Earnings Labs

James Hardie Industries plc (JHX)

Q4 2017 Earnings Call· Thu, May 18, 2017

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Transcript

Louis Gries

Management

Okay. Good morning, everybody. We'll go ahead and get started. Appreciate you joining the results announcement call for fiscal year '17. We're going to do it pretty much like we normally do. I'll give an overview of the year, and then Matt will give you a financial overview. One thing I'm going to do differently, since this isn't a typical Hardie year, results wise, I'm going to give you a bit of summary. As I'm finishing up my overview of the businesses, give you a summary of '17 and also a little indication -- not guidance on '18 but a little indication of how we're thinking about going into '18, and then I'll hand it over to Matt after that. You'll probably get there through Q&A, anyway, but I thought I'd give you the kind of framework that we're thinking about the year. Looks like I need something to change -- the clicker? Got it. Sorry. Okay. So a lot of red arrows in that. Quarter came in weaker than full year, and almost everything's going to come back to manufacturing. So I'm going to get into it in some detail. We even put in a couple of extra slides so we can kind of show you what that looks like. Full year, pretty flat on the profit side, better on the earnings per share, better yet on the cash flow. But again, not a typical Hardie year when it comes to delivering financials. When we go to North America, which where the main story is, you can see volume was good, price was flat, basically down a hair. And the EBIT was the lost opportunity, both in the quarter and the full year. And this summary, on the slide to the right side of the slide is a pretty…

Matthew Marsh

Management

Good morning. Thanks, Louis. We'll go through the financials like we normally do. We'll start the fourth quarter group results. So net sales for the quarter were about $494 million. You can see they're up about 13%. Pretty similar growth on volume in both North America and international. They're both up around 12%, 13%. International also saw in the fourth quarter, as it did throughout the year, good price increase, 6%, 7%. About half of that is mix and half of that is the annual price increase. Gross margins were down about 420 basis points, largely driven by the North America manufacturing discussion that was Louis just took you through. SG&A was up about 10% as we continued to add capability in all three of our business areas. North America, international; and at a corporate level, we added organizational capability. Headcount, labor costs were up year over year as well as in North America. And in Australia, we also added marketing programs. You see adjusted EBIT was down 8% in the fourth quarter. Adjusted net operating profit of $54.6 million was down for the quarter as well. If we go to the year. So for the full year, group sales were $1.9 billion, up 11%. Gross profits of $674 million, up 7%. Group EBIT of $393 million, up 11%. And net operating profit on a reported basis of $276.5 million, on an adjusted basis when you take out the effects of asbestos, $248.6 million, up 2%. So net sales for the year, up 11%. That was North America, up about 12%, 13%. We had good growth on both the exteriors and the interiors business. Obviously, exterior's growing a greater degree than interiors. And good growth internationally, as Louis covered in his section. International got price for the year, pretty consistently…

Q - Emily Smith

Management

Emily Smith from Deutsche Bank. So just a couple of questions, I guess, looking into the first half, more specifically, the first quarter. I guess, you put the information in the management discussion on Page 4 suggesting that the percentage change in the gross margin in the quarter was negative 5.5 points. I guess, going into the Q1 of fiscal '18, would you expect that surely that 5.5 points negative should turn around quite a bit because you've got the price increase is a pretty significant offset at 3 percentage points? So I guess -- and I guess bearing in mind that Q1 '17 EBIT margin was 25. I guess, it's sort of hard to see how you'd be at the low end of the range if you get a 3% price increase even if the production and start-up costs stay at the same sort of level? Just wondering if you can explain that.

Louis Gries

Management

Yes, we do see it at the low end of the range. I'd say right through the year, fiscal year '17 is not going to be a good year to think about from a comp perspective. To me, the EBIT margins we are delivering early were a bit artificial. They reflect too low of a spending on maintenance and some other things in the plants. Then it carried over from fiscal year '16 and we started to correct, or adjust for, I guess a better way to put it, and starting in July. And we kind of built that program over -- through the year and it peaked, peaked in December, January, February. Part of that was because we are identifying things as we are going. We -- as most of you know, we were surprised by so many issues we ran into first quarter -- end of first quarter last year. And then, we started to reset the business. I think the reset wasn't as efficient as it could have been, but it was okay. It was a big change for the organization. I think they handled it well. We didn't identify everything we want to do right off -- right out of the chute, but we did by the time we got to about October and November have everything identified and programs to address it. So you're right; you're going to get 3% on the price line, which is good. You're going to have much higher delivered unit costs than you had last year due to the things we've talked about, which is your maintenance spending's still high, your board you sell this quarter will be largely produced either in March or April. And freight costs are high. I can't remember if I said that. So anyway, we do see ourselves down near the bottom. Oh yes, and then our volume comp's not going to be as good as we'd want it to be. It's not going to be as strong as it will be for the year, I don't believe.

Emily Smith

Management

So does that mean that you're not expecting start-up costs and production costs to fall in the Q1 '18? So you expect them to stay…

Louis Gries

Management

Well, we're starting Summerville right now. We're starting to turn the PC 3 machine. We're still running PC at about two third efficiency, PC 4. That's a big machine down there. Cleburne 3 is good. It's at a point now where it's producing at very near normal unit cost. And then Fontana's still still. So we still have efficiencies in the system. They're just not going to be to the same degree as we had in '17. They're going to be significantly less. Now the way you've got to think about start-up costs for Hardie, I'd say, hey, we started up 700 and we didn't do it as well as we should have and we never should have tried to start up that much of the year. We're starting up 300 this year. Well, basically, if we want to grow at the rates we want to grow, we're going to have to start up 300 every year. So this is more of a 300 -- this is more of a normal year on start-ups. The only thing different is you still have the tail end of the PC4 inefficiencies and the Fontana inefficiencies always -- also coming into the business, mainly early in the year. They're getting less by quarter, there's no question. But they're still there.

Emily Smith

Management

But I guess, just back to the numbers that you give us. I mean, it implies that -- versus the previous corresponding period, that the margin would only be down around -- even if you assume that there's no reduction in the start-up and production costs, it sort of only assumes that the margin will be down about 200 basis points with a 3% price increase, which is a 23 margin at the low end. Does that make sense to you or?

Louis Gries

Management

Well, I started to say don't look at our comp last year. So that's where I'm going to end. Don't look at last year. It's an artificial comp.

Peter Steyn

Management

Louis, Peter Steyn from Macquarie. Just in relation to the service issues that you outlined and the fact that you're -- I suppose you're calling out [dive hot] levels in the 80s. Is there any negative franchise impact from your customers? What's the sort of sense from the market?

Louis Gries

Management

Yes. Thanks, Peter. There's no question, customers would have a little fatigue with Hardie at this point. Allocation last year, long lead times in a couple segments. And then this year, we get ourselves back in pretty good shape. We have a price increase. Of course, they've got to take advantage of that pull forward price increase because they've got protection out there for their customers. So we give them an opportunity to buy about 10% more board at the old price so they can take care of their price protection commitments. So we pull all that down, and then we're back into service of about 80. Now there's two parts to a service equation. There's the on time and full, which is in the 80s. And then there's the severity, how late are you. And right now, we're in the 80s on the on time and full, but we're doing well with the how late are you. So normally, two to three days late. So because we have a channel between us and the job site, there's no danger that we're holding up jobs if we stay with a severity of two, three, four or five days late. It's when you hit two, three, four weeks out that you can run under those risks. So you'd say franchise damage makes it sound worse than I want to make it sound. But yes, there's fatigue out there with things. I mean, people that do business with Hardie would like to feel like they push a button and what they expect to happen happens. And that's kind of our reputation. And over the last 12 months, that hasn't been the reality. So the sooner we can pull out of that situation, the better. But it won't -- we're trying to do it in a big -- in a seasonal -- in the building season. So it's probably going to take us -- I don't know. I think it's going to take us to get through there first half and we start getting the seasonal downturn a bit. And then all of a sudden, we'll -- because we've got to pick up like not a little bit of inventory, we've got to pick up 60, 70 million feet of inventory to really feel comfortable. So our run rate is not that high above our order rate at this point.

Peter Steyn

Management

Just could I indulge of one more? If you strip out the impacts of production costs and start up costs and just thought about raw material increase, cost push versus your 3% price growth, do you think that at a fundamental level, you're offsetting the cost push that you get?

Louis Gries

Management

We're easily offsetting that. What -- do we have any kind of ballpark that we're going to be external on raw material forecast?

Matthew Marsh

Management

No, we're not sharing it.

Louis Gries

Management

We're not going to ballpark it, but the 3% will easily offset, easily offset.

Andrew Johnston

Management

Andrew Johnston, CLSA. Just if I can talk about your commentary around the last -- commentary on the last quarter, Lou, around what margins should look like at this point in the cycle. And I think the comments were that were it not for the start-up capacity issues that you were having, you would expect margins to be, and I can't exactly remember, was it at the top end or above the top end of the range. But what's changed in the last quarter? And I suppose also, as part of that as well, following on from Emily's comment about the gross margins. If you look at the gross margin in the third quarter versus the fourth quarter, it continued to decline. Is that all just part of the comments you've made now or is there something else going on?

Louis Gries

Management

Yes, I think we covered it all. It's kind of where your -- we are flat -- we are on a flat part with some of the start-ups now. We're improving on those start-ups. We're back with a positive slope. And then, the other thing is -- I'm looking for a EBIT margin slide. Yes, so you got about 45 -- I mean, the board we have in inventory now is expensive board because we just started tapering down as the throughput is going up. Now when you have the denominator and the numerator moving at the same time in the right directions, it can change pretty quickly. But so far, we're just not there yet. So the leading indicators are very good on the manufacturing side. But until you deliver the result, you just don't have it. And then, we actually get it 45 days after we deliver the result. You start seeing it. Externally, you start seeing it. Even internally, we're seeing early signs rather than okay, we got it. We're seeing that okay, we're getting it rather than we got it at this point. So I think back in November, I said, this is a two to three quarter issue we have in manufacturing. It's probably playing out to be three. Maybe you're going to say, well, it sounds more like three. It sounds like -- more like four than three, I don't know. It's -- we're off the bottom. We've had good trend lines. So far, you and I have seen in our results and I don't -- you'll see I think maybe a hair of improvement in the first quarter but not much. So the EBIT margin. You asked a question. I kind of remember the -- do I think Hardie should be running at or above the 25 this type of market? Yes. There's no question. We should. It's just internally on the operating side of the business, we haven't managed it as well as we should have, and that's the difference between being 25 and 26 versus where we finished last year.

Andrew Johnston

Management

You made a comment earlier, and I just wasn't quite sure of the context because you said that the margins that we saw were probably artificial.

Louis Gries

Management

Yes. What I mean by that and I -- there was nothing wrong with it. All the accounting was sound. It's a quarterly thing. And we were in a period where we were under-spending on maintenance and a few other things, and that was kind of also on a slope that was under-spending every quarter. It was getting greater every quarter. So in July, like I said, we had a bit of a wake-up call in July. And because -- about this time last year, we started getting short on board, okay? Before that, we were fat and happy thinking everything was fine. We started getting short on board, and that pushes you right to throughputs. Well, I think I have the capacity in place. Why am I not getting the service position or the throughputs I want? And that led to a pretty, pretty good, pretty deep drill down on manufacturing. And like I said, it just, even though we had taken that nice step up between '15 and '16, and we were still operating at a higher level, we weren't operating at the level we had planned, okay? And part of that '15, '16 start-up, I think it had too much on the numerator as well as gains on the denominator, okay? So unit cost is numerator/denominator. I think we did a really good job on the denominator. And we maintain most of that, although you can see we went into a tailspin. We're still at a much higher level than previous. But once we see, once we fully understood what the impact of programs on the numerator were, we had to reverse course. And that's what last year is all about. And that's why I'd say the first quarter, artificial's the wrong thing because I don't want to mislead anyone into thinking there was anything wrong with our numbers. It was the game plan that was wrong. It was just not a way to run a business and it delivered a good, short-term EBIT result but not a sustainable EBIT result.

Andrew Johnston

Management

So how do we reconcile that comment that those high margins above 25 were unsustainable with your comments that the business at this point in time should be delivering those sorts of margins?

Louis Gries

Management

Yes. It's a good comment. But I mean, we've got, we -- the other thing you've got to remember last year, we skipped price, okay? So do I think Hardie should skip price when the market is, has inflationary factors and most of the rest of the market is taking price? Not unless there's some specific reason, some specific initiative. And so the way you get to your above 26 is good volume growth, some price improvement that more than takes care of your cost and then good, good operation of your network. So last year, we had kind of, we didn't have the operating of the network. That was the big problem. And we didn't have the price going for us either. We did have the volume going for us. So we did 1 for 3. We're like baseball players. We hit 3 33.

Andrew Johnston

Management

And just on the order book you mentioned it was a bit soft. Any particular region?

Louis Gries

Management

I didn't even look at it region-by-region. But if there is a particular region involved, it's just normal regional variance. We have no regional problem in the business. Any other questions in the room? Geez, I'm going to give you an overview every time [just] on the questions. All right. How about on the phone?

Operator

Operator

We do have your first question. It comes from Brook Campbell-Crawford from JP Morgan.

Brook Campbell-Crawford

Analyst

Brook here from JP. I had a question on the SG&A expense. You've explained quite well the step-up in FY '17 due to increased labor cost and sales and marketing programs. Can you talk a little bit about what that figure looks like next year? Are you going to continue to invest ahead of sort of penetration expectations into the market in the U.S?

Louis Gries

Management

Yes, we will continue to invest. You just won't see it year-to-year to be the same level in actual cost. But yes, one of the things we did do very well in '17 is we kind of reset our market development initiative against vinyl, and we got a lot of resources. Yes, I think we improved the game plan. We've got a lot of resources on that initiative. And like I said, there's 2 parts to our growth equation. One is what does vinyl do against its market index? And they're declining and I think they continue to decline or accelerate. And then you've got us and L-P as the 2 largest hard siding players kind of growing above our market index. So L-P, as you know, has kind of taken a good enough position against us, so there's work to be done there by Hardie. But we didn't get much of it done in '17 because of our shortages in board. And we've got to make sure we get that buffer built back in so we can get more serious about our programs against close alternatives, which L-P is one of them.

Brook Campbell-Crawford

Analyst

That make sense. And a question for Matt on the CapEx side. I think I recall the guidance being for CapEx to be north of $20 to 25 million for FY '17. And I don't know if you came in a bit lower than that. And if you can talk also a bit about what the difference was in the period if those figures are correct.

Matthew Marsh

Management

Yes, I think it's just timing of when some of the CapEx hit for the future expansion projects. So we've obviously got to come out there on timing of Summerville. And I think it's just timing between the quarters. Nothing kind of -- no change in direction or strategy.

Brook Campbell-Crawford

Analyst

Okay, fine. And then one more just on price. You talked about a 3% price increase for this year. Will there be any benefit or impact due to mix over and above the 3%?

Louis Gries

Management

Yes. So product mix, segment mix, customer mix, all that will add up to a positive.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Ramoun Lazar from UBS Investment Bank.

Ramoun Lazar

Analyst

Just one follow-up on Brook's question on SG&A, Matt. So just wondering, if that $75 million SG&A cost in the fourth quarter, which is similar to the third quarter, should we assume that is now the normal sort of quarterly run rate for fiscal year '18?

Matthew Marsh

Management

Yes, I don't know if I'd -- I don't think I'd -- I'd probably be misleading you to say take the $75 million and plug that into each quarter, and that's kind of what you're going to have in fiscal '18. We're going to continue to grow it in fiscal '18, not to the same rate that we grew it in fiscal '17, but I'd also expect it to still grow at a fairly healthy clip as we're continuing to invest in the organization and in some of the sales and marketing programs. So it won't grow quite as much as it did in fiscal '17 compared to '16, but in fiscal '18, it'll continue to expand.

Ramoun Lazar

Analyst

Okay, good. And then just one for Lou. Just your comments on PDG in the first quarter. Lou, just could you elaborate on those comments that PDG will be weaker than you expected?

Louis Gries

Management

So growth above market index. Quarterly is too short but what you can see in our growth above the market index, as we went on the allocation and longer lead times, you could see some of the momentum in that area come off. So some of that was giving up business we already had that we considered not at a profitability level that made it worth keeping and trying to trade that off for new business or core business, either growth or core. So I do think next year, we will be making some trade-offs on the volume we desire the most in order, as I said earlier, to get our buffer there, if we went through the business. And I'm repeating myself now. Last year was manufacturing, okay. That's what I want you to remember. Last year was manufacturing. But part of having an EBIT problem in a business is you drill down in a lot of areas and not just manufacturing. So we went through what product lines were using capacity and at what rate. And then what the profitability of those product lines is. And as you know, most things at Hardie are very profitable, but we did find that not all things were as profitable as you would want them to be if you're going to just find new investment in capacity. So we had about 3% of our business that kind of falls into that category. And my thinking is we either going to get the profitability up on that 3% or we've got to move away from that 3% and use that capacity for kind of product lines that can generate the kind of cash that supports capacity expansion. So that's part of the PDG equation. The other part is what I talked about on the allocation and long lead times followed by service position not being as strong as we want it to be in a building season.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Andrew Peros from Crédit Suisse. Please go ahead.

Andrew Peros

Analyst

Lou, just a point of clarification around that safety initiative you talked about. I think you called it investing in infrastructure, 15 million per annum for three years or so. Is the allocation of that expense coming through in the North American EBIT line? Or do we see that come through in the CapEx line?

Louis Gries

Management

Yes, it's a bit of a mix. So some of it's operating CapEx and some is expense. But enough of it's expense to where you definitely see it in our bottom line.

Andrew Peros

Analyst

Okay. Also, in the Windows business, it does look as though the losses are slowing. I think previously you called out that, that business at a minimum will be break-even in FY '18. Is that still, I guess, an expectation at this point in time?

Louis Gries

Management

No, I think we lost a year. We didn't lose a year in capability but we didn't run that business model as well as we should have last year, so we kind of lost a year. So I'd push that back until '19.

Andrew Peros

Analyst

Okay. So similar losses in '18 as we saw in '17, I guess?

Louis Gries

Management

A little bit better. A little better.

Andrew Peros

Analyst

Okay. That's very good. Also, just maybe a question for Matt around depreciation. Following the material step-up in CapEx, wondering at what point we should expect to see the D&A charge start to step up? And if you could, perhaps help us out with a bit of guidance around that. That would be very much appreciated.

Matthew Marsh

Management

Sure. So I think in the appendix, there is a slide on depreciation. But I think it was around 80 something -- $80 million or so last year. That was a step-up from the prior year. I'd say if you looked at the last three years on depreciation, you'd see kind of a fairly modest $10 million or so a year increase in depreciation, not even quite that much. And then it will obviously continue to step up over the next couple of years. But what you've got to keep in mind is that while we're investing in new capacity, some of the old assets, obviously, are getting to a point where they're fully depreciated. And just with the timing of when we brought those assets on, call it 15 to 20 years ago, and now the new assets that we're bringing on, you do get -- you don't get a one for one step-up in depreciation the way you might be expecting. So depreciation will expand. You'll note the last couple of years, it hasn't expanded quite at the rate that CapEx has expanded, and I think that's a pretty good framework to think about for the next couple of years.

Louis Gries

Management

That reminds me of the summary comment I was going to make on our capacity. So you saw all that capacity we brought on in '17. We didn't bring on as well as we should have, obviously. And it's had ramifications for this year. But that brownfield capacity from an investment standpoint is very efficient capacity. So as it gets up and running, we'll obviously be benefiting from that. As far as the greenfields, every greenfield comes on at a higher cost per unit. But we'd expect -- number one, we're working on those CRs to make sure we don't spend more than we need to in a greenfield situation. And two, now for all our start-ups, we've finally learned our lesson so we start our -- we start -- our start-up activity for Tacoma will start a year before the actual start-up at a plant. So we'll bring in people, management. It will be a much more formalized start-up program. And I'm certain just like we did in Cleburne, I'm certain we'll do a way better job starting up the next three major capacity adds we have. But again, greenfield is going to be higher cost per unit, where these brownfield additions were really efficient from a cost per unit standpoint.

Operator

Operator

We have one final question. This comes from Simon Thackray from Citi. Please go ahead.

Simon Thackray

Analyst

I just want to start -- get back a little while with your comments on sort of bringing facilities and process, I guess, into the current era around the zero harm and the cost of doing that. I think you referenced $10 million to $15 million a year. I just wanted to clarify. Is that an ongoing expectation for cost the next few years to bring facilities up to speed?

Louis Gries

Management

On the infrastructure?

Simon Thackray

Analyst

Yes.

Louis Gries

Management

Yes, I think you're maybe two to five or something like that, two to five years.

Simon Thackray

Analyst

So we should assume that you'll be spending $10 million to $15 million for two to five, is that, right?

Louis Gries

Management

Yes. And that's across nine facilities now.

Simon Thackray

Analyst

And so how much was spent this year?

Louis Gries

Management

About that rate on the infrastructure part. But we spent it quicker than the full 12 years. We didn't start until after July.

Simon Thackray

Analyst

Just going back to something a little bit obscure. In your concentration of risk in your accounts, you talked about customer A, which I assume is the same customer year-on-year, '15, '16 and '17. And I know you report customer concentration risk based on gross sales, not on net sales, as you report in your financials. But if I back solve for the concentration risk again and look at the spread between gross sales and net sales, it would seem the discount, or whatever it is, the spread between gross sales and net sales has been increasing year on year. And that customer concentration has been increasing certainly '17 on '16. Can you just talk about the mix of customers with the major homebuilders, the price discounting, what would be driving that spread? Or is that freight or something else that I need to think about or.

Matthew Marsh

Management

Yes, so I think you're probably referring to something that's in our 20F?

Simon Thackray

Analyst

Yes. [indiscernible].

Matthew Marsh

Management

Yes, and where we talk about kind of top customer?

Simon Thackray

Analyst

Yes.

Matthew Marsh

Management

Yes. So obviously, we don't disclose what the top customer is, but we do obviously have different tactical pricing strategies by segment. And in some cases, within the builders, depending on what our market penetration objectives are. So what you're probably picking up on is just the difference between that particular customer and programs that may be available to them depending on where they're operating and then other customers where that same program doesn't exist.

Simon Thackray

Analyst

I presume it's a U.S. customer, Matt, yes?

Matthew Marsh

Management

Yes, that's true.

Simon Thackray

Analyst

So that would be -- so that makes it more like 15% of the U.S. net sales for the year?

Matthew Marsh

Management

Yes. I think that's a good estimate.

Simon Thackray

Analyst

Okay. So that being -- if there's a push towards greater concentration of the major homebuilders, does that mean that the discount potentially or the gap between gross sales and net sales gets larger? Is that the idea because they're on preferential treatment?

Louis Gries

Management

Let me -- I'm not fully understanding. I guess the easiest way to tell you is we haven't changed it. So there's been some consolidations in the market. Now we don't sell builders direct. So it wouldn't be -- it wouldn't be so much about builders. But we haven't changed our basic customer strategy. We sell through distributors. We sell direct to dealers. We sell direct to boxes. We sell direct to some tile pro channel. So we haven't changed anything. So I haven't paid attention at the information you're looking at, and I'll ask Matt to show it to me later. But we haven't made any changes. We haven't consciously done anything, and we don't think we -- we're in a position that we have to react to anything. We like where we're at customer to customer and from a risk perspective, also from a access to market perspective.

Simon Thackray

Analyst

Cool. And then just going back, you're made it -- you were pretty empathic, Lou, about the 3% price rise covering any increase in cost expectation for the year in terms of the margin. So I think on a like for like basis, on your gross margin, you'd have to see a 9% increase in the cost of goods sold. So is there any area -- I mean, looking at pulp obviously, but looking at input cost, is there any area that you would be more worried than less over the next 12 months?

Louis Gries

Management

Yes. The question I think Peter asked me was the material -- the raw material input cost increases rather than cost of goods sold increases. I think cost of goods sold is going to comp higher -- or it won't comp higher than last year but the reality is cost of goods sold above kind of like an efficient level this year, we won't hit the level we want in one year. But we think we're on a program that we drive the business back to a level we want. And like I said, that's both the numerator and the denominator. We're getting -- we got programs on the numerator to kind of play that catch up and then let it taper down to a run rate level we're comfortable with in the future. And then in the denominator, one thing I didn't cover is as we've been working on these throughputs in the manufacturing, similar to what we saw in '15, we do see some upside not only to get back to where we want to be, the level we were at in '16, but we also see some throughput opportunities beyond that, which we've put some technology projects in place to try and -- I guess I did mention, try and compress the discounts for the product mix we're running. So that's code for kind of new products don't normally run at the same throughput rate is kind of the old established products that have long experience -- we have longer experience curves on. So we've accelerated some of that work. So yes, I mean generally, again, the summary is '17 was a miss for us. It wasn't a miss on the market side but it certainly was in operations. And it certainly was from a financial result. Just like anything else, when you have a miss, you've got to learn from it. I think we got -- we think -- I think we're committed to a program in manufacturing that gets us exactly where we need to be, not overnight but certainly, for future growth. And we'll get our leverage back on our financials as we implement that program.

Simon Thackray

Analyst

Sure. And just on that market side, Lou, you made I think the comment earlier that the order book's [indiscernible] that was softer than you would have thought. I presume that the impact of the pull-forward volume in to margins was dealt with predominantly in April and early May. So is this tacking what we're sort of seeing in slightly disappointing permit sort of data? Or how do you feel about the order book, the recovery in the order book or the growth in the order book over the next, I don't know…

Louis Gries

Management

Yes, mixed feelings. If I had a really strong order book right now, I'd be more worried about service position. So I'm okay where we're at. I mean, you can't run from the fact that we're on allocation, that we had long lead times and we had a low service position. The question was asked, are you doing damage to the company? Hey, we surprised the market on the downside -- our customer market on the downside by getting short on capacity, just like we surprised our investors, being short on capacity. So the only thing I could tell you is we have the game plans in place, we're committed, we'll get it done and we'll work through it. I think our general guidance on this thing when we realized the extent of our problem back in probably -- I can't remember exactly when we talked about -- in September, probably didn't fully understand it until November. But we said it was a two, three quarter problem and I think it's two, three maybe three plus, one month or two problem. And we'll be on a good track. But we're just pointing in that direction right now. Like I said, the leading indicators are good. Resourcing on the manufacturing side of the business, we've filled some holes. We're doing a good job on kind of knocking some stuff over, but it's all leading indicators. We've still got to deliver the result and we'll do that on the manufacturing side as we move through the year. I think we'll have a more positive story every quarter for you on the manufacturing side.

Operator

Operator

Your final question comes from Matthew Burgess from Bloomberg News. Please go ahead.

Matthew Burgess

Analyst

I was just wondering if you could provide an update to the vacant senior management positions that are there at the moment, how the recruitment is going on for that.

Matthew Marsh

Management

Management positions. Senior management.

Louis Gries

Management

Oh, management. Yes. No, actually, so most of you know we had some turnover of our senior guys, long-term guys at Hardie, for different reasons but Ryan Sullivan left last July and then Mark Fisher left early August, I mean, early April. So we're in a resetting of the GMT, which is our senior team at Hardie. And the teams that work for the GMT, we have a major initiative strengthening those teams. We brought in a new Head of HR in January, Kirk Williams. He's started. And just recently, in this room, actually Jack Truong has joined us as Head of International. So we're happy with the progress we're making. We think we're in the final stages with a Head of Sales and Marketing in the U.S., and we also have an active search for a CTO. So we believe we'll fill out the kind of reset GMT this calendar year, maybe bringing the CTO on in October, November time frame. Yes, I'm pretty excited. Jack certainly brings some background experience and capability to Hardie that we haven't had at the senior team in an operating executive. And I think we'll accomplish the same with the Head of Sales and Marketing. And we're very early in the CTO, so I haven't seen any individuals for that position yet. But I'm optimistic it's been a pleasant surprise that a company like Hardie, which is still, although we have a good market cap, we're still a relatively small company, and to attract an executive like Jack is very encouraging for me. I think we're going to do a good job filling out the GMT and really resetting the capability at the most senior level at Hardie. All right. Thank you. I appreciate you joining today.