Greetings. Welcome to SiteOne Landscape Supply, Inc. first quarter 2021 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. [Operator Instructions]. Please note, this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to your host, John Guthrie. John, you may begin.

Thank you and good morning everyone. We issued our first quarter 2021 earnings press release this morning and posted a slide presentation to the Investor Relations portion of our website at investors.siteone.com. I am joined today by Doug Black, our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer and Scott Salmon, Executive Vice President, Strategy and Development. Before we begin, I would like to remind everyone that today's press release, slide presentation and the statements made during the call include forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from our expectations and projections. Such risks and uncertainties include the factors set forth in the earnings release and in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Additionally, during today's call, we will discuss non-GAAP measures, which we believe can be useful in evaluating our performance. A reconciliation of these measures can be found in our earnings release and in the slide presentation. I would now like to turn the call over to Doug Black.

Thanks John. Good morning and thank you for joining us today. Following a very strong fourth quarter and an excellent year in 2020, we are very pleased to report even stronger results in the first quarter of 2021 getting us off to a tremendous start for the year. We have seen the stay at home and outdoor living trends continue to benefit landscaping repair and upgrade, coupled with a strong housing market and steady commercial activity, all supporting robust demand for professional landscaping services. At the same time, our exceptional teams continued to overcome the labor and product supply challenges associated with a very strong market, delivering better value to our customers and suppliers than ever before. We believe this has allowed us to gain market share on top of the overall market growth. Further we continue to add terrific companies to SiteOne, all local market leaders with the best teams in the industry. As a result, we are delivering outstanding value to all our stakeholders and gaining strength at the same time. Stronger together works. And I could not be prouder of our team or more confident about our future. I will start today's call with a brief review of our unique market position and our strategy for long term performance and growth, followed by some highlights from the quarter. John Guthrie will then walk you through our first quarter financial results in more detail and provide an update on our balance sheet and liquidity position. Scott Salmon will discuss our acquisition strategy and then I will come back and review some of the trends that we are seeing in our end markets and address our outlook for the remainder of the year before taking your questions. As shown on slide four of the earnings presentation, we have grown…

Thanks Doug. I will begin on slide nine with some of the highlights from our first quarter results. We reported a net sales increase of 41% to $650 million in the quarter. There were 65 selling days this quarter compared to 64 in the prior year period. Organic daily sales increased by a record 32% for the quarter due to strong demand as consumers are spending more time at home and investing in their outdoor living spaces. Organic daily sales for landscaping products which include irrigation, nursery, hardscapes, outdoor lighting and landscape accessories were strong again this quarter increasing 29% compared to the prior year. Landscaping products are the products most closely tied to the repair and remodel end markets which is benefiting from homeowners upgrading their backyards and patios. Organic daily sales for agronomic products which include fertilizer, control products, ice melt and equipment grew 39% this quarter. Agronomic products benefited from increased demand in residential maintenance, an early start to the spring selling season, strong sales of ice melt in response to more winter storms and increased sales of LESCO products through the retail home center channel. Geographically, all regions achieved double digit organic daily sales growth. As Doug mentioned, we continue to see strong sales growth in the second quarter as our customers remain very busy. As a reminder, last year due to the impact of COVID-19 related restrictions, we saw a negative organic daily sales growth in April and only 3% organic daily sales growth in the second quarter but then sales recovered and we achieved double digit organic daily sales growth in the second half of last year. So we have a less challenging sale comp for the second quarter and tougher sales comps in the third and especially fourth quarter. Prices increased 3% for…

Thanks John. As shown on slide 11, we acquired two companies in the first quarter and two more companies since the quarter finished with combined trailing 12-month net sales of approximately $80 million. Since 2014, we have acquired 60 companies with over $1.1 billion in trailing 12-month net sales. Turning to slides 12 through 15, you will find information on our most recent acquisitions. On February 17, we acquired Lucky Landscape Supply, a wholesale distributor of nursery products to landscape contractors serving the Greater Houston market from a single location. This is our fourth nursery branch in Houston and expands our full line capabilities in this important market. On April 1, we acquired Arizona Stone and Solstice, establishing a leading hardscapes platform with nine locations across the rapidly growing Arizona and Nevada market. This complements our existing lines of business and doubles our footprint in Arizona. On April 30, we acquired Timberwall Landscape & Masonry Products, expanding our leading hardscapes position in the Greater Minneapolis market established in Q4 of 2020 when we acquired Hedberg Supply. Also on April 30, we acquired Melrose Irrigation Supply, extending our leading irrigation presence in Florida by adding six locations across South Florida. Melrose brings a great team and excellent new locations to serve the growing Florida market. Summarizing on slide 16. Our acquisition strategy continues to create significant value for SiteOne and our pipeline is strong and expanding across all geographies and lines of business. We are excited to be partnering with the highest performing companies in the industry and bringing outstanding new talents to SiteOne. Our field and functional support leaders along with our strategy and development team continue to build strong personal relationships every day with the many entrepreneurs who we hope to bring into our family when the timing is right for them. The decision to sell a family business, they only happen once in a lifetime and we are truly honored and humbled each and every time an owner chooses to join our family. I want to thank all the highly successful entrepreneurs who have joined SiteOne as well as the entire SiteOne team. Their passionate commitment to making SiteOne a great company continues to be the key ingredient which allows to successfully add terrific new companies and associates and provide tremendous value to our customers, suppliers and communitiers. I will now turn the call back to Doug.

Thanks Scott. I will wrap up on slide 17. As mentioned, we have seen very strong demand trends continue in April across all product lines, customer segments and geographies. Given our customers' current backlog of work and the underlying positive developments that we see in the economy and in residential construction, we expect favorable demand trends to continue through the remainder of the year. As a reminder, last year we had negative growth in April which was heavily impacted by COVID-19 restrictions. As the restrictions were removed, we saw some recovery in May and then very strong double digit growth in June through December. As such, we expect our current growth to begin to moderate in May and then settle into a much lower growth rate in June through the end of 2021. We do however expect the growth to be positive in the second half supported by higher inflation and solid demand. In terms of end markets, we would expect maintenance which comprises 41% of our business to be steady during the remainder of the year with low to mid single digit growth. We have terrific capability and great momentum in maintenance with our market leading LESCO brand. And so we are confident in our ability to perform in a steady market. Residential new construction and major repair and upgrades which comprised 27% and 18% of our business respectively are expected to remain very strong. While growth will certainly moderate against higher comparable sales, our customers have deep backlog in residential and do not plan to slow down. These markets will be constrained by labor, weather and possible supply shortages. Lastly, the commercial market which represents 14% of our business has remained surprisingly solid this year so far. And the weakness that we anticipated earlier in the year has…

[Operator Instructions]. Our first question is from Ryan Merkel with William Blair. Please proceed with your question.

Thanks and very nice quarter, all.

Good morning Ryan.

Good morning. First off, EBITDA this quarter was well above even my most optimistic expectations. You usually breakeven or lose a little money in this quarter. So Doug, help us understand how you made $35 million this quarter? And then, was there any revenue pulled forward from the second quarter?

Yes. I think it just gets down to the organic growth. When you see organic growth like that, it ends up looking like a second or third quarter. And so it just gets down to the rapid growth that we saw really across all regions and all product lines. And the other thing is that our teams, we are struggling to ramp up, if you will, labor wise. We fill out our teams as spring hits. And it's a battle out there. Our customers are fighting it and we are fighting it. And so you get a combination of really good leverage on, let's call it, a standard team and then the strong sales. Now our teams will fit out and we will get less leverage as we go through the year. But those were the big factors in having that strongly profitable first quarter. In terms of pull toward, we really don't feel like that's a big factor. Spring did hit a little early and the weather was favorable. We did have the storms in the winter. So we sold a lot of ice melt. And so you saw our maintenance products very strong. And so we really don't feel like that's a big factor. It could always be somewhat of a factor but it wouldn't be a huge factor that we think would materially effect the second and third quarter. John, anything to add to that?

No. I think you hit on it. You hit the key points straight.

Okay. Helpful. And then secondly, you mentioned April is tracking well. I know it's easy comp. If I just use normal seasonal lift in the 2Q, I get mid teens or better organic growth. Is there any reason that we wouldn't see typical seasonality into 2Q and then even through the whole year?

Yes. We feel like we will get usual seasonality. So that's a good assumption.

Okay. Got it. I will pass it on. Thanks.

Great. Thanks Ryan.

Thank you. Our next question is from David Manthey with Baird. Please proceed with your question.

Thank you. Good morning guys.

Good morning.

Good morning.

So yes, following under Ryan's question, typically the first quarter is breakeven or a loss on an EBITDA basis and clearly really strong results here. And then relative to the guidance which looks like it's up $25 million to $28 million, should we assume that when you put up the initial guidance range, in your mind you had already assumed there was EBITDA profitability in that first quarter? And I guess what I am asking here is, are you increasing the outlook for the second through fourth quarters? Or you are just upping the guidance for the first quarter beat and then mostly maintaining the outlook for the remainder of the year?

I think I would characterize it as the latter. The increase in guidance primarily reflects the outperformance in Q1. There's still a lot of the seasons to play and we are really going into our selling season. While I think we are probably more optimistic now than we were when we gave initial guidance, we have not substantially changed our outlook other than for the first quarter beat.

Yes. Okay. Thank you for that. And then second on gross margin. You noted the handling expense increase. Could you talk about TMS and update us there and then discuss private label and the mix of nursery, hardscapes, the usual suspects as it relates to work gross margin? I think previously you said you expect to increase gross margin for the full year 2021 and I am just checking in on the puts and takes there.

We still think that we are very optimistic that we are going to continue to expand gross margins this year. And we were actually very pleased with how we ended up for the quarter only being down 10 basis points. We did lose almost $1 million of nursery product in Texas this year. That's about 15 basis points. I mean obviously, I think one of the things that's different is price inflation was stronger than we originally thought. So we have managed through that. I think we have got a good handle on it now. But it was a battle for our team throughout the quarter as they are both honoring customer commitments but also seeing the cost increases exceed what we had originally forecast.

On top of that, David, we are seeing very strong private label growth. We are extremely happy with that. We are seeing really good growth with our small and midsized customers, not just sale but the customer count going up. And then the other category initiatives as we are driving nursery and hardscapes and higher gross margin products, all those are on track. And so we feel that's what gives us confidence in addition to, we feel like we are in good shape on price cost. The other factors are still full steam ahead for this year.

Sounds great. Thanks a lot guys.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question is from Matthew Bouley with Barclays. Please proceed with your question.

Good morning. Congrats on the results and thanks for taking the questions. I just wanted to follow up on the margin side actually because I think, if I am doing the math right, the guide implies a decline in EBITDA margins just for the balance of the year, following the strong start. And you just touched on gross margins improving year-over-year. So basically if you could reconcile that. Is it just that moderation in SG&A leverage you spoke to/ Perhaps pulling in some extra investments? Sort of all of the above? Or just that what else can you give us on reconciling that? Thank you.

We haven't completely, what I would say, given up on achieving EBITDA margin growth. We are going to face some higher expenses in SG&A. As Doug mentioned, we are staffing up to realize the increased demand. We do expect gross margins to improve in the second half. Then they will be potentially depends on how Q4 goes, that will be probably the most challenging, just from our standpoint also that we face a tough comp from a sales perspective in Q4.

Okay. Thanks for that John. Second one on the M&A side. If I look at Phoenix in South Florida, obviously large construction and housing markets. On the slide, I mean it seems like you have a pretty healthy scale in those markets. Are those type of market where you have 10 or 15 branches, does that get you near the kind of desired local market share with full line offering? Or is there still even more to come in places like those markets? And just you know broadly, what are you thinking on just kind of the next areas or white space you are looking to sell? Thank you?

Yes. I think you bring up a good point. If you look at our four acquisition here today that shows the diversity and strength of the pipeline with two hardscape distributors, an irrigation and a nursery and all across the country. But that's always a factor, Matthew, the market share we have in any market but there's still parts of Florida where we have very strong market share irrigation but there are still pockets where we might be able to grow. And Arizona and Nevada, where Arizona Stone was, is such fast growing market as well that I still believe we have opportunities in really all of our lines of business. And looking forward, I think what you see is the continued but the go forward pipeline is similarly diverse just like our acquisitions year-to-date and across geography and lines of business.

And I would just add to that, like there is the fill in. If you look at Arizona, we have several locations but we still have a ways to grow there in market share in irrigation because Horizon is very strong there, Ewing is very strong there. And so it might look like we have got great coverage and we are number one but that's actually a market that we have got a lot of room to grow in both the irrigation and agronomics. Arizona Stone adds to the acquisition we did previously and now we are the leader in hardscapes and landscape supplies there. So we are very happy and that's kind of a good example of our strategy how we kind of build out over time these leadership positions and acquisitions are key to doing that.

Makes sense. That is great color. Thanks everyone and good luck this year.

Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question is from Keith Hughes with Truist Securities. Please proceed with your question.

Thank you. My question is on inflation. You have guidance on that earlier in the call. In terms of passing through that pricing, are you at the point now we don't see a drag associated with the inflation coming in your businesses? Have you gotten ahead of the curve, I guess is my question, as we head into second quarter?

We do feel as if we were ahead of the curve there. Specially, as we went through the first quarter, we put in place new pricing to reflect the increases coming from our suppliers. And we think we got ahead of it at the end of the quarter and are well positioned for the rest of the year.

And a final question. Doug, you talked about raised expectations on your commercial business. Do you expect that to be solidly positive year-over-year in the second half of the year? Or is this quotation activity that's more focused on like 2022?

Yes. When we started the year, we thought commercial will be down. And given what we see now, we actually do you think it will be a slightly positive in the second half. And we base that on the activity that we see. We have a project services group that does bids for our contractors and their bidding is higher than it was at this rate last year. And last year, it dipped in April but then it came back in May. But we still look like we are tracking above last year's rate. And the other thing is, just talking to our customers, our commercial customers feel good about their backlogs that they have going into the second half of the year and some of them actually feel good going into 2022 which is interesting. So we think that the commercial market seems to be lagging but slowly following a very strong residential market. And as you think about the suburbs where the residential are happening that kind of commercial business lends itself more to landscaping than maybe inner-city commercial which has been strong over the last couple of years. So the mix is good for us as well. So long story short, we expect to be slightly up in the second half in commercial which is terrific and more positive than what we would have thought about three months ago.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question is from Mike Dahl with RBC Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.

Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. My first question is kind of a follow-up on the guidance. And I think you mentioned that you still expect positive growth in the second half despite the tough comp. So I was wondering if you could clarify, do you expect positive growth in each of 3Q and 4Q? I know you have the selling day impacting 4Q. And also the specifically on volumes, do you expect positive volume growth in each of 3Q and 4Q within the guide?

We are not specifying that level of detail. I would say, we will say we are more optimistic. The later you go in the year, the more uncertainty is. 4Q is going to be toughest comp. It's also the smallest, smaller than obviously 3Q. And in addition, one thing just to model out is, just on pure organic basis, not accounting for the extra day because we do lose a few days of sales in the fourth quarter. So Q4 will be more challenging than Q3 but we are not specifically calling out the difference between the two.

Okay. Got it. Yes, that helps. And then I think you talked about some of the moving pieces around margins. I was wondering if you could kind of specify maybe with respect to freight specifically how much of a headwind do you expect freight to be? And have you started to implement anything like surcharges on freight?

We think we are trying to capture the freight cost like all cost in the cost of our product. From that standpoint, we are trying to manage it through it. Maybe a slight headwind, I would say, relative to where we thought we would be at the beginning of the year or what we talk about with regards to gross margin. We think we can overcome it. But it could be a slight headwind. We are not implementing any additional freight surcharges or anything for our customers. Most of our freight cost is actually our delivery costs to customers. But we are trying to manage through that. But slight headwind, I guess in summary. We think we can still achieve gross margin improvement in spite of that.

One of the things that gives us confidence there is, we just have a very good transportation team that does a phenomenal job of working with our freight partners, managing costs, but more importantly securing capacity in this kind of strong market where there are shortages. So we have got a very -- that would be a strength to SiteOne. And so that that gives us the confidence that we can manage that. And then on the pricing side, as John mentioned, we are on top of the movements and actually working and feel good about our ability to pass on any increases.

Okay. That helps. Thanks Doug, John.

Thank you. Our final question is from Alex Maroccia with Berenberg. Please proceed with your question.

Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. My first on is on acquisitions. Did you notice an uptick in calls from distributors looking to sell following the recent discussions around capital gains tax increases?

I would say there's so many factors that go into that decision that that is one of many. I think I have heard it discussed some. But I wouldn't say that that has, someone who wasn't thinking of selling at all, the uncertainty of the tax change hasn't driven them to full sell mode. But I would say, it adds momentum within their decision process already.

Okay. Understood. And then second one is on back half of the year guidance. Taking into consideration the three items you outlined as potential sources of second half weakness, so labor, weather and supply issues. Which one do you think could provide the best upside, if it doesn't come to fruition?

Yes. It's really, I would always just characterize them as labor, we know, is a constraint. It's been a constraining. It continues to be a constraint. So I think that's more predictable one and one that we and our customers seem to always figure out how to over come and get some growth. Supply shortages, we have strong suppliers. They are working hard. We do a great job of making sure that we secure volumes for our company. And so that one, I think, is a risk but also a somewhat manageable risk. Weather is the one that is not in our control, right. So if we got three or four hurricanes or if winter comes early, that could be probably a more material factor. So I would probably put that one. It's always a factor in our industry. And so of the three, that's probably the one to watch more for.

Okay. Great. Thank you guys.

Thank you. Our final question is from Damian Karas with UBS. Please proceed with your question.

Hi. Good morning guys. Just had a follow-up question on the really strong profitability in the first quarter. I was just curious to what extent did the one week shift in the calendar kind of stretching into April more of the spring season have an impact on the first quarter profitability?

I don't think it would be a huge impact. I mean we talked about a little bit, especially the maintenance being in early spring. But we believe kind of the strong sales we saw throughout the quarter from that standpoint. And so maybe on the margin a little bit but not huge with regards to the overall performance for the quarter.

Okay. Great. And then just on the capital allocation, how you are thinking about the balance sheet targeting the one to two times? Last year you made that decision kind of in an environment where there was still a lot of economic uncertainty out there. Just where we are today, just wondering how you guys are thinking about that one to two times and whether you have more flexibility to go kind of above those levels from here?

We do not anticipate that at all. We think the one to two times is a good range to operate in. We think the strong cash flow we are generating from the business, we have got great opportunities on acquisitions. So we don't see ourselves going outside of that one to two times anytime soon, whether this year or even over the next couple of year's perspective. We are going to try to manage through there and execute our strategy. And we think we are in good position from that perspective.

Yes. And that being said, if we had a large opportunity, which there's not many large opportunities in landscaping, its very fragmented or for some reason we did more acquisitions. The one to two is designed that we could go above that if we needed to strategically, right. It gives us strategic flexibility. It's also designed, in the future if we hit a recession, we want to continue to be able to do deals. So the strategic flexibility is important for us. We would go above it to make important strategic moves or to continue investing in acquisitions if the times were tougher. But assuming normal times and good solid market and kind of normal course, it's a good range for us.

Got it. Makes sense. Thanks guys.

Thank you.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we have reached the end of the question-and-answer session. I will now turn the call over to Doug Black for closing comments.

Thank you and thank you all for joining us again today. It's such an honor to be able to the build SiteOne and we appreciate your interest and support as we move forward our company. I do want before we close just highlight that COVID-19 is still with us and our thoughts and prayers go out to all those that have been negatively impacted by COVID-19. And we look forward to updating you again during our call in August. Thank you.

This concludes today's conference and you may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation. Have a great day.