Earnings Labs

James Hardie Industries plc (JHX)

Q2 2016 Earnings Call· Thu, Nov 19, 2015

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Transcript

Louis Gries

Management

Okay, good morning, everybody. Thank you for joining the second quarter results. I will walk through this, or we’ll walk through it the same way we always do. I will take you through the just high level business results and then Matt Marsh, CFO of James Hardie, will walk you through the financials, and then we will come back to question and answer. So go to the first page, that’s the group overview. I guess the pertinent things on this slide as far as the real graphs go, we are flat on net operating profit adjusted. We are up 12%, so like I said Matt will go through the financials and you will see how that arithmetic worked out. On higher volumes, we did have higher volumes in all businesses, but I think everybody who follows Hardie knows we're not satisfied with the volumes we're getting out of the U.S., so I will cover that when we get to the U.S. We did have average higher net sales price in all businesses as well in local currencies. Obviously everything outside the U.S. gets translated into U.S. dollar, so in U.S. dollars in the currencies - I mean some of the pricing was down, but in local currency which reflects mark-to-market position, everyone was up. Plants continue to run well, basically the businesses right through the company continue to run well. Half year EBIT 25.6%, mostly we would have seen for a quarter was 24 points, so we will talk about that a bit, that’s U.S. and Europe and then the dividend of $0.09. So going to the next slide, I’ll go through the U.S. Net sales is up 8% in the quarter, 7% on volume, just 1% price. Right off the bat on the volume, we think our market index…

Matt Marsh

Management

Good morning. So on slide 12, the Group's second quarter results, as Louis said, net sales were up about 2% on a reported basis, volumes were up in all the operating segments and I will show you those when we go through the segment results here in a minute. He has also talked a little bit about higher averages and selling prices in local currencies year-over-year. Gross profit margins are up about 240 basis points primarily as a result of the U.S. plant performance and then we are getting help on input costs, almost across the board on our key inputs are all down year-over-year. SG&A expenses, up about 3%, really driven by two things, both stock compensation and FX losses, you will see that the half year as well. Adjusted net operating profit for the second quarter was up 2, that’s on EBIT up 11%, so the operating businesses are up. That gets compressed as a result of both the higher income taxes, as a result of the mix of earnings in high tax jurisdiction countries, primarily the U.S. And then gross interest expense is up about $5 million in the quarter and that corresponds to the higher level of debt. If we go the half year, you see net sales for the half year up 2%, gross profit is up 11%, EBIT up 25% and net operating profit is up 22% for the half year, all in comparison to the first half of the year ago. Similar drivers and dynamics, if you will. Volumes up in the segments, sales prices up in local currencies, compressed a bit by foreign exchange. We get some tailwind on plant performance which is contributing to the gross margin rate increase of almost 270 basis points as well as lower input cost, SG&A…

Q - Michael Ward

Management

It’s Michael Ward from CBA. Just Louis in the release you talked about the issues around PDG not being an external issue. I was just hoping you can elaborate on that a little bit, please.

Louis Gries

Management

Yeah, I mean, the housing market is fine. I don’t think there has been any shift externally between the products that are fighting for share. I think when you have a reduction in PDG, that doesn’t mean you are losing share, that means you are not gaining share at the same rate you had been and I think that’s the situation we are dealing with. Most of you would have seen LP produced results below the market index. So at least for this half year, we don’t think it’s an LP situation. We really think that our programs against final, we have to run them as well and probably as broadly as we need to, so that’s the adjustment we are trying to make in the next couple of quarters.

Michael Ward

Management

And the management change in the context of all that.

Louis Gries

Management

Yeah, the management change, basically it was triggered by the business running well, but not growing at the rate we expected to grow at. We went through the analysis, external versus internal, and in internal how much was game plan design and how much game plan execution. And we just feel like with the two divisions, really the Northern division being the growth division against vinyl. We just weren’t getting the traction we needed in our programs up there. We looked at the resources available in the company and we just felt like going back to a national structure was the best structure considering what we are trying to accomplish and management resource available.

Michael Ward

Management

Okay. Also just on the gross margins, there is some interesting detail in the release, you get around, both the US and AsiaPac, I think you say the production cost benefit in the US is sort of 2.5 basis points or something, I was just wondering if you can split that between sort of raw materials and whether or not that’s - how much of that might be from improved manufacturing efficiency.

Louis Gries

Management

Probably one-third, two-thirds. One-third is raw materials, two-thirds efficiency. Keep in mind, first half this year versus first half last year, network didn’t run well last year and so the comp is just an easier comp on top of the plans we are in which is a lot better, the first half of this year in comparison, so you’re going to get more favorability in the first half for plant performance than you will for the full year.

Michael Ward

Management

And then the IPO says it’s the other way round, it’s sort of modest 2.5 or so. When would we expect the [indiscernible] should actually a positive contributor to that?

Louis Gries

Management

My guess would be starting next year. I think they still have a little bit this year, I mean, this quarter and hopefully next quarter to work through the rest of it, and by fiscal year ‘17 we will get the benefits that are in line both in service position and in lower unit costs of that line.

Michael Ward

Management

Okay. Thank you.

Andrew Johnston

Management

Thanks. Andrew Johnston, CLSA. Louis, could you comment on regional Primary Demand Growth and how that’s varied across different regions?

Louis Gries

Management

Yeah, what I can tell you Andrew is we went through the business and we asked planning people to tell us if we are benefiting or kind of being hurt by regional mix and it balanced out almost perfectly. So this isn’t a regional mix story. Again, from an external perspective, I think our PDG in the North is less than it should be and that’s where most of the vinyl is. So when I say it’s internal, that’s what I’m saying, there has been a lot of speculation about the Texas market being not so good, and other markets be real good and when you average it all for Hardie, it comes out about - it’s fine, the regional mix isn’t hurting us. But the vinyl is biased toward the north and I think our market share development programs in the north haven’t been as running as well as they need to for us to move forward on 3590. I think a lot of that’s short-term, say a next couple of years, it’s just running and program is better. I think there will be some tweaks as we get in kind of smaller segments, tougher value proposition type segments, going to be small markets or things like that. But I think right now, our programs are good. We just have to run them better.

Andrew Johnston

Management

And you might have already answered this question, but is there any build up in inventory in the channel over this last quarter that would cause you to be more concerned.

Louis Gries

Management

We saw those comments in our results, we don’t feel like it’s affecting us at all.

Andrew Johnston

Management

And just with your more focus on growing, getting PDG back to where you wanted, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of increase in SG&A. So what sort of - in terms of percentage terms so far this year and perhaps looking at the next year, what sort of increase in sales and marketing expenses have you had and do you to expect have?

Louis Gries

Management

Where are we so far?

Matt Marsh

Management

Yeah, we have been in the 6% to 8% range and most of that SG&A increase is within the segments, a little bit of increase in corporate. I would say, corporate is going to run lower than that, probably in the 3% to 5% range. But both in Asia-Pacific and the US and Europe, they have been running in the 5% to upwards of even like 8%, and we expect that that will continue.

Louis Gries

Management

So we do have some organizational holes, we are working hard to fill, some of them are in the field and some of them are in areas like product and segment management. But it’s not a big spend to get back on track. We do have to spend some to get our PDG kicked up, but it’s not like - there is no trade-off being made here where we’re going to check growth for EBIT, it’s on the margin. The amount of costs that needs to go under the business, it’s real dollars, but that’s not the fix, spending twice as much on SG&A is not the fix. The fix is running our programs better. Having said that, there is few gaps capability wise that we need to address.

Andrew Johnston

Management

I probably had some other question, ultimately it was just trying to get a bit of understanding of how much frontloading was in that marketing spend you’re stressing that there was - could you talk us through how you see the pay off over the several quarters if you quote, how that will develop?

Louis Gries

Management

Yeah, I mean, the pay-off for Hardie is real easy. I mean, we get paid well - we get paid very well for volumes. So if you’re starting something from scratch, like for instance, right now, we haven’t talked about market initiative, something like that, that might run negative for three, four years, okay. But that isn’t what we would be talking about. We are not looking at topping the market to deliver our PDG. We are looking for our existing programs either in new construction or repair and remodel to deliver more with roughly the same resources, say, you were looking for about - let’s say another 7% or 8%, 10% more resources, but again not double. And with our margins, when the volume comes, the pay back is pretty quick.

Andrew Johnston

Management

And then perhaps just a broader question around the market and capacity, there has been lot said about labor and its ability to deliver 1.3 million starts next year. How would you see that across your business mix both R&R and new.

Louis Gries

Management

I would say, we hear the same things directly from builders and residers, so there does seem to be shortage of labor in the construction industry. It’s not great for us, because of course, we are a lot better than bricks and some other things that take a lot of labor per unit to install. But we take more in the vinyl and wood, a lot more than vinyl, a little bit more wood. So it’s not great for us, but it’s a crisis type situation. I think the builders talk about a lot because there are really delays in closings. So it’s cash flow very important for them in the business. I think starts are more important in closings for business like ours. So if order for subdivision gets delayed 45 days or 30 days because of labor, tight labor market, really don’t affect us that much. So I do think the housing starts, we are getting into a regular occurrence of forecast, housing starts being higher than actual housing starts and I think that’s partly driven by the labor situation and it wouldn’t surprise me if that existed again next year where the forecast weren’t reached in actuality.

Matt McKee

Management

Good morning, Louis. Matt McKee from J.P. Morgan. Couple of quick questions from us. First of all, just around your targeted PDG, I think you spoke to PDG running below target. Just firstly to clarify what you mean by target PDG, I think couple of quarters ago, we were talking about 10%, 6%. So I just want to get a bit more color on that. And in relation to that, just around the timeframe, I mean, is this an FY17 or backend of FY17 story before we see some meaningful PDG?

Louis Gries

Management

Yeah. Just to kind of get everyone up to the same page, coming out of the downturn several years ago, we kind of set a 6% to 8% PDG target and we were hitting it. And we are in a market that we really like and that the market wasn’t really spiking at all, it was little steady increase. So we really felt like this was going to be an extended recovery because it’s not overheating at all and that we are putting more money on the growth side and trying to get that PDG up to the 8% to 10% level, obviously without trading off to financial returns in the business. So our timing on that was bad, because I think we declared that about last year and now we are sitting pretty flat this year. So not the greatest forecast there on our part. So I think, if you look at how we are going to step in to - of course, we see everything by market, you don’t see things by market. So by market is really important to us to tell how the different programs are running in different markets because your positioning is little bit here and there - a little bit different here and there. But if that get back to 5% and then kind of push on to 10%, 10% is still - that 8% to 10% is still the right target. But I think it’s pretty hard to go from flat to 8% to 10%. I think we are going to look for that step in between that we are at, which was more the 6% to 8%, 5% to 7%. So I’d say short-term 5% to 7%, maybe second year back to the 8% to 10% target. Keith brings up a…

Matt McKee

Management

Thanks, Louis. Just a follow-up on mix, I think that has been reasonably flat until now, just how that’s tracking. And also interiors versus exteriors, I think first quarter interiors was pretty strong?

Louis Gries

Management

Yeah, interiors was strong first half, so it continued into second quarter. So we like - we had concerns about interiors now probably only not quite two years ago, maybe a year and a half ago. And we kind of did a similar assessment to what we just done on an exteriors and I think we've got interiors the way it should be. I think we’re going to see potentially some acceleration in interiors, so we expect that to continue. So exteriors is really the - gap is on the volume side, it's not interiors. Any questions on the phone?

Operator

Operator

Your first question comes from the line of Emily Smith from Deutsche Bank. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Emily Smith

Analyst

Good morning Louis, good morning Matt. Just a couple of questions from me. I’m just wondering is it only the PDG side of things that’s changed between the last result and today that changed your overall guidance expectation. Also just wondering if you can give us a sense for how the December quarter is looking sort of at the moment. And obviously the price up 1% this quarter, you’ve outlined that it relates predominantly to mix. Do you expect that at some stage that mix change might turn around and you might start to get a positive benefit from mix again, and what do you looking for that to happen? Thank you.

Louis Gries

Management

Yes, three questions, I forgot your middle question, so I'm going to give that one to Matt. The change has really been our volume forecast. So, the guidance already had a tax rate that we seem to be tracking to and the FX isn't far off of what was in our forecast. So the reduction in our guidance is the reduction in the volume that we think we’ll sell the share in the US. Now again, we hadn't decided not to take the price increase in March until just recently, so that would have led some more volumes about a year so that played a small part in it. As far as the price 1% backer, backer on a good role. Not sure if we’ll take a price increase next year, but we've known we’ve taken in the spring, so if we get through to spring without an increase, I'd say the probability of an increase that would affect our numbers very much next year is fairly low. I would think price would be flat you know up 2. And it could even if backer went on a realtor, it could even be flat to minus 1, so it might add. But I would call it flat, we’re not looking for big price improvement over the next five quarters, six quarters actually. I don't remember your middle question now, what do we look like right now this year - this quarter? We look very much like we have over the last couple of quarters. So the business is tracking in that same range it has been tracking I think for four quarters now. So we think we’re growing at probably just a little bit above the market index, plants are running well, input costs are staying favorable relative to last year. So everything kind of, this quarter is going to, in my mind track a lot like the previous three of four quarters.

Emily Smith

Analyst

And the 1.7 point benefit you got from lower production cost, how much of that would be manufacturing efficiency versus input cost savings?

Louis Gries

Management

I don't know if you heard Matt’s earlier response, but it is a rough estimate is two thirds due to plant performance and one third due to input costs. But he kind of gave a little warning there that our plants started running well in August or about September last year, so the comps in the winter on that performance in plants is going to be tougher comp than what we’ve had so far. So we won't get the same benefit just because we’re against a better running system this time last year. Having said that, I think that's one of the things we want to keep in the front of your mind, we actually think we are on a long-term improvement trend line with our manufacturing plants. We got the blip here but we think in both regions we're pretty optimistic, we’re going to be able to continue to drive efficiencies greater efficiencies in our operating plans. So that would be one of the areas we're pretty pleased with as far as we think we can deliver over the next couple of years.

Emily Smith

Analyst

Just finally, what was the reasoning behind not proceeding with the price increase in March?

Matt Marsh

Management

We want to keep the field focused on executing. A lot of what we’re trying to change is, as Lou said is internal execution and we're trying to take the distractions away from the sales team. So we just felt like we were happy with where price has been over the last couple of years. And the benefit of taken a modest price increase next year versus the work that that would require from the team over the next couple of months to get that in place just weren't as great as keeping everybody focused on getting growth back to where we want to get to and getting PDG back to where we needed to be.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of John Hind from Merrill Lynch. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

John Hind

Analyst

Just wondering how you expect to grow PDG in this slower environment without really having to reduce prices to some degree. Obviously flat pricing coming up is a little bit of a flag for me and also with some of the problems, is it the west with PDG, is it the west market share sort of at its limit and some of the easy wood gains have already been made and I mean how much stickier is vinyl than you previously thought?

Louis Gries

Management

I'll kind of start where you finished. So, I think the vinyl equation is the same as it's always been. So first thing we want to do is address the price problem. This is in a situation where you can increase PDG by lowering price because PDG stands for primary demand growth, meaning you’re growing from others outside of your category. So again, it's not market share growth within your category it’s growth outside of your category. So less vinyl more Hardie and that's the equation we’re dealing with. So because we sell about twice the premium from an install cost to a builder about maybe 50% or 60% for our reset or homeowner. The price of the product doesn't play a big part, okay because, if say vinyl were to drop their price 10%. Their premium they put on Hardie would go from like $4,500 to $4,680. Okay, so they are large premiums that a builder actually has to deal with when he is deciding to go away from vinyl and come to Hardie. So pricing is not it at all. If it was competition within a category than pricing becomes important, but that's what we’re talking about here. You can see the - as I said, five quarters ago, the rate of decline in vinyl market share started to slow down and you can see in about the last looks like three or four months it's too early to call, you can see it start accelerating again. Now it's not anywhere near what where it was five quarters ago, but it has started to come down a little bit again. I think selling against vinyl is market development. We are the company that does market development. So if we don't do it, it doesn't get done and I think the reality is we haven't been doing as well as we should do and vinyl had a temporary benefit from that. But I don’t see the positioning of vinyl in the market has changed one bit. It's been in decline for a lot of years, is still in decline, it’s just at a - in decline at a slower rate than it has been and we think that rate will pick back up.

John Hind

Analyst

Thank you, I mean, obviously clearly a few issues with margins, EBIT margins outside the US which you have addressed. I’m just wondering obviously windows had a negative impact on EBIT. Given the impact, is it appropriate for you to provide a little bit more detail around revenue and potential run rate for business yet?

Louis Gries

Management

Is the windows business?

John Hind

Analyst

Yes.

Louis Gries

Management

I mean, remember, I mean because we look at the margin so closely in the US business, when I say we, we, I talk external. It gets a lot of attention, but it's not at all material to the corporation. It is a market development initiative, it's meant to cost money. It's what we talk about when we talk about balancing growth with returns. This just happens to be outside of fiber cement. So normally when we talk about growth and returns, we're talking about market initiatives within fiber cement, but this is a market initiative outside of fiber cement. It is very small business, you guys are going to quickly be able to figure out how many dollars I’m talking about and estimate how many are foreign exchange and then you can come up with your guess on windows. And it's not insignificant, but it's not going to break the bank. And we do expect this year's loss will be highest of that initiative. We’ll move into a lower loss position next year and that would be kind of we’re thinking about two and half years if the initiative runs away. We expect until before we make further investment decision in windows, we’d be at a neutral position on EBIT, so it wouldn't be pulling down the EBIT line for the US. We haven't gone through that gate yet. So we've got a relatively small investment in this initiative, we haven't gone through the reinvestment gate which should be a significant decision by the company. And of course when we get there, we’ll lay everything out, if we reinvest and decide to try and grow windows, fiberglass windows into large business, we’ll lay that out for your guys why, and how we’re going to do it, but at this point we haven't made that decision.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Andrew Peros from Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.

Andrew Peros

Analyst

Thank you. Sorry, just to clarify your last comment on the windows business, can you confirm whether that's now included in the US and Europe [indiscernible] or whether that's still being carried elsewhere in the business.

Louis Gries

Management

Now it's in the numbers you see for US and Europe, but the numbers haven't been big enough until this year for you to care about it. So last year, the EBIT loss because we’re just starting up the business would have been smaller than we are dealing with now.

Andrew Peros

Analyst

So, I guess my question is, why would you put it into that division contribution if you're not sure if you're going to continue with it longer term?

Louis Gries

Management

Or again, if I have a market initiative that has a three-year stage gate process and say I don't go ahead with the business in the next three years from now, it comes out. It looks a lot like, a lot of initiatives we are running in the US business. Again, it just don’t happen to be fiber cement its fiberglass. So we have debated that but, and if we reinvest in the business and we think there is good reason from a shareholder perspective to pull it out a fiber cement numbers, we’ll do it at that time, but, again, our investment is small and the loss is relative to the US business are small as well.

Andrew Peros

Analyst

Just a question to Matt around the balance sheet capital management. You obviously haven't been very active with the buyback for the past quarter and I think Matt you made the comment that you're pulling back on distributions above ordinary dividends. Does that mean that you won't be paying any special dividends if you don't execute that 5% on either buyback?

Matt Marsh

Management

I think we started saying probably last February, and certainly in the May results that our focus on distributions would be on the ordinary first and anything above the ordinary we’d move away from specials and I like at that time, I said it was because I felt like there was confusion around some guess work, I really felt like it was only guessing what the special dividend would be and there is really no need for that, and some of the specials that we've done over the last couple of years. I think the circumstances aren’t the same as there will be kind of going forward. So now that we've got the balance sheet where we wanted, if we do distributions above and beyond the ordinary, it would be in form of share buyback, but our focus going forward is really around maintaining the ordinary in that 50% to 70% range. Obviously, we've got the buyback, we haven't been active with that since the summer and so we’ll continue to operate with the buyback open, but our focus is on maintaining the ordinary in the 50% to 70% range and you shouldn't expect kind of a special dividend in the second half of the year or any additional amounts would be done through share buybacks.

Andrew Peros

Analyst

Okay, and so that was deliberately effort to pull back on the buyback, is that right or was it because there weren't any trading windows, I think, which was kind of an issue you had in the past.

Matt Marsh

Management

The trading widow restrictions are definitely greater in the summer than they are in the fall. And so that was, it was obviously a conscious decision that we are making as we were going through the last couple of months.

Operator

Operator

The next question comes from the line of Matthew McNee from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Matthew McNee

Analyst

Thanks, guys. Just a little bit more expanding on some of the pricing and margin impacts. So, Louis, I think 7% or 8% of your volumes are in Canada and Europe. Now, both those currencies are down sort of circa 15%, which simple calc would have taken about 1% of your average price and something a little bit less than that obviously op margin. Have you thought about or have you announced any price recovery in those markets or thought about pushing prices up in those markets, just given all your costs or lot of your costs are obviously in US dollars.

Louis Gries

Management

Yeah. No, Matt. We market price on all our markets. So, we don’t pass cost on and we don’t drop prices from cost cut downs. So at this point, we haven’t had any discussion about adjusting Canadian prices beyond the normal, little bit of tweaking we did up there recently, which had nothing to do with our exchange rate and then in Europe, same thing. So no, we wouldn’t try and recapture the cost and price, we want to be price positioned right for what we’re trying to do at volume and markets. So -

Matthew McNee

Analyst

Yeah. But obviously you’ve got some pretty big cost savings here with the currency. Louis, just to allow us to do that calc you mentioned before a little bit better, on the Windows loss, when you said the US business on its own is doing 26% plus margins, is it low-26, high-26?

Louis Gries

Management

It’s about mid. How is that?

Matthew McNee

Analyst

Okay. So maybe $3 million loss something like that out of windows?

Louis Gries

Management

How much?

Matthew McNee

Analyst

2 or 3?

Louis Gries

Management

You can do your own work. Yeah. But it’s not hard to figure out, you guys can figure it out.

Matthew McNee

Analyst

And sorry, Louis, just going back to PDG thing, as you said op is probably down 10% year-to-date for you guys year-over-year and the [indiscernible] growing market. So where - even though that might only be a few percent, where do you think that PDG growth is going, it’s obviously not bricks, we can sort of see that in Boral, but is Stucco picking up or is it really, and can you give us a little bit more color on your regional mix. Is it one region doing a lot worse than others? I know you mentioned the northeast and the north, but you’re sort of hard lent in the south and the west, are they still growing or are they flattened out, just a bit more color on that would be good.

Louis Gries

Management

Yeah. The first part, we did go through that exercise of, if we’re not getting it, vinyl’s not getting it, LP is not getting it, who is getting it, and I’ll be honest with you, we didn’t find it. So it is just a couple of percent, of course with our numbers, with our volumes, we know exactly what they are. With vinyl, we use published numbers, but you can’t be certain how accurate they are, what LP we use their results which are hard for us to interpret at times. And we don’t track the bricks much. And then, you get here all the delayed closings and stuff like that. So, we just stopped, okay, and the reason we stopped is because we went back to that, by the way, you said we are like 10 points ahead of LP so far this year, but we only look at things four quarter rolling and four quarter rolling, they’re kind of flat, they’re zero and I think we’re 6 or 7. So we’re pretty sure it’s not LP. Now, LP being flat to last year, that’s another thing you got to keep in mind. We don’t know how much their capacity has played in to that and how much is some of the other stuff they’ve done like pricing or if the market is just seeing that chipboard probably isn’t the answer for a cheaper alternative, the fiber cement. So we can’t interpret that till they’re back in free supply. It doesn’t look like they’ve sold their capacity over the last year, but maybe they haven’t and we’re just not aware of it. But the compelling chart, if you plot vinyl over that five-quarter period, you’re going to see the rate of decline slow and you’re going to see during that same five quarter period, you’re going to see our rate of PDG slow down as well. So theoretically their rate of decline during that period slowed, so there is less coming our way. And again, a market sits on a standard unless there is a compelling reason to move, okay and we started against vinyl when they were something like 36% of market and the compelling reason to move was fiber cement, okay, it was a big premium, but it had value to target customers greater than the premium to move to Hardie. We’ve done a lot of good things in the US business over the last 2, 3 years, but I think we’re just not as good market development against vinyl as we had been 2 or 3 years ago and as we need to be to keep driving toward that 35. So the whole game is us against vinyl, keeping an eye on LP, which are trying to sell themselves as a cheap alternative to fiber cement. So that’s the market model on the exterior side.

Matthew McNee

Analyst

And just your observations by region, has there been any marks?

Louis Gries

Management

Yes. Sorry, you want me to answer both questions. It’s vinyl, I guess that’s the reason I didn’t answer it. The Midwest, Northeast, Canada, Carolinas, it’s all the same. Those are the big vinyl regions and one of them is not doing significantly better than the others, we’re just not doing as well against vinyl as we were two or three years ago.

Matthew McNee

Analyst

Yeah. No worries. Thank you.

Louis Gries

Management

By the way, I’ll give you a bonus answer too, because if we got that one segment wise, we see it the same thing, it’s not one segment, new construction or R&R, it’s both segments, we’re just not doing as well as we need to do.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Simon Thackray from Citi. Please go ahead.

Simon Thackray

Analyst

Thanks very much. Louis, you made a point earlier about interiors had been, they’d made a strong contribution to mix and that was obviously affecting price to a certain degree. And 18 months ago, you were a bit worried about that and you want to deal with it. You’re obviously dealt with it. And it’s accelerating. Can you talk to that strategy and then talk to your strategy around PDG, because I mean you guys sound somber I got to say in terms of where PDG has ended up, you were like this about interiors 18 months ago and now, it’s a strong contributor. So can you just really help us nail down, I know you’re going to say, we’ll wait for September for strategy, but talk to exactly what we should be expecting in terms of initiatives over the next four quarters?

Louis Gries

Management

Yeah. I don’t think you should expect any new initiatives in the next four quarters. Our focus, Ryan is focused on that with the new structure, they’ve spent a fair amount of time doing a current state assessment on the business and working out the game plan, both short term, medium term. Short-term game plan is execute what we do better. So we like our nine box, we’re using new construction, we like R&R program and vinyl markets, we know what to do with the channel now, we’re getting better with the channel. We just need more attention on the growth side of the business. Now, Simon brings up the point that we did have a problem, which I agree with 100% on HardieBacker market share maybe 18 months ago, maybe a little bit longer and the organization has responded quite well. Now, the problem is we’ve also, you can remember two, three years ago, we were operating fro I think two years in a row just below our 20 based on our EBIT margin range and we took care of that. We had tactical pricing problems, which was a big part of taking care of that. We took care of it. I think the story for our organization internally has been, hey, we can’t do it one at a time, we got to do the interior things right and then we got to run our exterior strategy, we got to have our tactical pricing and plans have to go. So I think Hardie coming out of a downturn, now five, six years ago whatever it’s been has become a much better company, but we’re still not a company, we’re not that juggler that can keep six balls in the air, seems like we’re always finding a way to drop one of them and I think the one we drop now is growth against vinyl and we got to get that back in the air, what I’ll drop in one of the other ones. So that’s what you should expect out of Hardie is a lot more intensity around how well we’re executing and the fact that we’re executing all segments, all product line strategies at the same time, which would be, it will be a challenge. So I’m very confident, we got it done, that’s what drove the organizational structure change, but you’re going to have to see how the results come out.

Simon Thackray

Analyst

Yeah. And I guess I would say the following question, what you answered really is the management structure that you’ve now put in place supports that strategy to be able to juggle all those six balls at one time.

Louis Gries

Management

Yeah. I covered earlier Simon the structure, there is a lot of reasons we went to, with the structure we went to, but it was triggered by our inability to grow or take market share at the rate we’re continuing to take market share. So that’s what started to process of evaluation and we ended up with the structure change, we ended up with execution as being our main thing we need to change over to next four, five quarters to get back on track PDG wise. There is a lot of game plan enhancement, value proposition bumps that we’re going to do over the next five years, but that’s not what we’re focused on right now. We’ve got some people working on that, but the majority of the organization is committing to higher level of execution on existing game plans.

Simon Thackray

Analyst

Louis, just one final question if I can, I mean, housing starts certainly for our type of work were pretty lackluster just a bit above a mil, it turned it’s sort of okay, with the trajectory certainly a lot slower than people would expect, now we used to think that that was a benefit for you guys, both in terms of PDG and manufacturing cadence. What’s your expectation now that an acceleration would be much better for the business or that it’s irrelevant, you just need to be executing a lot better.

Louis Gries

Management

Yeah. We like the market, I mean I know if the market was larger now, market demand was more just because of more housing, we will make more money, but we like the market, I’m not an economist, I tell you guys all the time, I think X number of houses are going to be built in this recovery and you can either build them in five years, you can build them in nine years and it looks to me like if it doesn’t just take off, it’s going to be a longer recovery and a longer recovery for a market share company is good because you’ve got more years to kind of build on the momentum of the previous year. So, we like the market, no complaints about the market.

Simon Thackray

Analyst

Okay. Thanks so much gentlemen.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of James Rutledge from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

James Rutledge

Analyst

Thank you. Good morning. Just wanted to clarify how we should be thinking about price increases going forward, given I guess it seems at least on the face of it that no price increase this year, seems to be because of how PDG growth is tracking, if as you cite hopefully these initiatives and you see PDG growth return to that 5% to 7% over the next 12 to 18 months. Should we be expecting a 2% to 3% price increase in 18 months’ time?

Louis Gries

Management

Yeah. I mean I think if you go to the history of the business, we review price every spring, most years, we take 2 to 3, we’re careful not to be greedy on price, but we don’t want to kill potential, we don’t want to lower the terminal share for fiber cement by creating a perception that we need more price every time you turn around. So we’ve been very disciplined on pricing. Every once in a while we skip a price increase and it looks like the share at least this spring, we’re going to skip the price increase. I think Matt summed it up well, I actually didn’t know I’d answered the question, but he did answer it well. Our focus on the exterior side of the business is volume and we just didn’t want a lot of distractions for the people that are trying to execute on our strategies. So we took a pass on pricing. And I wouldn’t expect that would be a regular occurrence, I would think that would be more of a one-time occurrence.

James Rutledge

Analyst

Okay. Thanks. And just I’m not sure if I missed this earlier, but can you clarify what the exterior versus interior growth was for the half or the quarter, I think you had indicated that interior was stronger?

Louis Gries

Management

Interior was a bit better than exterior and so if you look at our overall growth and go a little bit higher in our interior, little bit lower on exterior, you’re probably pretty close.

James Rutledge

Analyst

Okay. Thanks a lot.

Operator

Operator

It appears so that we have no further questions. I’d now like to hand back for any additional or closing remarks.