Brian Chambers
Analyst · Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead. Your line is open. Hi, Collin, your line is open
Yes, thanks. So, we are seeing some demand headwinds coming into business that we've talked about. But, overall, yes, the business continues to perform well. We're seeing declines tied to, as we talked about in our residential business, some weaker light housing starts coming through, and some pretty sluggish remodel sales coming out. So, on a net-net basis, I think we're getting hit by both slower housing starts and less investments in the remodel markets. Overall, though, I'd say our wholesale distribution business probably -- which is tied a little bit more towards new construction, is being a little more impacted than our retail business, where it's a little bit more tied into repair and remodeling. So, while we're still seeing some volume headwinds, we've seen those kind of start to stabilize a little bit here as we start the year at lower levels. But at least where we're seeing kind of a trough emerge, as we think, in some of the volumes that we're seeing on both the new construction and the remodel side of the business. So, that gives us some confidence now as we look at Q2 that if we see that stability starting to emerge, we normally start to see some seasonal pick-up just with more new construction going on, more remodeling activity as we get into the warmer weather, when we get into our remodel market season. So, we're expecting that to play out this year similar, but at a lower pace. I would say, we are expecting year-over-year volumes to be down, but we are seeing that order book kind of steady out, and then, we would normally expect to see a modest pickup here as we get into more construction activity in the second and third quarter. And that's really driving our outlook for a slight seasonal uptick.