Welcome to MasterBrand's First Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. During the company's prepared remarks, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. Following managements closing remarks, callers are invited to participate in question-and-answer session. Please note that this conference call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Farand Pawlak, Vice President of Investor Relations and Corporate Communications. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and good afternoon. We appreciate you joining us here on today's call. With me on the call today are Dave Banyard, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Andi Simon, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. We issued a press release earlier this afternoon disclosing our first quarter 2023 financial results. If you do not have this document, it is available on the Investors Section of our website at masterbrand.com. I would like to remind you that this call will include forward-looking statements in either our prepared remarks or the associated question-and-answer session. Each forward-looking statement contained in this call is based on our current expectations and market outlook and is subject to certain risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from those currently anticipated. Additional information regarding these factors appear in the section entitled Forward-Looking Statements in the press release we issued today. More information about risks can be found under the heading Risk Factors on our Form 10-K and other filings with the SEC which are available at sec.gov and masterbrand.com. These forward-looking statements in this call speak only as of today and the company does not undertake any obligation to update or revise any of these statements except as required by law. Today's discussion includes certain non-GAAP financial measures. Please refer to the reconciliation tables which are in the press release issued earlier this afternoon and are also available at sec.gov and at masterbrand.com. Our prepared remarks today will include a business update from Dave followed by a discussion of our first quarter 2023 financial results from Andi along with our current 2023 financial outlook. Finally, Dave will make some closing remarks before we host a question-and-answer session. With that, let me turn the call over to Dave.

Thanks, Farand. Good afternoon, everyone and thank you for joining us here today on our first quarter 2023 earnings conference call. MasterBrand delivered another strong quarter. Net sales performance in the first quarter was slightly higher than our internal estimates and we delivered higher adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA margin year-over-year despite the lower net sales. As the quarter developed, our customers that serve the new construction market performed better than expected, particularly in March. Following our last earnings call, lower mortgage rates appear to have incentivized home buyers back into the market. And single-family completions bolstered our end market demand. I'll spend some more time discussing the market later in the call, but we were happy to see the improvements in that portion of our market this quarter. The team delivered strong results with $82 million of adjusted EBITDA, an increase compared to the first quarter of last year. Adjusted EBITDA margin expanded a healthy 160 basis points to 12%. Our margin performance was driven by solid execution on our continuous improvement and strategic initiatives and by a lower fixed cost structure from actions taken in 2022. While we report year-over-year information, it's helpful to look at our sequential performance this quarter to isolate operational improvements from the variation created by price and inflation in our P&L. On a net sales decrease of $108 million from the fourth quarter of 2022 to the first quarter of 2023, our adjusted EBITDA declined only $16 million. This is a decremental margin of approximately 15%. Both quarters include some discrete operational charges that are relatively the same size. So with the exception of some holidays the quarters are comparable. I'm extremely pleased at how well the team is operating. This favorable decremental margin highlights the impact of our continuous improvement efforts and…

Thanks, Dave and good afternoon, everyone. It's great to be joining you here today. I'll begin with an overview of our first quarter financial results and then I'll discuss our updated 2023 outlook. First quarter net sales were $676.7 million a 12.9% decline compared to $777.1 million in the same period last year due to expected volume declines in the market partially offset by higher net average selling price or ASP primarily driven by previously implemented price. Gross profit was $204.6 million in the quarter down 3% compared to $211 million in the first quarter of last year. However, gross profit margin expanded 300 basis points year-over-year from 27.2% to 30.2%. The margin expansion was driven by higher net ASP, savings from our continuous improvement strategic initiatives and proactive restructuring actions in 2022. If you recall last year we anticipated a softer environment and acted promptly by taking three facilities offline. Our restructuring-related savings are tracking as anticipated year-to-date with an expected savings of roughly $5 million per quarter in 2023. Also important to mention as Dave highlighted this performance includes the expenses from our Jackson Georgia facility being closed for more than two months due to a tornado. We anticipate insurance proceeds to largely offset this expense for the full year resulting in no material impact for 2023. Selling, general and administrative expenses were $135.3 million 6.8% lower compared to the same period last year. As discussed before, we were allocated a portion of Fortune Brands Home & Security costs in 2022, but that allocation is now gone. Instead, we have standalone costs. But if you compare the impact of the two it is a net savings year-over-year in 2023. We delivered net income of $35 million in the first quarter compared to $46.9 million in the comparable period…

Thanks, Andi. In summary, we're very pleased with our performance. In our first full quarter as a stand-alone public company, our associates operated at an extremely high level and delivered year-on-year adjusted EBITDA growth and adjusted EBITDA margin improvements. The team's prior work on our strategic initiatives, Align-to-Grow, Lead through Lean and Tech Enabled are helping drive these strong results. We are prepared for a challenging market environment, particularly in the second half of 2023, and feel that we can manage through any near-term market challenges. At the same time, the team continues to work on strategic initiatives and invest in the business, using our exceptionally strong cash flow from operations. We believe in the strong long-term fundamentals of the US housing market and our strategic initiatives position us to capitalize on this market and achieve our long-term growth targets. Lastly, we appreciate your continued interest in MasterBrand. To learn more about the company, our strategic initiatives and an update on our ESG journey, I'd encourage you to look at our first annual report, which is posted on our Investor Relations website. Now with that, I'll open the call up to Q&A.

Thank you. [Operator Instructions]. Our first question comes from Adam Baumgarten with Zelman. Please proceed with your question.

Hi, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. I guess just back to the quarterly result here a lot stronger than expected, although, you guys did give an outlook with about just three weeks left in the quarter. So was it the new construction side that really surprised you in March? Is that the way to think about that?

Yes. Thanks, Adam. First of all, I would say, it wasn't wildly better than we thought, but I think we did do some incrementally better results than what we thought both on the top and bottom line, but it was not wildly different. So I just want to make sure that's clear. But yes, the incremental improvement that we saw was mostly in March, and mostly in the single-family new construction and that carried into Q2 as well.

Okay. Got it. Makes sense. And then I guess just on the outlook for the second half. Is that just based on sort of the broader macro concerns, or are you seeing order trends in your business that are kind of pointing towards a slowdown in the back half?

Yes. It's -- I'd say, it's more on the macro side, and I'll speak in a couple of different buckets. I think first and foremost, the way we're pacing right now, as we highlighted in the prepared remarks, we had a pretty big gap in the second and third quarter just because of the backlog that we had last year. So that's there and that's still there. In terms of the second half specifically, I think the primary concerns are twofold. One when it comes to new construction starts have started to tick up, but they're not reaching the level that completions are at right now. And so at some point either you have to start more houses or the whole market pace starts to reduce. So that looks like tail end of third quarter maybe fourth quarter if that's going to happen this year. So our models say that with the uptick that we've seen recently in starts that's good. But with the -- you put the backdrop of the macroeconomics around that and sort of say well is that really going to hold up? And at what point does that run out of gas? So it's -- I think there's just too many larger picture things that are unclear right now in terms of the state of the economy. It's hard to say, definitively that whatever model you're using that's using historical data to predict can really tell what's going to happen that far out. So that's on the new construction side. Along the -- along -- the part around the R&R portion of the market, I think that's going to go the way consumer spending goes. And I think that while it's been very steady, I think we highlighted both in the dealer network as well as in the retail network. Sequentially things are very steady. But if the consumer starts getting more and more pressure, as the year goes on because of macroeconomics around us I don't know that that continues. So I think we've just baked some of that in with our initial forecast or initial outlook that we provided you last quarter. And we just felt like we haven't learned enough new information to change that.

Okay. Got it. And then just last one for me. On the selling underperforming point of sale. It sounded like you were expecting that. Was that -- is that now worse than you maybe initially thought a couple of months ago?

No, it's about what we expected. Again, we work closely with those partners. I think if you look year-over-year, there is some deceleration there. We were seeing a steady stream of POS, but we were in conversations with them about their inventory levels. And it's been very controlled. We didn't have -- I think, if you look at a lot of other building products particularly a little more of the point of sale sort of transactional type products, those destockings occurred more last year. We didn't experience that as much. What we knew it was coming as the market sort of normalized I would say. So, I would say, our post-COVID normalization of inventory is early days with them that started in the first quarter. We knew that was coming. The question is just how long does it go on and that's going to be a factor of how does POS hold up. So far it's kind of driving forward on the script that we thought it would which is good. But question marks again back to my comments around the consumer.

Okay. Makes sense. Best of luck.

Thanks, Adam.

Our next question comes from Garik Shmois with Loop Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.

Hi. Thanks. Congrats on the quarter. I wanted to ask a little bit more just around the margin performance in 1Q. I don't know if you could itemize perhaps how much was the restructuring savings? How much was the benefit from the strategic initiatives? How much is higher pricing, or just maybe give directional clues.

Yes, sure. So, I mean, really high level that adjusted EBITDA was really quarter-on-quarter. Price nearly offset the volume impact, which was fantastic. And I think in our last call we mentioned that we would have stronger churn over price in the first quarter. And then from a cost inflation perspective, our actions and our CI pretty much offset inflation in our Jackson facility costs being down. So CI we're still running on pace to our estimate of approximately $40 million for the year. We have $80 million identified in the pipeline, which we mentioned and we are on track. With respect to the 2022 actions, it's about $5 million a quarter of savings that will occur – incur in 2023 and we are on track for that as well.

Great. Thanks for that. I wanted to ask just a follow-up just on the margin progression from here. You've indicated, I guess directionally how to think about EBITDA margins in conjunction with how sales are expected to track the next several quarters. Wondering maybe if you could speak to decremental margins. You had outperformed your targets in the first quarter and maybe provide a little bit more context on how to think about that moving forward?

Yes, Garik, I'd go back to – I think we're going to stick with the way we've described it on our last earnings call, which is that we're aiming to be better than 20% on the decremental side and then better than 20% on the incremental side. So – if you look at sequentially how we performed in the quarter, I think that's a good example of that. I think if you look out quarter-by-quarter, Q3 is probably the one quarter where we had pretty good revenue, pretty good margin. That's going to be the toughest quarter. But I think we're going to – we're aiming around that 20% – better than 20% decrementals and better than 20% incrementals throughout the year. So that's about as specific as we're going to go on but that's generally we're on track for that.

Okay. That's fair. Last question is just a follow-up on the new residential piece. The strength that you saw towards the tail end of the quarter, do you think more of a function of the market being stronger, or is it a function of some of the wins that you mentioned with the production? I'm just trying to figure out is it the market or is it some of the – maybe some of the share gains that you've demonstrated.

Yes. It's a combination of things. Certainly, the products that we introduced are hitting the mark and people are excited about them and that's driving some good uptick. The – there is a dynamic. I will say that our – when we serve the new construction market through a dealer network, there is some inventory in that network. And so there's a period of time where you're destocking that inventory and we're well past that now. But that happened in the late part of Q4 and into Q1. And so the timing of that happened quicker a little bit. So that was – got us back to on pace for what the builders are building. And then builders are building houses faster. They're – I think they've got a lot of confidence around building spec homes because the dynamic in the market today as you well know is there are no existing homes for sale. So the only thing that's on the market are new homes. And if people don't want to wait, they have to buy a spec home. And I think builders have figured that out and are willing to take the risk of building more spec homes than what we were seeing before and I should say, the ones that did benefited from that. And so I think that's becoming more the norm. Does that run out of steam? I don't know yet, but I think that's right now, particularly in the hotter markets, the Southeast of the US, east of the Mississippi. If you want to buy a house, your choices are pretty thin except for a decent chance you're going to be buying a house that was recently built even though you didn't order it in a custom land. And so I think all those things combined have given that little extra gas coming through tail end of Q1.

Sounds good. Thanks, again.

Thanks, Garik.

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from [indiscernible] Bank of America. Please proceed with your question.

Hi, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. Just the cash flow conversion was really strong in the quarter. Can you just talk about the drivers of the improvement there versus historical levels? And how do we think about that going forward?

Yes. Thanks, Chris [ph]. Really strong results from the team operationally on taking out inventory and working on working capital throughout the quarter. So just really good operational results there drove a lot of that. I will highlight that CapEx was low. But I think if you put a normalized CapEx number, it's still really good cash flow in the quarter. So it's really just excellent operational performance by the team throughout the quarter and delivering on the working capital initiatives that we have to take that back out of our balance sheet.

Thank you. And then on the price/cost outlook. Can you talk about what you're seeing -- what you saw in the quarter for hardwood number-- hardwood prices -- like your expectation is, and then how do you expect that to flow through COGS going forward?

Sure. I think the overall thing I'd say about cost in general is sequentially, the costs are starting to come down but we still have a pretty long way to go until we're what I'd say pre-COVID, kind of, cost level. So prices are coming down but I'd say that's most sequentially. Year-over-year we still are experiencing some inflation in certain categories. Plus like I said like we mentioned on the last earnings call, we do have inventory that's at that higher price. But again the good thing is as you work through your inventory quicker you get past that faster. So I think good signs ahead. But again there's other cost baskets that have not come down as quickly as we'd like. So we're continuing to work on that. It's a big part of our initiatives this year is to make sure we're paying the right price for things. Just like many of our competitors are and many of our customers are. So it's -- there's a lot of work ahead but I think we are seeing a trajectory where perhaps the market will start easing up a bit.

And then the final question. Just how do you think about pricing and discounts and rebates going forward? The dealer network is destocking, you said POS has softened up a bit. Have you seen pricing and rebates holding?

Yeah. I mean, I look at prices. First of all I think it's a core piece of the Align to Grow initiative within our strategy. Price is a huge part of that. And really what we try to do is focus on what the customer or the consumer needs, which is a -- they're thinking about it from a cost perspective. And a lot of what we do is get those customers and those consumers into a product that they -- that fits their cost structure. Obviously price is a lever within that and there's going to be situations where you have to discount or there's a volume related to it perhaps wanted discount from a competitive standpoint. But generally speaking what you're seeing from us is migrating customers to the right product that we're both happy. And so it's not a chase volume by dropping price, it's get the customer into the cost structure that they're looking for from the particular products that you're selling to. And that's a big focus of Align to Grow. And that's how -- if you look back at our price performance over the past couple of years and the way we intend to continue to act is we're going to be leaders in that. We're going to be leaders in understanding what the market price should be and putting the right products in that price bucket and selling those. So it's a huge part of what we talk about. Every time we're analyzing a different portion of the market or a different customer set with the products that we have.

Okay, great. Thank you.

We have reached the end of our question-and-answer session, and I would now like to turn the floor back over to Farand Pawlak.

Thank you, operator and thank you all for joining us here today. We appreciate your interest and continued support. We look forward to speaking with you in the future. This concludes our call. Operator?

This concludes the MasterBrand first quarter 2023 earnings conference call. To access the telephone replay please dial 877-660-6853 or 201-612-7415 and enter ID 13737805. Thank you for your participation. You may disconnect your lines at this time.