Earnings Labs

Owens Corning (OC)

Q4 2010 Earnings Call· Wed, Feb 16, 2011

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Fourth Quarter 2010 Owens Corning Earnings Conference Call. My name is Keisha, and I will be your operator for today. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to hand the call over to Mr. Michael McMurray, Vice President of Investor Relations and Treasurer. Please proceed.

Michael McMurray

Analyst

Thank you, Keisha. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for taking time today to join us for today's conference call and review of our business results for the fourth quarter and full year 2010. Joining us today are Mike Thaman, Owens Corning's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; and Duncan Palmer, Chief Financial Officer. Following our presentation this morning, we will open this one-hour call to your questions. Please limit yourselves to one question and one follow-up. Earlier this morning, we issued a news release and filed a 10-K that detailed our results for the quarter and the year. For the purposes of our discussion today, we’ve prepared presentation slides that summarize our performance and results for the fourth quarter and full year 2010. We will refer to these slides during this call. You can access the slides at owenscorning.com. We have a link on our homepage and a link on the Investors section of our website. This call and the supporting slides will be recorded and available on our website for future reference. Please reference Slide 2. Before we begin, we offer a couple of reminders. First, today's presentation will include forward-looking statements based on our current forecasts and estimates of future events. Second, these statements are subject to risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially. Please refer to the cautionary statements and the risk factors identified in our SEC filings for a more detailed explanation of the inherent limitations of such forward-looking statements. This presentation and today's prepared remarks contain non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations of GAAP to non-GAAP are found within the financial tables of our earnings release. For those of you following along in our presentation, we will begin on Slide 4. And now, opening remarks from our Chairman and CEO, Mike Thaman, followed by CFO, Duncan Palmer, and then our Q&A session. Mike.

Michael Thaman

Analyst

Thank you, Michael, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today to discuss our results for the fourth quarter and full year 2010. Owens Corning completed another successful year. Our portfolio of market-leading businesses delivered strong profitability, despite markets that continue to perform well below their potential. This performance was highlighted by an impressive turnaround in Composites and continued strong performance in Roofing. For the year 2010, adjusted earnings per share totaled $1.57, a 38% increase compared with 2009, and adjusted EBITDA of $381 million represented a 24% increase over the prior year. The substantial growth in earnings was achieved on a 4% increase in revenue, which totaled $5 billion for the year. It feels good to report positive top line performance. As we enter 2010, we outlined a number of important objectives for the year. I'd like to spend a few moments sharing my assessment of our achievements in these key areas. We said that we would continue our progress in creating an injury-free workplace. Our rate of injuries improved by 23% last year, marking our ninth consecutive year of safety improvement. Over this period, we've reduced the number of injuries by more than 90%. This is tremendous execution by all of the people of Owens Corning. We said in our third quarter guidance that EBIT would be in the $360 million to $390 million range. Today, we reported full year adjusted EBIT of $381 million. We said that we would return our Composites business to profitability. Adjusted EBIT in Composites was $175 million last year compared to a loss of $33 million in 2009. This represents more than 75% operating leverage on revenue growth. Needless to say, we are very proud of this result. We said that our Roofing business would achieve operating margins greater than…

Duncan Palmer

Analyst

Thanks, Mike. Let's start on Slide 5, where we show our key financial data for the year and for the quarter. You will find more detailed financial information in the tables of today's news release and the Form 10-K. Today, we reported 2010 consolidated net sales of $5 billion, a 4% increase compared to 2009. This was highlighted by our Composites segment, which increased sales over last year by 17% on consistently stronger global demand. In a moment, I will review our reconciliation of items to get to adjusted earnings before interest and taxes, adjusted EBIT. As a reminder, when we look at period over period comparability, our primary measure is adjusted EBIT. Adjusted EBIT for 2010 was $381 million, up 24% from $308 million in 2009. Results for the year continue to demonstrate the strength of our business portfolio and our ability to execute in challenging markets. Adjusted earnings for 2010 were $199 million, or $1.57 per diluted share, as compared to 2009 adjusted earnings of $145 million or $1.14 per diluted share. This represents a 38% increase. For the fourth quarter 2010, adjusted EBIT was $64 million, compared to $33 million for the same period in 2009, driven by the sustained improvement in our Composites segment. Adjusted earnings for the fourth quarter of 2010 were $29 million or $0.23 per diluted share. Depreciation, amortization expense totaled $320 million for the year, which was in line with our guidance. Based on the recent investments that we have made, we estimate that our 2011 depreciation, amortization expense will be about $340 million. Our capital expenditures for 2010 totaled $314 million compared with $243 million in 2009. And we anticipate the capital expenditures will be around $400 million in 2011. We continue to demonstrate strong cash generation and produce $488 million…

Michael McMurray

Analyst

Thank you, Duncan. Keisha, we are now ready to begin the Q&A session.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Josh Levin with Citigroup.

Josh Levin - Citigroup Inc

Analyst

When you think about Roofing for the full year of 2011, not much capacity is coming online in the industry. Volumes will probably go up due to a greater demand, pricing has been relatively stable, the industry is trying to push through some price increases. So why should Roofing margins go down at all in the full year relative to 2010, it's just an asphalt cost for you?

Michael Thaman

Analyst

Josh, this is Mike. I think Duncan, in his prepared remarks, talked a little bit about the fact that while Roofing prices have been relatively stable since the third quarter of 2008, we have seen some quarter-to-quarter fluctuation. And with the weakness that we saw in demand in the second half of last year, we continue to believe that we see contribution margins entering this year that support 20% operating margins, on the one hand. On the other hand, we are seeing inflation and some other things as going to need to get passed through into the market in the form of price, in order for us to keep those contribution margins stable and solid. So we don't want to get ahead of ourselves and advertise or promote an operating margin number that was above, kind of what we've seen as our near-term goal of keeping the business at 20% operating margins. So we felt comfortable coming in to the year, that 20% was a good goal for us, given all the factors that we see in the market. I do embrace a number of the positives you pointed out, though, which is we do think we should see more stable and predictable demand in 2011, which should help us operationally. And I think, should help us and our customers function a little bit more effectively, in terms of managing price.

Josh Levin - Citigroup Inc

Analyst

We had a long hard winter in many parts of the country. How do you think that might affect storm-related demand for shingles? And when will you have some visibility into that?

Michael Thaman

Analyst

It's a great question, and I think one that we're asking our sales force about, really, every day. In the near term, I can tell you over the last three or four weeks, the very difficult weather has probably created a little bit of challenges in terms of shipments. A lot of our customers today, their yards are full of snow or big piles of snow, their ability to take in inventory or to ship our product is pretty limited, given the amount of snow that's up on roofs and the amount of snow that's on the ground. Conversely, I mean, we're definitely hearing and reading articles and a lot of papers in New England through the Midwest and down to the center of the country, that there's a lot of ice damming, that there's a lot of roof damage, that there's a lot of homes that are going to need to be repaired. So we would expect after a very difficult winter that the contractors should come out of the gates relatively strongly when the snow melts, and then that should help our distributors with their at-the-door sales, which would then draw through more of our products. So we, net-net, heavy winter should be positive for the business. I think in the near term it's kind of slowing down a little bit of activity between us and distribution points.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Michael Rehaut with JPMorgan.

William Wong

Analyst · JPMorgan.

This is actually Will Wong on for Mike. I have a quick question about the Insulation business. In 2010, you guys had higher cost due to manufacturing efficiencies, and you guys also idled a few plants. And can you give us an idea of what those two cost benefits are? And the non-recurrence of those efficiencies and benefits? And how that all effects 2011 on a dollar basis?

Michael Thaman

Analyst · JPMorgan.

Yes. I mean, we have not framed either those two issues in terms of specific dollars and cents. I think I've said on prior calls, is that when you're looking for, kind of sequential improvement in a business, in a business of Insulation's size, there's a $1 billion plus business. But a couple million dollars of performance issues in any given quarter kind of swing you from making progress to not making progress. So we've been very focused on small performance details inside Insulation and trying to demonstrate that we would make progress. I wouldn't characterize the performance issues that we really experienced through the summer of 2010, as being materially impacting our 2010 results on the margin. There was probably enough impact there that might have been the difference between us narrowing our losses and going sideways, but it wasn't the difference between us really getting back to some level of profitability. That was much more market driven and weakness in the market. And then I think today, a bit of new disclosure, because we had not talked about the EcoTouch product line until we made the launch last month at the builders' show. We were spending money in the second half of last year doing some plant conversions, which is both out-of-pocket expense some capital and then learning curve, as you bring in new product into a plant, we operate a little bit below our standards efficiencies for a period of time. We're going to have more of that in the first half of this year, which will be a bit of a headwind that will offset, maybe some of the gains we might have got by operating better. And then we would expect by the second half of the year, we should have EcoTouch fully into our facilities. We should be operating well. Hopefully, we have a housing market that's helping us a little bit with tailwind. And slow improvement in housing could contribute to maybe some second half upside force in Insulation.

William Wong

Analyst · JPMorgan.

And then just a quick question on Composites, too. With tariffs in Europe not being renewed, and does this impacts 2011 profitability at all, does it have any concerns about that?

Michael Thaman

Analyst · JPMorgan.

Yes. I'm glad you brought that up. We've talked about that. I believe we talked about that on the third quarter call that following the financial crisis in 2008 and into 2009, there was some very, very aggressive pricing from some of the Chinese imports into Europe and that actually in 2010, the European current competition authorities have proposed a provisional anti-dumping duty in Europe, that was about 42% on all Chinese imports. At the time we had said that, that was provisional. And that there was going to be, I think, a six-month period of time where that was going to be considered by the competition authorities. In terms of determining whether or not a permanent or a longer-term anti-dumping duty should be put in place or not. We've seen, we've heard news on that over the course of the last couple of months. In fact, there has been progress to put in place a five-year anti-dumping duty of 14%, that's not finalized, that will be finalized in March. But certainly, all the indications, as it moves through the European Union kind of administratively is that, that has support and that will likely happen, I think would be fair to say. That's obviously below the 42%, but we do think that, that's sufficient for us to get what we need in Europe, which is a level playing field and fair pricing. So that's going to give us an opportunity for us to continue to improve our European operations. We've been pretty clear, even with a 42% duty that didn't give us the kind of pricing leverage that might on the surface seem like we would have. Because we have to keep our European customers competitive, and if we're not doing a good job of keeping them competitive, they can compete on what is a global market. So what really defines pricing in Europe is our customers' need is just to stay competitive; our need to therefore keep them competitive. I think this 14% duty will take away some of the distortions that were in the market from very well Chinese prices and get it back to a level playing field.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Joshua Pollard with Goldman Sachs.

Joshua Pollard - Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

Analyst · Goldman Sachs.

The first is on Roofing. A recent price increase was pushed out anon, can you talk about what you all think drove that decision? And whether or not the industry dynamic within Roofing may or may not be changing?

Michael Thaman

Analyst · Goldman Sachs.

Yes, Joshua. We have a March 1 price increase that was announced earlier this year. And I think at the time of that announcement, most, if not all, of the major players in the industry had announced pricing action. So we felt pretty good about that price increase. There are some competitors that have announced that they're going to delay the implementation of that price increase. We have, at this moment, I do not believe made any formal announcement about what we intend to do on that. We don't sit here today and believe that, that price increase was necessarily definitively pushed out. There's certainly, as I alluded to in my previous answer, there are some shipping issues and basic logistics issues because of the snow that's on the ground. And certainly, in any price increase, we want to put our customers in an ability that they can take in the inventories that they want to take in at the agreed-to prices, while at the same time, making sure that price increases in the market have some integrity and that they're actually going to go happen. So we're managing that at this moment, but I would not characterize the announcement of a couple of the competitors to move the effective date of their price increase to April, as necessarily a movement industry-wide, to move the price increase to April.

Joshua Pollard - Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

Analyst · Goldman Sachs.

My other question is around Insulation. You guys put out the 10% guidance for the top line. Can you split what portion of that you expect to be from industry improvement versus the benefits that you guys will see from signing the supply agreement with Masco?

Michael Thaman

Analyst · Goldman Sachs.

Yes. We probably wouldn't split it out that specifically. But we talked in other calls about the fact that our Insulation business competes in a lot of different end user markets with different dynamics. Obviously, our businesses in China and some of the other developing countries have continued to grow through this period, so we would see growth there. We did comment earlier, Duncan commented that, we did gain some price in the second half of last year, so as you annualize that, that's going to contribute to the top line growth. We are forecasting most of the people who forecast off of, say, blue-chip would be forecasting that we'll see some increase in housing starts in the second half of the year, which would contribute to top line growth. And then us regaining a primary supplier position with Masco, as that becomes implemented through the year, we'll get some volume growth out of that. So I think it's a lot of pieces contributing to it, and I wouldn't necessarily characterize it as just the opportunity we see with Masco as driving that top line.

Joshua Pollard - Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

Analyst · Goldman Sachs.

Just following up on that question. At what point in the year would you expect to be, at a full run rate with Masco? And also, at what point in the year would you expect to be at a full run rate with EcoTouch?

Michael Thaman

Analyst · Goldman Sachs.

Well, let me take the second half of your question first, which is our EcoTouch conversion is complete across Canada. So today, that is the product line that we're shipping in Canada. We are in process, we have five major insulation plants in the U.S. that would be making that product. We are in conversion on two of those at this moment, and I believe our expectation is that on the residential side of the business, the products that go into residential and building insulation markets that we would be complete really by the end of the second quarter. As it relates to the Masco implementation, I don't think that they disclosed on their timeline or we disclosed -- they disclosed on their call or we disclosed today what that timeline looks like. It's going to be a timeline that works for both of us. And we want to do it in a way that they're going to do it, obviously a branch at a time, which is how these things happen. And we're in the process of working out the implementation plan on making that happen. I certainly would expect it by the end of the year. We'll be to the position with Masco where we believe the agreement calls for.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Ken Zener with KeyBanc.

Kenneth Zener - KeyBanc Capital Markets Inc.

Analyst · KeyBanc.

I have two questions. One, just kind of a follow-up on the Roofing. And I know Duncan had talked about 4Q to be seasonally weak, and you guys had margin pressure due to the high cost of volume. If you could do refine the statements so we can understand the decline sequentially in margins, relative to fixed cost pricing, as well as the underlying input costs, asphalt, for example.

Duncan Palmer

Analyst · KeyBanc.

Yes. So what I was -- this is Duncan. So what we were talking about there, was how margins devolve for the year. The first thing to remember about the year is that it was an unusual year, in terms of how revenue shapes, it's about 60% the first half, 40% the back half and our more normal year is about 50/50. Because fixed costs are pretty much evenly spread through the year, the seasonality that you can see, combined with the unusual shape of 2010, mainly the third and fourth quarters had a lot less revenue, certainly the fourth quarter, very much less revenue than maybe you'd typically get to see. Now also, what shapes the year from a margin point of view, is where production occurs. And production, as I said, was probably in the third quarter quite a lot less than we typically would see in an average year. And therefore, when you look at the fourth quarter, yes, we did see some slight declines in contribution margins, but fundamentally, they remained pretty stable and pretty healthy. But what we did also see was because the sales were down, and also because we were selling some inventory that we've made in the third quarter, which because it was relatively small amount made in the third quarter, absorbed quite a lot of fixed costs. But that inventory was quite high cost inventory, and both of those two factors depressed EBIT margins in the fourth quarter. But having said that, the run rate of contribution margins that we have seen in the fourth quarter, particularly when you take into account some of the pricing actions we have announced in 2011, fully capable of supporting margins that we see as achievable in 2011 of 20%.

Kenneth Zener - KeyBanc Capital Markets Inc.

Analyst · KeyBanc.

Sounds like you obviously got rid of a lot of that higher cost inventory relative to where you are now. So for the Composite, if you could kind of talk, I mean, it sounds like shingles is going to be up modestly. But if you could kind of talk about volume, how you're seeing as your traditional 1.5, 2x GDP or if you could peel the onion back a little bit, talk about Europe, if it's autos how much incremental sales, because I know China was getting seeded. So kind of the real growth from that, because I think that plant’s around 10% of your guys' volume, how win demand is looking, et cetera?

Michael Thaman

Analyst · KeyBanc.

Today, we did say that we envision that 2011 could be another year of double-digit top line growth in Composites. We have been getting some sequential price in Composites, so a portion of that top line growth will come from price actions that were taken in 2010, and then some additional pricing actions that we're working off of for 2011. But the bulk of that will come from underlying tonnage growth or volume growth. I think this story is very similar to what we've really been saying for the last four, five quarters, which is we are seeing recovery in the U.S. and Europe. We're seeing that pretty much month over month, and it's good stable recovery, so we don't think we're seeing any big inventory builds or changes in demand that would cause us to be concerned, that the market is getting ahead of itself. So we feel fairly comfortable with good single-digit volume growth in the U.S. and Europe, but predictably. And then obviously in the developing countries, Brazil, Russia, India, China where we’re very well-positioned, we're seeing growth much better than that. So it's kind of a combination of stronger growth in the BRIC countries which is becoming a higher percentage of our overall mix in the business, just because of their compounding. With Europe and the Americas growing at respectable single-digit levels, with a little bit of price gets us to that double-digit. I think that's fairly consistent with where we've been over the last five quarters, which is really good news. I mean, any time you give us predictable demand and the ability to plan our operations against that and price against that, we tend to be able to deliver good operating leverage.

Kenneth Zener - KeyBanc Capital Markets Inc.

Analyst · KeyBanc.

It sounds like if that's your outlook then, I mean given the fact that you're very explicit around $75 million EBIT growth in Composites, and kind of talk in 20-ish percent for Roofing, would you consider your guidance ultra conservative, similar to -- not ultra but conservative relative to comments you made in prior years, given where we are in the year relative to demand on Roofing and some other seasonal components?

Michael Thaman

Analyst · KeyBanc.

I characterize our guidance kind of the same way we characterize our guidance in every call, which is our best available information at the moment we make the statements. So we weren't super happy in the third quarter call, where we had to come in and put new guidance into the market. But I think we're pretty clear that we had put our best available guidance into the market before that call, and then as a result of what we're seeing in Roofing volumes we are updating that guidance and putting our best available information. I think today, we look at the pieces and feel comfortable that giving a pretty clear indication on Composites was something we wanted our investors to understand. Either on the upside or the downside, either we didn't want investors thinking that we had ran out of gas on Composites, but candidly we didn't want investors thinking we could sustain 75% operating margins, those are pretty heady numbers. We wanted to give a real number that investors could pin to for Composites. And I think, the improvement in Composites, with some of the uncertainty in Building Materials, we believe that $475 million is a good number for 2010.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Dennis McGill with Zelman & Associates. Dennis McGill - Zelman & Associates: The first question, just on Composites pricing, you kind of touched on it a couple of times, Mike, but just to drill down a little bit more, it seems from the way it was written up that pricing for the year was maybe up in the 3% range and there's some improvements through the year. So can you maybe talk a little bit about what the pricing run rate was to exit the year? And how that maybe varies across the three major regions?

Michael Thaman

Analyst

Yes. Let me talk about Composites pricing maybe a little bit more broadly, and then I'll get more specific with your question. But we've said before that our Composites business for good, I mean, I think mostly in the positive, does produce a product line that is specified and engineered into a lot of the applications that our customers use it for. And in a number of cases, our customers have been job quoting or piece quoting something to a customer down the line that might be at a fixed price. So unlike our Building Materials, where price swings tend to be pretty quick and kind of across the product line and across all channels of distribution, on a defined date, our pricing in Composites tends to be a continuous negotiated movement of pricing, relative to our needs for return on capital and relative to our customers' needs for profitability, our need for profitability and availability of supply. So you would see across product lines and across geographies some general trends that were all broadly positive. But if you really dug down by product line, by geography, you might see some pretty big variances based on the facts and circumstances of that specific market. So that said, I think it's fair to say, that with anti-dumping coming in to Europe and giving us some relief from what had been very, very aggressive Chinese pricing, we've been able to really rehabilitate pricing in Europe back to pre-crisis levels. But certainly, have not really realized a lot of positive price relative to where we would have been in '08, but sequentially better. U.S. has been relatively good, if you remember in 2008, following the Vetrotex acquisition. Saint-Gobain had shut down all their Wichita Falls, Texas facility because it really wasn't economic and couldn't compete. So the U.S. really didn't suffer quite as much in the financial crisis because there was capacity coming, at the same time demand was dropping, and so we've seen the U.S. be relatively stable. And then, I would say the developing countries probably is a less about price and more about volumes. So where we're seeing reasonably good volume growth we've also seen capacity come in. We have prices that justify new capacity investments. We have prices where we can make good money. So we haven't been moving pricing nearly as much in those markets, maybe as we have in more the developed countries. Dennis McGill - Zelman & Associates: But it's fair to assume that the pricing momentum, obviously, was accelerating through the year into 2011?

Michael Thaman

Analyst

I mean, not necessarily. Again, I would kind of, in our internal books we look at it in the individual segments and the individual pieces. And there are some places where that's true and there's other places where the business is a bit more contractual over the supply-and-demand situation and the product line is a bit looser. So I wouldn't want to have a broad characterization of Composites pricing, that says it's accelerating. Dennis McGill - Zelman & Associates: Second question just has to do with Insulation business. We've been hearing more chatter in the marketplace about spray foam and I think we've touched on this in the past. But can you just update us on your view of spray foam as a challenge for the business? Is it something that you guys are pursuing either internally or potentially through acquisition? Or I guess, how do you think about it broadly over the next couple of years?

Michael Thaman

Analyst

Yes. The product, Dennis, is talking about is full-cavity spray foam, where you go into the house and rather than putting a fiber glass batt or blowing fiber glass into the wall, you actually have a two-part foam system that you spray into the wall, it expands inside the wall then you scrape off the overspray, and then put the plasterboard up over the top of that. This is a product that's really been around, probably for the last decade. I would say that at least in our industry analysis, it's a presence in the market on a volume basis. It's probably a bigger presence in the market on a revenue basis, because it's pretty high-priced high cost product line. We would say that given the way the construction market is organized today, where there is still some high-end construction market out there where this product is typically enjoyed more success, and then there's a spotty new construction or track build home market where this product wasn't typically found. We're seeing some reports in the market that would say, spray foams maybe making some progress that we're not sure necessarily we signed up for. So it's something we monitor. We would go back to the fundamentals of how builders build homes, which is we think they're trying to deliver as much energy efficiency and value to the homebuyers they possibly can. I think it's pretty undisputed that fiber glass insulation is the lowest cost per thermal performance product available on the market today. There is a need, as you get to higher levels of energy efficiency, to also seal the home to air infiltration. You can do that a lot of ways. You can do that with House Wraps, you can do that by putting a very thin layer of…

Duncan Palmer

Analyst

This is Duncan. You should think about as being essentially a sale of the business with staged proceeds. So as we said, we got $45 million off proceeds for that in 2010, and we anticipate getting some more proceeds in 2014 of at least $45 million. It kind of depends on the performance of the business in 2013. But it has been the sale of the business, and so we'll not go through as a kind of equity-type joint venture, which I think is what you're thinking of, no, it's actually a sale of the business.

Operator

Operator

The next question comes from the line of Jonathan Ellis with Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

Jonathan Ellis - BofA Merrill Lynch

Analyst · Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

First question is your comment about the Composites pricing in emerging markets, it's really interesting to me, given that we've heard that some of your competitors in China have recently been announcing price increases on some of their composites products. Can you talk at all about pricing in China and whether, I guess broadly speaking, there's more opportunity perhaps in that market this year for price increases relative to some of the other markets?

Michael Thaman

Analyst · Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

Yes. It's a good distinction that I'd be happy to talk a little bit about, which is again, kind of a characterization of the composites market that I gave earlier which is, it's not really one homogenous market. I think the same thing would be true in China, which is we have tended to participate in the Chinese market in some of the more highly engineered applications and more highly specified applications, where our global footprint has really broad global specifications into China and our capacities in place with our product lines to meet the specifications. So our business in China has generally operated probably at a higher average price level than the broad Chinese composites market would operate. So when you hear that Chinese competitors in China are moving prices in China, that would probably be more impactful on the broad Chinese market, where we don't have as much of a position and may not spill over, give us a big opportunity in some of the more specified or engineered parts of the market. That said, obviously, we're seeing inflation in China, as is any other manufacturer. Since our strategy in China is very much China for China, that's not bad for us, because if we see some inflation we believe ultimately, if we need to get price in the market to recover cost increases, we'll able to do that. But it is good for us, in terms of the people we compete with who are trying to export out of China, as their cost base goes up, it just makes our European and U.S. assets that much more competitive. So generally, cost inflation and price inflation in China doesn't hurt us in China, could only help us there and actually helps us outside of China. So we think those are generally two good trends.

Jonathan Ellis - BofA Merrill Lynch

Analyst · Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

Second question ties to pricing in the Building Materials, this is sort of a two-part question. The first on Roofing, is your guidance of 20% EBIT margins, does that imply that the price increase you previously announced this year, that 100% of that holds in the market? And then the second question on Insulation, you previously talked about, I think 6% to 12% price increase on some product lines that may take place later this winter, any update on whether you're still planning to put through price increases on Insulation?

Michael Thaman

Analyst · Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

Let me start with the Roofing. I think Duncan really provided some good new information to investors today, regarding his comments about contribution margin. And really, the business, as we look at it, we're very focused on what is price, relative to our input costs. So it's very hard in these calls for us to answer a question in terms of how would this specific price increase impact our guidance, because it's always going to be relative to our forecasted evolution of asphalt cost, which may or may not come true also. So we can tell you that as of today, some of the recent activities that we've seen in the oil market, we are starting to see some asphalt cost inflation come through in our business. And we feel that the price increase that's announced, which is a March 1 price increase from Owens Corning, is a justified price increase. It's going to be needed to recover some of the cost inflation that we see. So certainly in our guidance, we would be assuming that pricing actions we take this year and any additional pricing actions that we need to take later in the year relative to cost inflation, that those would be able to recover and offset the input cost that we see, and therefore, sustain our contribution margin and our operating margin. On the Insulation side, there is in fact, a December price increase from 2010, that's been pushed into the first quarter of 2011. I know our team on the ground is working very hard today to help our customers get that price increase in the marketplace, and it's really too early for us to comment on any outlook that we have, in terms of how much of that price we'll realize and by when.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Bob Wetenhall with RBC.

Robert Wetenhall - RBC Capital Markets, LLC

Analyst · RBC.

Sounds like you guys have a lot of momentum into year end, and I just was hoping you could provide a little bit of a roadmap for the opening of the Hangzhou facility and also what you're doing in Russia? And just how incremental you think that's going to be in the next year to two years to the bottom line?

Michael Thaman

Analyst · RBC.

Sure. I mean, I would tell you in Hangzhou, when we pushed ahead with that facility kind of in the darkest hours of '09, there were a lot of times we sat around the table and said, "Do we really need to move forward, is this market going to move forward?" And history had always shown that after the composites market contracted, it would then recover pretty quickly. And we kind of trusted history and we trusted our instincts on that, so let's move forward with the facility. And at the same time, we used capacity that we had in the U.S. and capacity that we had in Europe to build our position in China. So that in fact, when the facility came online late 2010, early '11, that the facility was effectively loaded. That strategy’s just worked out perfectly. So as we sit here today, we're very happy with the timing, we're very happy with the asset we decided to build. A Composites facility goes through what's called heat-up, where you put the batch ingredients into the melter, you have to get it to temperature, you have to start making good glass and then you have to be able to make that good glass into a final form that can ship to our customers. The learning curve on that can take a while. I mean, it could 30, 60, 90 days before we really have a facility that's running at world-class levels. That's probably the activity for us in the first quarter. I would think by the end of the first quarter, we're going to have a low-cost facility in China, we're going to be able to shut down some shipping lanes that exist from North America and Europe to China to save some freight costs. We're going to get some additional product that might be available for us to sell in North America and Europe. And in doing that, it'll start to have a pretty nice impact for our business in 2011. And then following on that, obviously, we'll get a full year impact in 2012. I would expect the Russia expansion, now, that's not a new facility; we had an existing facility there and we've expanded that capacity, which we also believe is very low-cost. I think the Russia expansion will have the same kind of profile into 2012, just with a different magnitude because there's a lot less capacity.

Michael McMurray

Analyst · RBC.

And Keisha, this is Michael, one last question please.

Jonathan Ellis - BofA Merrill Lynch

Analyst · RBC.

On the Insulation business, guys, the new joint venture with Masco, a lot of positive developments. Any chance you reach breakeven this year?

Michael Thaman

Analyst · RBC.

Yes. Well, first of all, I want to make it very, very clear. It's not a joint venture. So I mean, this is a classic customer-supplier relationship and this is a business that we've known very well for decades; very big and very important insulation contractor in the marketplace. We've not been happy with our position with their Masco contractor services it's been below our overall position in the market. And when you're the biggest manufacturer and the biggest player in the market doesn't have you at your overall level of the market, it's very hard for you to kind of sustain your position in the market where it needed to be. So we would say, that their appointment of us as their primary supplier and the opportunities that we have to work together to improve the business, really gets our business and their business back to a pretty natural state. There's a lot of good things that we could get done by working with Masco. I mean, we are a market leader in builders' building science as are they. We worked together a lot in government affairs to try to move building codes and try to move energy efficiency measures. We know that they've got good integrated systems. So their ERP you can tie it to our ERP, and we can start to hopefully take some costs out of the supply chain. We can really go downstream and try to make sure that we're bringing builders the best, lowest cost, the most energy efficiency solutions in new construction. With all of that, I would say we don't see any scenario where we get back to breakeven at 2011.

Operator

Operator

And that was our final question. I would now like to hand the call back over to Mr. Michael Murray (sic) [Michael McMurray].

Michael McMurray

Analyst

Very good. Thank you for joining us for today's call. With that, I'll turn it back to Mike Thaman, who has a few closing remarks.

Michael Thaman

Analyst

Well, as always, I thank everyone for joining us on the call and for your continued interest in our company. Obviously, I think you can sense from the kind of the tone of the conversation today and our outlook for 2011 that we feel very good about the results that we produced in 2010. And I think equally as important, we feel good about the actions we took in 2010 that position us to continue to grow our business and grow our earnings. We've always said that this is a company of great businesses in great industries. Each year, it tends to be a little bit of a different story for each one of our businesses. But in aggregate, I think we've continued to show, over the course of the last 12 quarters, where things have been pretty choppy and pretty tough, that we've got a number of levers that we could turn inside our businesses in order to keep Owens Corning as an entity, as a profitable growing and vibrant company. We're very happy with where our balance sheet is right now. We've got a lot of good balance sheet work done over the course of the last six quarters. We've generated a lot of cash. We have our debt where we like it. So we're feeling very good about our opportunity to invest in our businesses and continue to drive results. Our outlook, we try to make very clear on the call, we think it could be another year of 30% or more growth in earnings per share. It's exciting to think about starting to string together a couple of years at that level of performance. And obviously, we continue to have a lot of work to do, as you listen to the activities and initiatives underway inside the company, to make those kinds of financial results a reality. But it's been really gratifying to see 2010 a little bit in the rearview mirror and realize what we've accomplished as a company. And I think, equally importantly, have a management team and a company that's excited about the opportunities we see for ourselves in 2011. Appreciate your interest and we look forward to talking to all of you in our first quarter call in April. Thanks.

Operator

Operator

Thank you for your participation in today's conference. This concludes the presentation. You may now disconnect your lines. Good day.