Earnings Labs

Axalta Coating Systems Ltd. (AXTA)

Q1 2017 Earnings Call· Wed, Apr 26, 2017

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing-by, and welcome to the Axalta Coating Systems' First Quarter 2017 Earnings Conference Call. Presenting today will be Charlie Shaver, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer and Robert Bryant, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. [Operator Instructions]. Today's call is being recorded and replays will be available through May 5th. Those listening after today's call should please take note that any information provided in the recording will not be updated and therefore may no longer be current. At this time, I'd like to turn the call over to Chris Mecray for a few introductory comments. Sir, please go ahead.

Chris Mecray

Analyst

Thank you, and good morning. This is Chris Mecray, Axalta's VP of Investor Relations. We appreciate your continued interest in Axalta and welcome you to our first quarter 2017 financial results conference call. Joining us today are Charlie Shaver, Chairman and CEO; and Robert Bryant, EVP and CFO. This morning, we released our quarterly financial results and posted a slide presentation to the Investor Relations section of our website at axaltacs.com, which we'll be referencing during this call. Both our prepared remarks and discussion today may contain forward-looking statements reflecting the Company's current view of our future events and their potential effect on Axalta's operating and financial performance. These statements involve uncertainties and risks and actual results may differ materially from these forward-looking statements. Please note that the Company is under no obligation to provide updates to these forward-looking statements. This presentation also contains various non-GAAP financial measures. In the Appendix, we've included reconciliations of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures. For additional information regarding forward-looking statements and non-GAAP financial measures, please refer to our filings with the SEC. I will now turn the call over to Charlie.

Charlie Shaver

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question

Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us today. I'm pleased to give you an update of our first quarter 2017 financial and operating performance. Our results overall were strong and were led by robust 8.9% volume growth. Continued solid adjusted EBITDA growth and stable margin levels versus last year. We've also continue to make progress on our operating initiatives, including ongoing productivity improvement and we closed two new acquisitions in North America. We also recently sign the larger North American industrial wood coatings transaction subsequent to the quarter. Overall, we continue to see a favorable global business climate driving stable demand for products in the vast majority of our markets, as well as some stabilization in Latin America that we remarked on our last quarter, and fairly steady vehicle demand in North America for both light vehicle and commercial vehicle end markets. I'd now like to review some of our first quarter highlights and progress on our 2017 priorities. So, if you would turn to slide three of our presentation. First quarter financial results met our expectations overall, including strong top-line performance and solid bottom-line growth. Net sales growth is 7.7% ex-FX, which included volume growth of 8.9% was strongest for some time. Organic growth of 3.2% before the 4.5% acquisition contribution was at the higher end of our previously communicated guidance for the full year. We're particularly pleased to see positive organic growth before FX for all four of our end markets, a certain headwind seen in 2015 and 2016 bottomed in the fourth quarter of last year. This includes broader line America demand as well as areas of industrial and commercial vehicle coatings that tempered growth during 2016. Broadly, Axalta execution relatively to top-line growth goals, we're on track this quarter led by good results showed volume…

Robert Bryant

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question

Thanks, Charlie, and good morning. Please turn to slide five for a summary of our first quarter consolidated results. Constant currency net sales in the quarter increased to strong 7.7% year-over-year driven by 11% growth in performance coatings and 3.2% growth in transportation coatings. This growth was composed of 8.9% volume growth slightly offset by 1.2% lower average selling price and mixed realization. Negative foreign currency translation reduced as reported net sales by 2.2% in the first quarter compared with the 6.4% impact in the same quarter a year ago and 3% same last quarter. The majority of the FX impact in net sales came from the Euro, the Yuan and the Mexican peso. Axalta's 8.9% volume expansion included organic volume of 4.4% coupled with 4.5% acquisition contribution led Dura Coat and other acquisitions completed over the past 12 months. It is important to highlight that we experienced organic volume growth in all four end markets, refinished, industrial, light vehicle and commercial and in all four regions. Performance coatings organic volumes were up mid-single-digits, including positive contribution and all regions except Latin America. Transportation coating has also posted mid-single-digit organic volume growth, notably including sales growth from both light vehicle and commercial vehicle end markets. Overall price and mix realization was a decrement of 1.2% in the first quarter driven by moderately lower average selling prices in most end markets except refinished. As expected, we saw some degree of sharing of savings from lower inputs but certain customers, though we are pleased that this did not preclude a strong overall quarterly profit result. We saw some modest impact from weaker mix and refinish as well as other end markets. Adjusted EBITDA in the first quarter of $203 million increased 4.3% from a $195 million first quarter of last year. This…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. At this time, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Robert Coorte [ph] with Goldman Sachs. Please proceed with your question.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Thanks very much. I wonder if you could talk a little bit, you discussed Robert you said towards the end, there is some pricing actions. The pricing pressure you're seeing has that been formulaic or has that been reactive to what's going on in the marketplace?

Charlie Shaver

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question

Good morning. Right now, what we've seen most of pricing pressure, we've seen - certainly there has been a little bit, because you've seen oil go up over $50 over the past two quarters here and we see a little bit from that standpoint, but actually most of our pricing pressure outside of what's been well documented around TiO2 has really been more supply demand related. We have seen certain products both in isocyanates, different resins in China, some of that's been outages and suppliers have had, some of them just been tightening supply and demand and nothing is that would have been formulaic around oil or gas. To a large extent, I think we'll continue to see some of that, as we go - as Robert mentioned in his comments, as we go into second quarter and so some of that is pricing, we will now go get as we mentioned and it takes us normally a quarter or two to get that. To extend oil or gas related as you correctly point out in many cases it's formulaic and it just moves through the system, but we have seen in a series of our - some of our commodities and specialties, where it's been more supply demand related starting in the fourth quarter last year, some of that will abate as those suppliers get back up and supply and demand gets more balanced. But in other cases, we expect some of those raw materials prices stay with us in which case again we're moving that - we'll move that through the system over the next quarter or two.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

And then if I could ask I know you're going to give updated guidance post Valspar transaction closure approval. But can you talk a little bit about if there any technology overlaps or synergies with that particular business line and what you do today, thanks?

Charlie Shaver

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question

Actually, as we got into the business we were we're actually pretty excited about that. A lot of the technology we have around low VOC, color and in some of the resin's technology, we believe we'll be able to apply to that business. So, innovation - there continues to be innovation in the wood business, not just in North America but globally, and we believe we'll be able to bring some of that to the table. We are as part of the business we are getting the industrial wood R&D organization which is complete all the chemist and all the engineers that go with that as well as the R&D head. So, we feel like we've got a great competency already, and I think in our engagement with those folks up to date although has been limited until we own the business. We believe that there is some great sharing that we can do there. As many of you know, we spend about 4% of sales in R&D and have about 1500 people scattered around the world. So, we're pretty excited about long-term where we can take some of that.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Arun Viswanathan from RBC Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.

Arun Viswanathan

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question

Great. Thanks. So, first question is just, it sounded like you guys trended towards the upper end of your top-line guidance. Maybe you can just discuss how that happened, and which markets turned out slightly better than you expected?

Robert Bryant

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question

Arun, this is Robert. I'd say overall when we look at our four end markets, refinished performed extremely well in Q1, our industrial business overall also performed well, our light vehicle business overall also performed well from a volume metric perspective. We did see some continued price pressure in particular in the Asia Pacific region which pulled back detract a little bit from some of that volume growth. And then in commercial vehicle, we also saw some stabilization in North America as well as Latin America in the heavy-duty truck market, which was also helpful to first quarter results.

Arun Viswanathan

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question

Thanks. And you also mentioned some mix, lower mix in certain of your markets. Maybe just if you can just elaborate on that, have you seen kind of a trade down to less premium products and refinished, and then you mentioned some concessions in OEM. Can you just discuss that a little bit more? Thanks.

Charlie Shaver

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question

Sure. So, refinished mix in Q1 although not dramatic by any means, we have seen more sell-through of mainstream and economy products in certain markets notably in China somewhat in the U.S. and also in EMEA in some of the periphery countries. And collectively this has resulted in the slightly more muted price mix picture, those are still quite positive on a net basis. I think as we continue to grow our presence in mainstream and economy products overtime, we would expect this counter balance in otherwise strong mix that we see from higher end professional body shop sell-through in other markets. That's with regard to refinish. With regard to industrial, we did see lower price mix into Q1. And that was primarily due to the shift in Asia Pacific, particularly China and to a lesser extent in EMEA to some lower price products in energy solutions along with a slightly weaker mix in powder. And then with regard to light vehicle, the pricing pressure that we saw in Q4 and that we saw continue into Q1 was consistent with what we had budgeted and planned for at the beginning of the year. I think we hope that as the raw material picture here turns the other way as we as well as many other companies have announced price increases to offset what we're not able to observe through additional cost and productivity and we're partnering with our customers to ensure the best outcome for both asset and supplier and they as a customer.

Robert Bryant

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question

One quick point I would make on that just on your question about customers shifting. We don't have to see customer shifting to lower price products, these are just a different mix the customers for purchasing in the quarter. So, overall, any region of the world where we have premium customers or mainstream customers we don't - they don't typically shift one way or the other they run the products they have. So, what you do see the with cash back acquisitions and some other things we've don't over the past year, we will continue to see some of these mainstream products grow with us, but that is a different channel of the market than some of our premium customers.

Arun Viswanathan

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question

Great. Thanks. I'll turn over.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Christopher Parkinson with Credit Suisse. Please proceed with your question.

Christopher Parkinson

Analyst · Credit Suisse. Please proceed with your question

Thank you. Just very quickly returning to transportation coatings. Can you just take us on a quick walk around the world, and runs through what you're see in the key geographic trends puts and takes on your volume outlook and both light and commercial vehicle. Are you hit on decimal North America, but what about the rest of the globe? Thanks.

Robert Bryant

Analyst · Credit Suisse. Please proceed with your question

Chris, this is Rob. Just to walk through a little bit of what we saw in you know in the market again, we saw when we look at our performance versus the statistics published by IHS, we did see our performance in access of what the market was North America. In Asia Pacific, we also experienced a strong growth and the In line with the market. EMEA also in a nice turn compared to the previous quarter, EMEA also performed better in the first quarter for us in light vehicle than what we had seen in the fourth quarter. And then lastly in Latin America, we didn't see good performance, but when you waited across Mexico, South America and Brazil, our growth was actually slightly lower than what the market composite was, but we did see a nice turn in that business there that we hope will be a sustained trend. I think some of our commentary looking forward for the rest of the year was if you look at the some of the IHS forecast for the full year, they're projecting global volume growth of about 2% compared to the 5.8% that we are seeing in the first quarter. And hence some of our commentary around a potentially seeing that growth rate slowdown slightly in certain region during the course of the year that's not a given - that's just what the external market forecaster are laying out at the moment

Christopher Parkinson

Analyst · Credit Suisse. Please proceed with your question

Great. Can you just quickly update investor simply walk through on your free cash flow guidance, just in the context of the employee's separation cost facility closure et cetera? And how we think should about the longer-term net income bridge in terms of a potential cash generation. And then if there is anything new on your net working capital targets that would also be appreciated. Thank you.

Robert Bryant

Analyst · Credit Suisse. Please proceed with your question

So, on the cash flow guidance of 440, 480, we continue from an EBIDTA perspective to see very positive projection to the rest of year. And we look at the other Items to get to our free cash flow guidance for the full year, we remain quite confident in those numbers don't see anything really material changing in that regard. And with regard to working capital, if you look at our working capital performance in the first quarter, we were at 14.8% of net sales compared to an expectation where a prior year 15.2%. So again we're more or less in line with where we thought we would be given our working capital outlook for the year.

Christopher Parkinson

Analyst · Credit Suisse. Please proceed with your question

That's great color. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our next question come from Ghansham Panjabi with Robert W. Baird. Please proceed with your question.

Ghansham Panjabi

Analyst · Robert W. Baird. Please proceed with your question

Hey guys, good morning. Robert, just to clarify comments on EBITDA progression for 2017. Are you expecting 2Q EBITDA to grow on a year-over-year basis given the raw material increases that you referred to?

Robert Bryant

Analyst · Robert W. Baird. Please proceed with your question

So, I think what we - although we don't provide quarterly guidance, we did want to indicate in how we saw the development from a quarterly perspective of EBITDA for the remainder of the year. I think our expectation is that in Q2, we will see somewhat of an impact from higher raw materials which will hit us at the same time that we have implemented price increases. As you know, there is a relatively short lag in performance but in transportation the lag between when those prices actually come into effect can be several months and therefore what we expect to see is a little bit of a hit in that in second quarter and then expect to make that up in the second half of the year.

Ghansham Panjabi

Analyst · Robert W. Baird. Please proceed with your question

Okay. And just in terms of your comments on Latin America, as you seem a little bit more optimistic on, what do you sort of see in the market there the improvement just the function of ease of your comparisons from last couple of years or do you see a broader recovery that starting to unfold there?

Robert Bryant

Analyst · Robert W. Baird. Please proceed with your question

I think when we talk about Latin American, again we have to be careful about making generalizations. We talk about Mexico, Mexico continues to perform extremely, extremely well in all four of our end markets, it's really South America and within that Brazil, that for us is the one that really moves the needle. It seems like Brazil is potentially starting to turn the corner, we do see lower inflation improved confidence in a more accommodative monetary policy, but we continue to believe that it's going to be more like 2018 before we see anything more material than marginal growth, the ongoing correction of a deep macroeconomic both fiscal and external imbalance that will, we believe necessitate kind of a slow and a gradual recovery. So, I think there are our view on Brazil is it feels like it starting to bottom, we can't say that for sure, but we are seeing some encouraging data out of Brazil, not only on the light vehicle side of the business, but also on the refinish and industrial side of the business. So, we expect that path upward not to be a sharp bounce back, but rather a gradual improvement in the best case.

Ghansham Panjabi

Analyst · Robert W. Baird. Please proceed with your question

Okay. And just one final one for Charlie, if I could. Charlie, you comment on the Valspar acquisition as the platform for future growth, can you just expand on that aspect as it relates to your overall vision for industrial coating segment overtime? Thanks so much.

Charlie Shaver

Analyst · Robert W. Baird. Please proceed with your question

Yes, sure. Again, this business we are acquiring today it's in the industrial side of the business, it's not retail. We like that because it's very similar to our business model that we run for other segments in industrial. Post this acquisition, our industrial business will be about $1.1 billion in sales for us. Again, it's a function of couple of our acquisition we have done the rest of growth comes from. But it does allow us in the platform to think about wood on a more global sense and also other adjacencies. But if it fits in really well, when we look at the type of customers that we sell into, the larger industrial building products customers, but also the distribution model. So, we think there will be for additional distributors that we are taking on, additional pull through for other industrial products as well as some of the folks in other regions are getting pretty excited for us about being able to offer some of these products, because we've got manufacturing in other parts of the world that also allowed us to take some of that technology on a faster sense than we would have into other regions as well.

Ghansham Panjabi

Analyst · Robert W. Baird. Please proceed with your question

Perfect. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from David Begleiter with Deutsche Bank. Please proceed with your question.

David Begleiter

Analyst · Deutsche Bank. Please proceed with your question

Thank you. Charlie, on the M&A front, how is the pipeline now going forward, is anything left in there, and your constraint with the near term given the Valspar acquisition in your debt levels?

Charlie Shaver

Analyst · Deutsche Bank. Please proceed with your question

That's a good question. I think Robert touched on it briefly in his comments. But our pipeline remains pretty full. I think in some cases that's a function of some of our other - some of the other competitors being busy on other things, but also, I think it's also a function of when we look at the activity more in the industrial or the performance segment for us, there is still lot of consolidation to go around, globally. So, I think we're not lacking for things to work on and things to look at. Clearly, valuation we continue to stay discipline, no valuation. And so, I think for the next year, certainly for the next year we think we have more than enough to work on as far as the bolt-on go. I think we also want to maintain though plenty of liquidity for these types of opportunistic things to come up like the wood business. So, we will continue, I think we have given guidance that from bolt-ons, we would like to add a $100 million, $150 million top-line a year and I think we will stay to true to that course as we go on through this year and into next year.

David Begleiter

Analyst · Deutsche Bank. Please proceed with your question

And just on refinished, Charlie. How are pricing trends that business and how do you look for them going forward?

Charlie Shaver

Analyst · Deutsche Bank. Please proceed with your question

Some of the refinished around the world, we continue to have our normal cadence on price increases. Again, for this year some of that certainly we'll have to look at as always for currency movements and then also raw material movements, but we continue to get price in refinished as we've talked about on prior calls that tends to be a little bit choppy as you go through the year, because there is a cadence we use. And I think this year, we'll have to look at raw materials in some regions and should we see escalation that stays up there, again more supply demand related than oil and gas, I think we may have to look at a different level of price increases or some cases maybe a second one in some products or certain brands as we go through the year. But I think the reality there is - those are pretty disciplined markets. But most importantly, when you look at the coating space and refinish, I mean there is not anyone who has really back integrated that can be opportunistic in this kind of situation. So, I think all of this will have to get price as raws goes up and I think it's a pre-level playing field, whether it's a regional producer, or whether it's a multinational. So, I think we'll continue to get price, in some cases, we may have to go for more this year, we'll just have to wait and see as the first and second quarter develop. As Robert mentioned, as we do believe some of this raw material price pressure will stay with us.

David Begleiter

Analyst · Deutsche Bank. Please proceed with your question

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Kevin McCarthy with Vertical Research Partners. Please proceed with your question.

Kevin McCarthy

Analyst · Vertical Research Partners. Please proceed with your question

Yes, good morning. Charlie with regards to the Valspar wood coatings transaction, I was wondering if you could comment on two things. First, how the margin profile of the acquired business compares to Axalta's overall corporate margin. And then second, how we should think about synergy opportunities as a percent of the acquired sales? Thanks.

Charlie Shaver

Analyst · Vertical Research Partners. Please proceed with your question

Yeah, first of all on the margin, we really can't comment on that one, we are running the business. We certainly don't even run it at this point. So, I think we probably better just hold off on that one and defer that one. But I think you could probably go back into some of the Valspar prior comments over the past year or two about that business and to do kind of the industrial type margin that it has, remember it's part of a larger wood business that they had, so you'd have to go back in there and dig that out. As far as the synergies, synergies for us are not operational in nature. The synergies will be more growth related and they'll be more revenue as we look to add additional products from our portfolio into some of their distribution chain. We're probably not ready to roll out a number around that right now, but they're clearly are same in North America and then again longer-term, we see some global revenue growth from some of these similar products that we'll take outside of the U.S.

Kevin McCarthy

Analyst · Vertical Research Partners. Please proceed with your question

Okay. And then let me follow-up on performance coatings I think you indicated on slide 6 that your pricing was flat on a year-over-year basis to go back to 4Q, it looks like you're running north of 5%. And I was wondering if you could help us reconcile how that has decelerated over the last quarter or so, is it a function of a comparable period for example or something going on perhaps on the industrial side?

Robert Bryant

Analyst · Vertical Research Partners. Please proceed with your question

Kevin, this is Robert, I hate to kind of restate the prior answer in terms of the industrial price mix pressure that we saw in Q1 in particular in Asia Pacific. And then also the mixed FX that we mentioned primarily in industrial but also in refinish, but those again were the main drivers of that change.

Kevin McCarthy

Analyst · Vertical Research Partners. Please proceed with your question

All right, thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from PJ Juvekar with Citigroup. Please proceed with your question.

PJ Juvekar

Analyst · Citigroup. Please proceed with your question

Good morning. Charlie where are we in the commercial vehicle cycle, looks like things are improving there after double-digit declines last year and the turnaround you're seeing what is the upside from that in 2017 in terms of EBITDA?

Robert Bryant

Analyst · Citigroup. Please proceed with your question

PJ, this is Robert, I'll step in perhaps, but just put some initial comments. For us, our biggest market in commercial vehicle is obviously North America heavy-duty truck and I think as you've seen the forecast from ACT get revised up from 2003 units for the year up to 217,000 units and there's some speculation that those builds may move up from there. LMC also put out some forecasts although not exactly the same, on the same relative trajectory. So, overall in that business, I think we hope that we see some return to growth in North America. I think we see potentially early cycle, you might think about that in North America. EMEA and Europe, it's a mixture of different market, but primarily mid cycle, pretty good growth, pretty good performance. And then of course the big opportunity always for us is its China where we continue to have or somewhat nascent position in that market. But we're bringing additional resources on the commercial side as well as additional products to China and those just take a while to gain tractions, but we are confident that through those actions as well as our joint venture would can lead in that market that will be successful in growing that market over a longer period of time. And then lastly, we did see some recuperation in the heavy-duty truck market in Latin America and that includes both Mexico and a little bit of Brazil as well.

PJ Juvekar

Analyst · Citigroup. Please proceed with your question

Thank you. And on recently you should talk about mile, but can you talk a little bit about volumes in terms of what you are thinking in terms of miles driven or number of accidents on the road? Thank you.

Charlie Shaver

Analyst · Citigroup. Please proceed with your question

Yes, so we continue to see on miles driven when you look - is still pretty consistent at least that data margin about 3% out year-over-year. As I think that's a function as continued low fuel prices and also just better miles per gallon as far as fuel just less than the essential expenditure of the homeowner and with the newer car sales people are buying new cars and driving them. So, what does that mean for refinish, what it means is I think we'll continue to see probably the refinished market grow about 2% this year in North America. We got good new cars out on the road. Unfortunately, we are seeing an uptick in accident rate, severity rate and most disturbingly brutality in the last couple of years and more charge-offs. So, I would have expected the refinished market to be up more or like 3% given the car sales that we've seen in the last couple of years. However, what I think it's taking a little bit of toll on that is, you are having higher severity rate, which means more charge-offs. So, we talked with a lot of our larger body shops, you just have more totals. Now, that's being reflected in people's insurance premiums and everything else. I think we'll continue to see a good robust market probably grows about 2% fairly we're growing faster than that with some of the consolidation going on in the industry. In Europe, same thing grow about 1% this year. China, we think, China refinished market actually last year was flat overall as to new insurance constraints kicked on the consumer, but we've seen that market picked backup in the last two quarters here probably returning back to more like a 4% to 5% annual growth. So, I think when you look at 93 million vehicles being built around the world this year, up a couple percent, I think the short-term future certainly for refinished looks stable to grow than almost every region.

PJ Juvekar

Analyst · Citigroup. Please proceed with your question

Great, thank you. Just quickly how big China for you in refinished because that's the market that seems to be growing? Thank you.

Charlie Shaver

Analyst · Citigroup. Please proceed with your question

So, just - I mean we don't disclose sales, but I think when you look at we're about 16% market share of the total refinished market that we believe based on external data that's out there and we continue to grow their business about 10% a year.

PJ Juvekar

Analyst · Citigroup. Please proceed with your question

Great. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Laurence Alexander with Jefferies. Please proceed with your question.

Laurence Alexander

Analyst · Jefferies. Please proceed with your question

Good morning. Can you characterize a little bit the degree of fragmentation that you are seeing in China in terms of the quality of assets that are available like how many of the or how much of the market is good quality assets that you would like to have relationship with? And then is it getting any easier acquiring control of those assets? And then the 10% figure that you just sighted is that an organic number or is that including sort of small bolt-on M&A?

Robert Bryant

Analyst · Jefferies. Please proceed with your question

Laurence, I'll take the first one and Charlie will take the second one. And the first one in terms of what we are seeing from an M&A pipeline, there are a number of companies in the mainstream and also especially the economy space out there. They tend to be smaller companies in sort of they tend to - at the large site maybe $50 million in sales top-line. We continue to look at those acquisitions and to pursue those acquisitions. I would say that from a valuation perspective, seller's expectations remain quite high. And they're not only looking at sort of the 15 and 16 times multiples that we're seeing for large deals and you might say in the U.S. or in Europe for transactional reference. They're also looking at how Asian coatings players trading and some of them are trading at 20 times EBITDAR or more. So, sometimes their valuation expectation can be out of sync with where we are in terms of the relatively disciplined approach that we take to valuation. So, it continues to be an area of focus for us, but in terms of quality assets there are quality assets to just a question of getting assets at a price that would allow us to achieve an appropriate return.

Charlie Shaver

Analyst · Jefferies. Please proceed with your question

And on your question about the growth, all of our growth in refinished to date has been organic. That's coming from a couple of sources, one as we've introduced a couple of mainstream products there, it's also coming from an additional distribution points that in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities. And then also growth from conversion of soft board shops to waterboard. And we offer our [indiscernible] their water board in the country which is a premium water board and that we had out there. So, it's actually coming from several different segments. Back to Robert's point, I think we will, you will see us distance bolt-ons China we set the couple of years looking a lot of things, in some cases easy assets, back to your question about quality of assets in some cases some of their operations were not in chemical parts. As many of you know in China, dangerous goods transfer, chemical operations and there are lot of scrutiny, so we're being very careful that we don't take on unnecessarily any liability. However, in some cases we may do a couple of bolt-ons but we'll either transfer manufacturing to one of our existing plans or as all of you know we've announced our next expansion at Nanjing and some of it may play into just being sighted there overtime. The quality of assets in some cases is good, but in other cases they're good assets, but they're not located in chemical products or there is issues with logistics and transportation that we're working through. But you will see us probably do one or two acquisitions over the next year and year and a half. As Robert pointed out, people do have fairly heavy expectations on evaluations, but we think we're now narrowing in on the ones that we like.

Laurence Alexander

Analyst · Jefferies. Please proceed with your question

And then secondly, I don't want to get into the ins and outs of competitor behavior, this is more of a technology positioning question. The [indiscernible] transaction does that longer term change the landscape that have been a long-term secular trend of market share gains in refinished as an opportunity for yourself and one of your competitors. I mean is there a change in the technology landscape because of who owns those assets?

Robert Bryant

Analyst · Jefferies. Please proceed with your question

Did you mean [indiscernible] or another player?

Laurence Alexander

Analyst · Jefferies. Please proceed with your question

Yes.

Robert Bryant

Analyst · Jefferies. Please proceed with your question

I mean [indiscernible] is pre-treatment, and I don't think that changes anything out there. I think that [indiscernible] is a pre-treatment whether that's an OEM or refinish our industrial. There are other suppliers out there, I don't think bundling a pretreatment with coatings, it's pretty rare to said actually really provide any competitive advantage. Obviously, we have a relationship with other pre-treaters where we need to and go in with someone to provide a total solution. But I don't think that there is any - we certainly don't have any interest in getting off into pre-treatment. We think there is much better places to deploy our capital.

Laurence Alexander

Analyst · Jefferies. Please proceed with your question

Okay, thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our last question for today will be Duffy Fischer with Barclays. Please proceed with your question.

Duffy Fischer

Analyst

Good morning. First question is just around the stock buyback kind of the appetite for that. The tone seems a little bit lukewarm on that. Is this more like you want to put in a floor at the stock where you get hit for some reason, or how volatile will the purchases be if we kind of take a two or three-year view on this program?

Charlie Shaver

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question

Duffy with only about two weeks less than in the quarter after our board approved the actual plan is just simply that in the first quarter at least price conditions were not met in that relatively short-time window to actually initiate any share purchases. Our strategy similar to M&A is to remain disciplined on our buyback algorithm and particularly in light of the Valspar transaction that we had potentially at the door as well as other M&A activity. How we thought about what those thresholds would have to be in the plan that we put in place for the first quarter, certainly had an impact on the price levels that we set that plan to activate and accelerate purchasing at lower prices and flows down at higher prices obviously. So again, our plan is to buy back stock. But, we'll always look at what is the best return for our shareholders in terms of whether it's instead putting that money into an M&A transaction or an internal productivity CapEx project or at something of that nature.

Duffy Fischer

Analyst

Okay. And then just as tangential to that, is it fair to assume the big acquisition you just announced would be at a discount to your own traded multiple?

Charlie Shaver

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question

Duffy, I think at this point, we would hesitate to comment on anything related to valuation, just given where we are in that process and given the NDA in place that we have will sure one in the bottom up.

Duffy Fischer

Analyst

Fair enough. Thanks, fellows.

Charlie Shaver

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question

Thanks, Duffy.

Operator

Operator

At this time, I would like to turn the call over to management for closing comments.

Charlie Shaver

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question

Yeah, thanks everyone, and really appreciate - at the end as we've highlighted a good quarter for us, good solid start. Our markets remain in good shape as we head into the middle of the year here. I think thus like you probably heard from some of the other players in the marketplace, we do see price creeping in the raw material side. We'll be dealing with that. I think we remain in markets that overtime we certainly can continue to pass that on through. We have worked closely with our customers and as you know this business has 120,000 different customers in the Axalta base. So, there is a lot of people to work with and moving through. We're confident we will. Fortunately, we've taken proactive measures in many cases and our positions on these raw materials, so we remain good supply with multiple sources, and we'll be leveraging that as best we can as we go through the year. But overall, very pleased with the first quarter. I think it's a good start and what continues to be a fairly slow macro environment out there globally. But I think we're navigating it well. We're excited about getting the wood business and then excited to talk to you a little bit more about it. Once we close again, I think the public comments around that have been people hope to that the other parties hope to get their larger transaction closed here sometime in the second quarter and assuming that happens then we follow-up back of that. So, a lot more exciting things to come, and again, as always thanks for your support and your questions.

Operator

Operator

This concludes today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. And have a great day.