would not have seen in WESCO previously, but it's there now. Can you expand on the point on unlocking the value of WESCO's big data? I'm sure this is part of the digital transformation, but what color can you provide?
John Engel, CEO
I have talked a little bit about this only briefly in our last few earnings calls. And it is something that we need to really spend a lot more quality time on with all of you, our investors and analysts covering the company. That is our plan, Deane, in our Investor Day that we are going to conduct later this year. It'll be our first Investor Day since 2019. I'll be our first Investor Relations gathering. But just to address your question directly, we're in the midst of a very aggressive and comprehensive digital transformation effort. And it is our digital applications that are going to unlock the power of our big data. Our big data really is, if you think about it, we have significantly more data on our customers, their operations, their demand profiles, what products go with what in what sequence. The current state of their operations and what needs to be upgraded, what needs to be maintained, and at what cadence. We have significantly more data than our supplier partners have. Because the majority of our supplier partners’ sales go through distribution. It is one of our top assets of the corporation that doesn't show up as an asset on the balance sheet explicitly. So one of the things that was incredibly important to us, and we have been working on this for years, pre-Anixter, and Anixter was working on that. We're putting in place a new, refined and expansive master data management construct. Both companies have been working on that. When we put the two companies together, one of our top priorities is getting both respective companies' big data and putting it into one world-class data lake. And we've done that. So we're at the point now where we're increasingly starting to unlock the power of that big data through a series of digital applications, and we use the term digital products that we're developing using Agile methodology, in conjunction with our lean culture. So let me give you a few examples. I alluded to these before. One of these is an AI-enabled product search function, a smart search function that we make available to our inside sales team so that they can do a more effective job of finding the best product for that customer or application as demand rolls in. Another one is an intelligent pricing application. The third is something we call our Unified Sales Desk, and think about that as the umbrella for all the front-end digital applications that we're going to bring to bear on our sales force to help them be much more effective with customers. An example of a product we've taken outside our four walls is what we announced last quarter, that conference room AV as a service, that's the first quarter of growth in digital products that we've taken outside our four walls, and we're selling it as a service to customers. We're in the very early stages of this, but I think you can sense my excitement. The power of this is going to be exceptional in terms of value creation and the greater ability to serve customers. And it's something we've got to take you through much more expansively than I've said, and we've got those plans later this year.
Deane Dray, Analyst
All sounds good, thank you.
John Engel, CEO
Thanks, Deane.
Operator, Operator
Thank you. Our next question comes from Sam Darkatsh of Raymond James. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Sam Darkatsh, Analyst
Good morning, John. Good morning, Dave. How are you?
John Engel, CEO
Good morning.
David Schulz, CFO
Thanks.
Sam Darkatsh, Analyst
Fantastic start to the year, obviously. Dave, two questions for you, if I could. Within the 80% free cash flow conversion assumption, are you assuming that you've finally reached where you'd like to be for inventory by year-end? I mean in other words, at what point do you imagine that you're going to be returning to a normal 100% conversion rate?
David Schulz, CFO
We have assumed that we get back to typical inventory levels to support the demand. And obviously, we are facing supply chain challenges. We talked about that, every company is dealing with it. We're aggressively going after inventory where and when we can. But right now, our assumption is that as we see that typical seasonal quarterly pattern for sales, we would expect that our fourth quarter sales and requirement for inventory would also come down to those typical levels and return back to typical inventory levels to support our customer requirements.
Sam Darkatsh, Analyst
Got you. And then my second question. Looking at the incremental guidance both in the guidance raise, the increase. It looks like you're raising guidance by roughly $3 billion in sales and about $210 million in EBITDA. And that change is about a 16%, 17% incremental margin. And you're not changing your synergies. So what I guess I'm getting at is, is that what we should be looking at for the organization's incremental margin on a go-forward basis, organically, assuming high single low double digit type growth rates? Is that the new normal for WESCO? Because I'm guessing that's quite a bit higher than many people have baked into their models.
David Schulz, CFO
And that's what we've talked about in some of our previous earnings calls. The simplest way to think about our incremental margin, particularly within a year, is take that as the gross margin. Lastly, additional variable costs that are required to support those incremental sales, so that's roughly four to five points. So again, within this current year, we believe that we can handle that incremental volume within our current fixed cost base. So that's one of the key drivers of the benefits that we're seeing with the increased guidance, that incremental margin in 2022. As we continue to grow the company, we are always focused on driving additional synergies from supply chain and our field operations. Those are built into our out-year expectations. Again, we've not changed our cost synergies for the year, so net-net; our incremental margin from the guidance is the right way to think about it going forward.
Sam Darkatsh, Analyst
The reason why I'm bringing that up is there was already kind of high teens incremental assumed for the year inclusive of the synergies. That was the rationale for the question. So you're saying that even exclusive of the synergies going forward, we're still looking at a mid to high teens incremental?
David Schulz, CFO
That's correct. In the near-term.
John Engel, CEO
And Sam, you’re also noticing the impact of increased operating leverage, especially with cross-sell, given the dynamics of cross-sell. This is largely due to the reduced overlap between the customer bases of Anixter and WESCO, as their portfolios turned out to be more complementary than expected. When considering our capability to effectively execute cross-sell strategies, we do not need to add resources at the usual rate to achieve incremental sales growth. This is contributing to additional seller margin pull-through.
Sam Darkatsh, Analyst
Got you. And if I can squeeze one more in. It looks like most of your synergies recognized in the quarter were in field operations and general and administrative expenses, with a little bit in supply chain. It seems like the majority were in field operations and general and administrative expenses. At what point do we start to see the incremental synergies for the rest of the year filter through cost of sales instead of general and administrative expenses?
David Schulz, CFO
We should begin seeing some of those supply chain benefits from our cost synergies in 2022. And again, some of that is negotiating into stock costs with our suppliers; it also includes our supplier volume rebates. We would anticipate that as we continue to grow, there would be incremental benefit, and we would recognize some of those cost synergies here in the current year.
Sam Darkatsh, Analyst
Terrific stuff. I'll defer to others. Thanks again.
David Schulz, CFO
Thanks, Sam.
Operator, Operator
Thank you. Our next question comes from David Manthey from Baird. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
David Manthey, Analyst
Thank you. Good morning, everyone.
John Engel, CEO
Good morning.
David Schulz, CFO
Good morning.
David Manthey, Analyst
First question on pacing and seasonality. Hi, John. Typically, your EBITDA margin percentage is lowest in the first quarter and then increases in the second and third quarters. However, based on the guidance, it appears that seasonality is less pronounced this year, and I’m curious if you could elaborate on the typical rise from the first to the second quarter. What factors are contributing to this year being somewhat less than usual? It still looks good, but according to your guidance, the increase seems to be less than a full percentage point. Can you discuss the reasons behind this?
David Schulz, CFO
Certainly, as we think about our sales profile by quarter, we anticipate that our Q2 and Q3 sales will be up sequentially versus Q1 and one of the things from an EBITDA margin profile, we anticipate that our SG&A on a dollar basis will also increase, primarily because April 1 is when we pay out merit increases. So our salaries, wages, and benefits will go up effective the beginning of the second quarter. But based on the expected top-line growth sequentially, we would anticipate that we would get adjusted EBITDA margin expansion sequentially from Q1 to Q2. And then given the seasonality when sales come down in the fourth quarter, we would give back some of that adjusted EBITDA margin, just given that we still have the same SG&A costs to support the sales.
Sam Darkatsh, Analyst
Okay, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Second, if I heard you right, Dave, you mentioned that price in CSS is low single-digits. Does that imply that EEF and UBS are low double-digits or high single digits, I couldn't find your point on that? And then just the last part of this gross margin question, could you talk about the magnitude by which inventory gains or temporary timing of price increases over lower-cost inventory is helping gross margin to whatever extent to measure that.
David Schulz, CFO
Certainly, on the pricing question at the enterprise level, we noted that we have approximately eight points of benefit to our sales growth. As we said, that would imply that both EEF and UBS are low double-digit, offsetting what we saw within our CSS business, low single-digit. So you're absolutely right in the way that you're thinking about that. It is very clear that we are getting the benefit of inflation, but again it’s very, very difficult to call that out. What I would point to is we are continuing to get the benefit of our gross margin improvement program. That has continued to get traction across our combined company. When you take a look back at some of the legacy results with Anixter prior to the merger, in a relatively low pricing environment, they were able to get significant gross margin expansion. As we've talked about in the past, we've deployed that now across our entire company, and we're still in the early stages of getting the benefit from that across the legacy WESCO businesses. And again, one of the key components of that is ensuring that we are effectively passing through price increases to our customers and getting paid for the value. We do expect that we will continue to see the benefits of the gross margin improvement program. It’s very, very difficult for us to call out the differential between price to customer versus our average with inventory cost. It’s very difficult to calculate that and provide you any quantitative answer there.
David Manthey, Analyst
Yeah. Very good. Alright, thank you very much. Good luck.
John Engel, CEO
Thanks.
Operator, Operator
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Nigel Coe of Wolfe Research. Your line is open, please go ahead.
Nigel Coe, Analyst
Thanks. Good morning.
John Engel, CEO
Good morning, Nigel.
Nigel Coe, Analyst
Good morning. Good morning, John. I really liked the new logo. I didn't see the A in the W so I'll let it point that out to me. I want to come back to just very quickly the margin seasonality point because just going back in time, 1Q margins are normally the weakest of the year, and normally below the full year. So are we just pointing to weaker seasonality than normal, and how much of this conservatism we're one quarter into a pretty uncertain time. There are some known headwinds coming up. Perhaps supply of price increases, etc. Any more color would be helpful.
John Engel, CEO
We're not going to guide the guide, Nigel, we won't do that. But with that said, if you look at supplier price increases, let me touch upon that point versus import. When you look at number, quantity, and magnitude, we're not seeing them continue to increase sequentially. So I think we've reached the stage where they're still high. Their numbers are large and are high reflecting the overall higher inflation environment, but they're not spiking up. The reality of this is that we've now posted three quarters in a row of results that are well, well above standard seasonality. We’ve also posted now seven quarters since we closed this transformational combination of transactions. We think we clearly are building a very strong track record of delivering exceptional results, rapidly de-levering still against the backdrop that’s challenging. It's a supply-constrained value chain. So I think what you see there, we are thrilled, literally thrilled with the strong results in Q1. It comes on the heels of the Q4 and a Q3. The second half of last year was much better than normal seasonality and capped off an exceptional year. We raised the guide much more than our deeds, and I think it does represent very clear confidence in not only the demand environment that we can access and deliver against, but more importantly, this is the confidence in our execution. So that's the message that you should take away. If I were to use one word to describe our execution and results, it's they're accelerating.
Nigel Coe, Analyst
No doubt about it. My quick follow-up is about Canada. Can we discuss Canada briefly? It's a high margin region, and we're noticing some acceleration in the steel points there. Could you provide an update on the recovery in that area? That would be helpful.
John Engel, CEO
Yeah. Great question, we've had a very strong, electrical base business in Canada from some Utility positions that we had built through a few selective acquisitions. But I would say just deep, strong, broad roots as the undisputed leader in electrical distribution in Canada pre-acquisition. If you look at what Anixter brought to the table, they brought exceptionally strong wiring and cable market leadership, which clearly they were the category leader in North America. They also brought a very strong Utility business that they acquired when they bought power solutions from H.C. Supply. I think if you all know, we went through the regulatory approvals and had to do some divestitures related to utilities as well as data-com. Obviously, Anixter, tremendous data-com and IP security capability is a key part of being a global leader. So we found that as the foundation. If you look at our Canadian results, they're exceptional. We have outstanding broad-based momentum across our Canadian business. The complementary nature of the two portfolios is contributing to a very large degree. The secular trends in particular are a positive driver for our results. Across-the-board, all the secular trends we've identified and in particular, broadband and 5G build-out. I mean, we're benefiting from everything we've talked about. It's affecting us in the U.S. and globally. I will also say our business has diversified significantly beyond oil and gas since the last oil and gas cycle, and as oil and gas cycles that's only incremental. We’re not seeing that as a meaningful contributor yet. Any capital spending in oil and gas will be positive incremental to accelerate through our growth. It’s a great question, Nigel. Hopefully, I've provided the context, but the short answer is, I don't want to go through the context it's important. The short answer is, strong and bulk broadband results that are better above-market.
Operator, Operator
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Tommy Moll of Stephens. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Tommy Moll, Analyst
Morning, and thanks for taking my questions.
John Engel, CEO
Good morning, Tom.
David Schulz, CFO
Morning.
Tommy Moll, Analyst
I believe John mentioned the gross margin improvement program a moment ago. You're still in the early stages of realizing the full benefits on the legacy WESCO side of your business, which is understandable. However, I would like to know more about what work remains to fully achieve those benefits. What does the timeline look like, and what kind of training or initiatives across the Salesforce will be necessary for implementation?
John Engel, CEO
The program is developed. The various levers and techniques are well-defined and honed, and we have extensive training materials that have been deployed through the Salesforce. Again, that was building off of what Anixter had put in place as David mentioned a few minutes ago. All those training materials were developed internally, and we've got a terrific training team that does that work. One of the major drivers of the results is the refined incentive compensation we put in place for the Salesforce, but we did that effectively two quarters into the merger close. We didn't do that in the first or second quarter, but we did two quarters into the merger close, so now we are basically five quarters into that. Here's how I would address your point, Tom, because I know why you're going there and it's important. How much legs are left on this? We think we have a lot of runway left. I put a fine point on this. If you look at Anixter’s reported results before the acquisition close in June of 2020, they delivered nine-plus quarters in a row of gross margin expansion. Go look at it. Against the distribution peer base, where all the other distributors had flat to declining gross margin. Since we've combined these two companies, I said we weren't going to talk about this much anymore because we're combined, but I will. We still measure Legacy WESCO and Anixter’s margin. Every quarter since we've been together, they still deliver gross margin expansion. To add those seven quarters to the prior nine now WESCO as well has delivered in every quarter. That gives you a sense. Anixter's four-plus years of running now. WESCO's essentially less than half of that running. I will tell you, we have a lot of runway in front of us. The sales force is just getting better and better at selling the value of the complete solution offering and our suppliers' products with our services wrapped around that. In conjunction with the cross-sell. Because the cross-sell serves to provide more of a one-stop shop. In today's world, where supply chain integrity and resilience has become a C-suite issue. I can tell you now, the CEOs of our customers are worried about the supply chain; never has it been such a C-suite issue. We provide that supply chain integrity and resilience, and that’s valuable. It’s incredibly valuable for our customers. That’s part of our value-priced gross margin improvement program. The incentive compensation absolutely helps because again, our sales force is getting paid for when they deliver the incremental margin.
Tommy Moll, Analyst
That's very helpful. Thank you. I wanted to follow-up on that cross-sell initiative. It’s a big raise in the target today from 600 to 850. Reflecting back, it feels like the cost synergy raises that we saw soon after you closed the merger were every quarter you dug a little deeper and you found more savings opportunities. A similar question on the cross-sell, how far into that process are you into discerning what the odd or the possible is?
John Engel, CEO
It's a really insightful question because when you think about the cost synergies, and I'm not saying that they're not difficult, but there are certain categories that we got right out of the gate starting day one, week one, and month one post-acquisition close, and they're still tough to do. Cross-sell is proving to be the most elusive and most challenging synergy to capture in any acquisition. You can go look at any and all deals that are trying to cross all industry value chains; it is the hardest thing to do. We spent substantial time and energy, including leveraging our integration and consulting partner in putting together the recipe and playbook for that. It really didn't get launched in earnest until early Q3 of 2020. We had a sales synergy program. We put it out in our three-year financial targets when Dave and I went public back in March 2020 well before the deal closed. The fact that we even had a sales synergy target we committed to was somewhat strong and aggressive because these things prove to be the most elusive. We were banking on it most when we had no crossover. Looking at our progress, we've raised it twice now. I will make a strong statement. First of all, there's tons of runway in front of us because in the continuum of learning how to really leverage cross-sell, this is a multiyear effort, and we're in the early stages. With that said, I will make a very strong point. It is proving to be the single strongest value creation driver of the combination. Yes, we delivered the cost synergies and they are there. We've basically fundamentally re-engineered our cost structure to a lower cost structure and where we've combined two Fortune 500 companies. We have margin expansion; yes, we're getting across gross margin. It’s terrific, but I will tell you this is proving to be the biggest driver, and these are significant numbers. We're very disciplined with how we track it and count it. I couldn't feel better about that. Tremendous runway is in front of us. This is what gives us the great confidence. It’s a big part of our beat and raise over the last five quarters because they’re substantial around us shifting into a growth company.
Tommy Moll, Analyst
Thanks, John. I appreciate it, and I'll turn it back.
Operator, Operator
Our next question comes from Ken Newman of KeyBanc. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Ken Newman, Analyst
Hey, good morning and thanks for squeezing me in here.
John Engel, CEO
Yes. Good morning, Ken.
Ken Newman, Analyst
John, you said WESCO is transitioning to a growth company and I know you're more confident in some of the more secular demand trends that you're seeing today. But should we take that to suggest that you think the combined company can drive growth through cycles in ways that neither of the standalone companies could historically?
John Engel, CEO
Absolutely. I want to emphasize three points. First, the merger of these two Fortune 500 companies, both leaders in B2B distribution, gives us undeniable leadership and scale advantages. Second, the combined portfolio is highly complementary with minimal customer overlap. Together, this creates a stronger enterprise capable of achieving significantly higher organic sales growth rates. I've consistently stated this, and it becomes evident as we continue to demonstrate our progress. For seven consecutive quarters, I've claimed that we've shifted the company towards a higher growth profile, making it more secular rather than cyclical. These factors contribute to a more robust organic growth structure for the enterprise. We're seeing this reflected in car sales, which is a significant contributor. Additionally, the addressable markets and secular trends, which we can't control but are supported by our combined portfolio, position us well against these trends. We've created a strong portfolio aligned with long-term secular growth rather than cyclical fluctuations. This represents a major boost to the growth I just mentioned. We have the confidence in our ability to deliver, and the momentum is building.
Ken Newman, Analyst
Great, that makes sense. For my follow-up here and you'll obviously exchange, there are some broader concerns about rising interest rates here. I know you have one of your large turbines becoming callable at a more attractive price here starting in June, but just any commentary about how you're thinking or looking at the capital structure here over the near-term and just a potential upside from lower interest expense, could drive here or the guidance for ’22.
David Schulz, CFO
Yeah, right now we've not contemplated any refinancing in our current outlook. We're obviously looking at how we can continue to make our capital structure more efficient. We're monitoring the market, but at this point, we do have very large prepayment penalties if we were to call those notes early, and we're balancing any of the arbitrage on the interest rate against those prepayment penalties. So, we're continuing to watch it. But again, at this point, not contemplated in our outlook.
Ken Newman, Analyst
Understood. Thanks for the time.
John Engel, CEO
Ken, thank you. I’m going to wrap up the call. We’re a bit over the hour, and I know there are still a few people waiting. We will definitely follow up with you. We have a busy schedule of calls today and tomorrow. Thank you all for your support; it’s greatly appreciated. We look forward to connecting with many of you in the coming days, as well as at our upcoming investor events. The next one we will participate in is the KeyBanc Industrials and Basic Materials Conference next month. Thank you, and have a great day.
Operator, Operator
Thank you. That now concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect your line.