Q1 2023 Ferguson PLC Earnings Call
Good morning, Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Daisy and I'll be your conference operator today at this time I would like to welcome you to put some first quarter conference call.
All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any interference with the presentation at.
At the end of the prepared remarks, there will be a question and answer session.
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Good morning, everyone and welcome to <unk> first quarter conference call and webcast hopefully you've had a chance to review the earnings announcement, we issued this morning.
The announcement is available in the investors section of our corporate website and on our SEC filings Web page a recording of this call will be made available later today.
To remind everyone that some of our statements today may be forward looking and are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected additional information.
Information on these matters is also included in our earnings announcement.
Form 10-K available on the SEC website.
Any forward looking statements represent the companys expectations only as of today.
In addition on today's call.
We will also discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures.
Please refer to our earnings presentation and announcement on our website for additional information regarding those non-GAAP measures, including reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures.
With me on the call today are Kevin Murphy, our CEO and Bill Brown, our CFO I will now turn the call over to Kevin.
Thank you, Brian and welcome everyone to <unk> first quarter results conference call.
On the call today I'll cover highlights of our Q1 performance.
I'll also provide a more detailed view of our performance by end markets and by customer groups before turning the call over to bill for the financials and our outlook for fiscal year 'twenty three.
I'll then come back at the N to share some thoughts on how we are executing our strategy, particularly as it relates to acquisitions and conclude with some closing remarks before bill and I take your questions.
First quarter saw our teams delivered another strong performance wed.
We'd like to express sincere thanks to our associates for their remarkable efforts to serve our customers helping to make their projects simple successful and sustainable.
We've continued to leverage our consultative approach our scale, our global supply chain and our strong balance sheet to support our customers' projects.
This drove 17% revenue growth as we appropriately managed and pass through price inflation.
We were disciplined with cost to ensure strong profit delivery with adjusted operating profit increasing 13%.
And adjusted earnings per share increasing 18%.
We've declared a quarterly dividend of 75 cents per share, implying a 9% increase when annualized over the prior year as we transition away from historical semiannual dividend distributions.
Our balance sheet is strong and we continue to execute our strategy of investing for organic growth.
<unk> are fragmented markets through acquisitions, and returning capital to shareholders.
On the M&A front, we were pleased to welcome one acquisition during the quarter and two subsequent to quarter end.
I will touch on acquisitions in more detail later, but these bring annualized revenues of approximately $270 million.
We're proud of these results, which came in as we expected and we're confident in the strength of our business model as we go forward.
Turning to our performance by end market in the U S.
Demand remained robust across our markets with growth moderating slightly as we came up against increasingly challenging comparables.
We'd continue to take share across both residential and nonresidential end markets.
Residential which comprises just over half our U S revenue saw solid growth.
While new residential growth has started to slow.
The repair maintenance and improvement has been more resilient.
Our residential revenue grew approximately 15%.
The pace of nonresidential growth eased from quarter, four due to tough comparable but grew by 20% over the prior year with broad growth across commercial civil and industrial end markets.
As we've discussed previously we will continue to focus on maintaining our balanced end market mix and while we expect growth rates will fluctuate over time, we seek to maintain this healthy balance.
Turning next to revenue growth across our largest customer groups in the U S.
All customer groups saw growth in the quarter despite challenging comparables.
Residential trade grew by 15% and building and remodel grew over 20% with strong repair maintenance and improvement activity.
HVAC.
The majority of our business serves the residential end market grew by 18% with a two year stack of 41%.
While residential digital commerce grew very modestly against a strong comparable as we have seen a slowdown in the do it yourself consumer.
Waterworks continued to deliver very strong revenue growth of 27% driven by price inflation.
On top of a prior year comparable of 50%.
The commercial mechanical customer group continued to grow and within other our nonresidential industrial fire in fabrication and facility supply businesses saw strong growth.
It's through these nine customer groups that we achieved broad and balanced end market exposure.
Aggregate. This allows us to serve our customers' needs in a more holistic way and bring more value to the total project.
Let me now hand over to Bill who will take you through the financials in a little more detail.
Thank you, Kevin and good morning or afternoon, everyone.
Net sales were $16, 6% above last year with growth rates slowing through the quarter as expected.
Unit growth was 12, 7% with price inflation stepping down from Q4 to Q1 to 15%, indicating a small volume decline in the quarter.
Acquisitions contributed two 7% to revenue with a further one 5% from an additional sales day, partially offset by a <unk>, 3% adverse impact from foreign exchange rates.
We were pleased to deliver gross margins of 35%.
In line with Q4, but down 80 basis points over the prior year as expected.
This was driven primarily by strong prior year Comparables during a period of rapid commodity price inflation and supply chain constraints.
Tightly controlled costs, partially offsetting the year on year gross margin decline, enabling us to deliver adjusted operating margin of 10, 9%.
Adjusted operating profit of $864 million was up $97 million or 12, 6% over the prior year.
Adjusted diluted EPS grew by 18% driven principally by the growth in adjusted operating profit as well as the impact of our share buyback program.
And our balance sheet remains strong at one times net debt to adjusted EBITDA.
Moving to our segment results the U S business delivered another solid performance.
You need to take market share with net sales growth of 17, 4%.
Panic, rather new growth of 13% was bolstered by a further two 9% growth from acquisitions and one 5% from an additional sales day.
Delivered adjusted operating profit of $845 million, an increase of $93 million or 12, 4% over the prior year with operating cost leverage driving an 11, 2% adjusted operating margin.
Turning to our Canadian segment, the business performed well with organic revenue growth of eight 2% as we lapped a 13, 9% prior year comparable.
One additional sales day added one 5% to revenue growth, but adverse foreign exchange rates reduced revenue growth by six 1%.
Total revenue growth was three 6%.
Similar to the U S nonresidential end markets performed better than residential in the quarter.
Adjusted operating profit of $33 million was $1 million below last year, including a $2 million adverse impact from foreign exchange rates.
Turning to cash flow, we take a disciplined approach to cash generation and continues to be an important priority and quality of our business model.
Adjusted EBITDA in the quarter was $912 million.
As expected our working capital investment of $357 million was lower than the prior year as we have begun to reduce inventory and supply chain constraints start to ease.
Inventory was down approximately $100 million during the first quarter.
We generated $501 million in operating cash flow, an increase of $510 million over the prior year.
We continue to invest in organic growth through capex, principally invested in our market distribution centers branch network and technology programs.
As a result free cash flow was $408 million, an increase of $470 million over the prior year.
Our balance sheet position is strong with net debt to adjusted EBITDA of one times.
We continue to target a net leverage range of one to two times and we intend to operate towards the low end of that range through cycle to ensure we have the capacity to take advantage of growth opportunities as well as to maintain a resilient balance sheet.
We allocate capital across four clear priorities.
First we're investing in the business to drive above market organic growth.
I previously mentioned on the cash flow side, our organic investments were driven by a combination of working capital to support our growth and Capex investments, which are broadly split between our market distribution center rollout.
Acknowledging investments in both front end customer facing capabilities as well as the modernization of our back end systems and investments in our branch network.
Second we continued to sustainably grow our ordinary dividend.
Previously announced our intention to transition from a semiannual dividend to a quarterly dividend and have today declared a <unk> 75 per share dividend.
This implies an increase of 9% when annualized over the prior year.
<unk>, our confidence in the business and cash generation.
Third we're consolidating our fragmented markets through bolt on geographic and capability acquisitions.
Purchased three businesses since the start of the fiscal year, bringing in approximately $270 million of incremental annualized revenues.
While the pace of deal activity in the market has slowed we maintain a good pipeline of potential deals and we've remained focused on executing our consolidation strategy.
Finally, we remain committed to returning surplus capital to shareholders principally through share buybacks. When we are under the low end of our target leverage range.
During the quarter, we returned $366 million to shareholders through share buybacks.
Reducing our share count by approximately $3 million.
This leaves approximately $600 million outstanding on the share repurchase program at the end of the quarter.
Turning last to our view of fiscal 'twenty, three guidance, which remains unchanged.
We expect to deliver low single digit revenue growth for the year.
Driven by continued organic market share gains and the benefit of completed acquisitions on top of markets, which we expect to decline in the low single digits.
We expect growth rates to continue compressing as we move through the year driven by increasingly difficult comparable a reduction in inflation and a deterioration in market volumes.
After stepping up adjusted operating margins by 230 basis points over the last two years, we envision some normalization and it provided a range of between nine three to nine 9%.
We expect interest expense to be between $170 million to $190 million.
Our adjusted effective tax rate should stay broadly consistent at approximately 25% and Capex is expected to come in between $350 million to $400 million.
So to summarize the business is performing well and we remain focused on executing our strategy.
I believe the combination of our strong balance sheet and flexible business positions us well for the remainder of the fiscal year.
Thank you and I'll now pass you back to Kevin.
Thank you Bill.
We continue to drive ongoing end market outperformance, while investing to build on our competitive advantages for the longer term.
Our strength and our strategy translate to long term value.
First.
We hold leading positions in large growing and fragmented markets with approximately 75% of our revenue generated from our number one or number two market positions last year.
Our supplier base is fragmented our customer base is quite fragmented and our competitor base is also highly fragmented with more than 10000 small and medium sized mostly privately held competitors.
And while there are macroeconomic headwinds on the horizon markets. We compete in have historically grown above GDP.
Secondly, our scaled deliver sustainable market outperformance on average we delivered 370 basis points of U S organic market outperformance over the past five fiscal years.
We're confident in our ability to continue to outperform by leveraging value added solutions that help make our customers' complex projects simple successful and sustainable.
Our supply chain that delivers breadth and depth to our customers, where and when they need it and.
And a suite of digital tools that offer our customers, an omnichannel experience and our people.
Leveraging longstanding relationships within the supplier and the customer communities.
As I talked about earlier, we complement this organic growth model by consolidating our fragmented markets with consistent bolt on acquisitions, driving two 2% incremental annual revenue growth from acquisitions in the past five fiscal years.
All of this has produced a long term track record of outperformance and cash generation by a dedicated team with long term experience in the business.
As we discussed acquisitions are a key part of our growth algorithm, allowing us to continue consolidating highly fragmented markets.
We acquire companies at attractive multiples and then leverage our scale to drive revenue.
Gross profit and operating cost synergies to generate strong returns.
Our strategy targets two types of acquisitions.
Geographic, which allow us to expand and fill in our existing geography, consolidate our markets and bring in associate expertise and customer relationships.
You have a repeatable process that allows us to quickly integrate these acquisitions and leverage our scale to generate these synergies.
Capability acquisitions in which we bring in new products or services.
Associate expertise and customer relationships that we can then leverage across our platform opening up these products and services to our more than 1700 locations and 1 million customers to rapidly expand that offering.
In both cases, while we're acquiring physical assets such as locations trucks in inventory the real value. We gain is from the talented associates their expertise and the customer relationships that they have.
Therefore, we spend a lot of time, ensuring we have a good cultural fit and aligned values to make sure we have a successful acquisition.
And as we present, our company to potential targets. We believe we are the acquirer of choice in our industry.
And then we offer those associates access to the best platform and capabilities in the industry and a proven ability to grow their careers far beyond their existing opportunities.
One of the principal focus areas of our acquisition strategy is HV AC.
Particularly as we look to better serve the more than 65000 dual trade plumbing and HVAC contractors across North America.
This year, we've added two great examples already.
<unk> is a leading regional HVAC distributor operating from 11 locations in the Pacific Northwest.
Trading since the 19 fifties and operating with a strong service ethic breath.
<unk> is very well aligned with the culture of Ferguson.
We're pleased to welcome the 191 associates, who partner closely with the customer base to help make their projects more successful while also maintaining strong relationships with carrier as well as various other vendor partners.
Marino is another distributor of HVAC equipment and parts with five locations across the New Orleans Metro and Gulf Coast areas.
This accelerates our geographic expansion in Louisiana, and Mississippi, while strengthening our relationships with key vendors in the region.
The HV AC area continues to be an attractive space for acquisitions due to the estimated $70 billion of highly fragmented market and we will continue to use our strategic initiatives within this customer group on both organic.
And inorganic fronts.
To close let me again, thank our associates for their remarkable efforts to serve our customers.
The result was a strong start to the fiscal year building on our market leading positions in our key strengths, while investing in the future of the business.
We are well positioned with our balanced business mix between residential and nonresidential, new construction and Rmi.
We have a flexible business model and the cost base that allows us to adapt to changing market conditions.
And we're maintaining a strong balance sheet operating at the low end of our target leverage range.
Despite slowing end markets and a more challenging comparable we continue to position ourselves to outperform fundamentally solid longer term end market demand.
Thank you for your time today.
Bill and I are now happy to take your questions operator, I'll hand, the call back over to you.
Thank you if you would like to register a question. Please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad, if you'd like to withdraw your question. Please press star followed by T y.
<unk>. Your question. Please ensure you Amin took lightly.
Thank you for your patience as we allow people with the chance to register.
Our first question today is from Matthew Bouley from Barclays. Matthew Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Good morning, you have Elizabeth lingered on for Matt today.
I was just wondering if you could talk a little bit about your guidance with the low single digit growth.
Are there any changes to your underlying expectations for within your end markets, specifically within Razee or commercial and if you have any details on your expectations for inflation or the cadence throughout the year that would be really helpful.
Yes. Good morning, Elizabeth This is bill Thank you for the question.
If you think about how Q1 played out for US It was really right in line with our expectations and as Kevin said in his prepared remarks expecting those growth rates, both inflation and volume to compress as we step through the year.
And Thats exactly what we saw in Q1, so as we finished really in line with our expectations really no change to that full year guidance and full year outlook.
Do you think about what's embedded in that we have talked about the fact that we expect inflation rates to compress inflation was up about 15% in Q1 that step down through the quarter.
We would expect that to lap those tougher comparables as we step through the year and likely for the full year inflation ending up in the mid to high single digits for the full year with volume then also stepping down in the year.
And ending in the high single to low double digit volume decline you add that up together that that comes back to our market decline expectation in the low single digits for the full year and then we expect to continue to outperform those markets plus the tail of acquisitions gets us to our low single digit.
Revenue growth guidance for the full year, so really no change, but hopefully that frames the underlying assumptions for you.
No. Thank you that's really helpful.
And as far as the <unk>.
Your line in Mexico are there any verticals in which you're kind of seeing more or less destocking or any excess inventory in certain groups.
We're not seeing a large amount of channel destocking with our end customers.
We have absolutely done is focused on bringing our inventory levels down and you saw that in Q1, reducing our inventories by about $100 million as we started to see our vendor supply chain constraints improve and product availability improve.
Talked about some of the areas that still remain pressured from a supply chain perspective.
Like HV AC like high end appliances, like ductile iron pipe on the waterworks side, there are still some pressure on those product categories, but as things have generally improved we are starting to ensure that we bring our inventory levels down and you should expect that to continue through the year, but we're going to remain really mindful.
All of the current market dynamics, and if need be use our flexible balance sheet and our balance sheet strength to ensure we have proper product availability yes.
But this is Kevin to build on that.
With some exceptions, we didn't see a pull forward of demand and shipment activity. We did see a pull forward during supply chain pressures.
Ordering activity.
And to Bill's point, we have done a good job of reducing inventory by reducing committed inventory inside of our systems for good projects.
And getting our customers ordering patterns back to a more normalized place.
Thank you very much.
Thank you Elizabeth.
Thank you our next.
Question is from Mike Dahl from RBC capital markets. Mike. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Hi, This is actually Chris kalata on for Mike Thanks for taking my questions.
Going back to the implied market volume outlook for the full year 'twenty three guide to high single digit low double digit volume decline could you help break that out how you're thinking about the split between <unk> and.
New residential rmi, non res and how that all baked into that outlook.
Yes, certainly expecting more pressure on the new rent side of our business remember new res is only about 18% of what we do.
In total in terms of price and volume, we are expecting new res to be down high single low double digits.
On the resi Rmi side, we expect that to hold up better.
In total again price and volume that to be down low single digits for the year and then on the non res side Theres some more strength there.
And particularly as we look out further ahead with some of the.
Support offered from some of the government programs that will likely play and towards the end of our fiscal year and into.
Fiscal 'twenty four, but we expect non resi to be up slightly.
For the year from a market perspective.
You put all that together that gets us our implied.
Negative market.
Low single digit decline for the year.
Understood that's helpful and just turning to the pricing outlook one more time.
Are you seeing any.
By price elasticity in the market place today from these and these increases given the outlook of pretty significant volume declines materialize the next quarter.
Are you guys thoughts on kind of maintaining the price on the non commodity side and then in terms of the commodity normalization. How are you guys factoring that into your outlook.
Yes, I guess I'll start with we don't see any catalyst for further abnormal price inflation.
As we look at how product will trade in the coming quarters.
Remember that just under 15% of our business is in commodities.
And as we've said, we expect to see some movement on the commodity side of the world. Although we do not believe that we will see those commodities move together.
Together for example cast iron ductile iron PVC carbon steel stainless steel.
A touch of pressure on the carbon steel stainless steel side.
But generally speaking we've seen pretty supportive pricing levels on PVC polyethylene cast iron and ductile iron. So we do expect to see some.
Degree of pressure change from a commodity perspective on the finished goods side, we haven't seen any.
Significant.
From a pricing perspective, we do believe that there are some structural floors underneath those pricing levels as we look forward not the least of which would be the labor cost associated with those manufacturers and what their pricing levels need to be coming through our fiscal year. So.
Short answer to the question would be we haven't seen any discernible movement.
From a price elasticity perspective is.
Demand is starting to slow on new construction residential.
Understood appreciate the color.
Thank you Chris Thank you.
Our next question today is from Kathryn Thompson from Thompson Research Group Catherine Your line is open. Please go ahead.
It's P. As Catherine has disconnected I'll move on to the next question. Our next question is from Mcclaren Haynes from Zelman and Associates Mclaren. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hey, good morning.
Wanted to dig in a bit.
Non res side of your business.
Have you guys seen any leading indicators of weakness there, whether it's project delays or cancellations.
Okay.
Thanks for clarity we have seen.
Some albeit very small.
Delayed activity on.
On some of our commercial build out activity it hasn't been.
<unk>.
Very large and it's been spotty in different geographies. We are energized by is again some of the larger scale projects as we look to nonresident things like electric vehicle battery LNG pharma semi.
Semiconductors, even normalized activity like refinery turnarounds.
Downstream chemical.
In mining activity those projects generally take a bit longer and so as we expect we will see some softening in new residential construction. We also believe we will see those projects start to take hold as we go through our fiscal year 'twenty three into the spring and summer and as we look at those projects in particular those are good.
Project for our company as a whole as we take a more one ferguson approach.
Towards that owner engineer architect general contractor to bring all the customer groups of Ferguson together on the project and on the site. So we've seen a touch of slowing in some areas of knock on build out commercial nothing discernible, but a good level of activity and what we would call Mega projects as we go forward.
Got it. Thanks, that's helpful and then on the M&A environment I think you noted in your prepared remarks that the the.
Pace of deal activity has slowed a bit but clearly you've still been able to get deals done have you begun to see any change in sellers' expectations.
You know as Theyre looking out.
For 12 months and they may be sharing a similar outlook to you.
Yeah, we've seen Mclaren was still seen to our point earlier, a pretty good pipeline.
In terms of what we maintain and still good deal activity as we look out into the future at least through that through the rest of this fiscal year I think what youre seeing from a seller expectation perspective is as may.
Maybe there's a bit more cloudy and this on the horizon from a from a potential recessionary environment perspective, you are seeing.
<unk> expectations, certainly looking back 12 months and facing valuation on what could be considered peak profits for some of these potential acquisitions and so were maintaining quite a bit of discipline as we think about value and valuation.
But really.
Bit of slowing in the market place, but nothing significant in terms of our pipeline.
Got it thanks best of luck.
Thanks for Claire.
Thank you.
Our next question is from David Manthey from Bad David Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Yes, Thank you and good morning, everyone.
Hum.
A couple of times on the call you mentioned.
Why residential business versus pro contractor.
Pretty sure that the predominant.
The age of your business is pro which could you tell us approximately how much of it is DIY today.
Yeah. Thanks, Dave So about 6% of our business would be considered a direct homeowner consumer business, so call it DIY or direct to consumer.
Got it okay. Thank you for that.
And then more broadly as we enter the school 23 could you maybe update us on a few of your initiatives and strategy you touched on a couple of these but could you talk about the M. D C rollout.
You talked a bit about euro star, but maybe owned brand initiatives.
More broadly.
And then the <unk>.
Ferguson approach that you just referenced maybe talk about some progress that you've made there and what you expect for fiscal 'twenty three.
Yeah, Dave in terms of the MDC rollout, we maintain we're right on track with that as you know, we hope in Denver and Phoenix within the last year Houston is.
Is set to open in the next couple of months. So we're receiving product into Houston now we will begin shipping in the next couple of months and then that'll be followed by Dallas.
Washington D C Metro area in Nashville, which will come out over the next call. It 12 to 18 months after that so we're continuing that rollout.
Really in line with that call. It two to three per year and that is clearly going to be a multiyear phased.
Phased approach for US Yeah, Dave and then when we think about own brand owned brand as a part of our overall product strategy, which our associates are going to help to guide a customer to the right product solutions for their project to make it successful, but also to guide them towards those products that will make it more unique for Ferguson and Patel.
Be gross margin accretive for us as a company as you remember last year, one brand was a bit overshadowed in terms of its growth because of what happened in the commodity side of our business is price inflation drove commodities, we saw the impact of our own brand growth.
<unk>, which kept us in that 8% range, even though last year, we had over $400 million and growth of our own brand activity that progress continued into our first quarter, we saw a $170 million worth of growth in the owned label side of our business.
And that was driven or that drove us up to about 95% of our overall revenue inside of Q1.
Good broad based activity.
M&A, where we're bringing on solid companies that we can leverage across our bricks and mortar across our digital platforms.
And then also organic expansion of categories, where we believe that we can bring a good owned brand potentially through some of the M&A that we've already brought in play like Jones Stephens like Sydney Chartwell and.
And expand that across our bricks and mortar. So that's been good success story during Q1, when we think about one Ferguson that's an extension of how we drive that consultative approach.
To make sure that that project's better, but we take it from the trade professional for the individual customer group.
To the general contractor and the owner and again as I said earlier, that's one of the energizing things around what's happening with non res Mega projects as we're starting to get involved much earlier in the design process and construction process to bring everything from underground water wastewater and storm water infrastructure up through commercial mechanical piping.
Systems HVAC.
Fire suppression and alike to the non res side again across a variety of those different end uses like electric vehicles chips and the like.
So pleased with what that progress has been to date and what it can be as we go towards the end of fiscal 'twenty three.
Alright.
Thank you Kevin I appreciate it best of luck.
Thank you Dave take care.
Thank you.
Next question is from Kathryn Thompson from Thompson Research group.
Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Hey, Good morning. This is actually Brian Biros on for Catherine Thank you for taking our questions.
First one can you talk about the activity youre seeing in the Waterworks segment.
It could be that you could read through for further activity and.
In general construction wise.
It seems project there are continuing funding theres solids any further commentary on that segment would be helpful.
Yeah. Thanks, Brad.
<unk> growth was good 27% in the quarter felt good about the activity level, if I take a step back.
What we're most pleased with from our Waterworks business is great balance across new residential construction single family and multi.
Public works infrastructure.
Commercial infrastructure.
Municipal spend metering metering technology erosion control soil stabilization that broad mix.
Has and will continue to serve us well the activity levels are good. We're just now starting to see the infrastructure Act start to play out we think that tailwind plays out more as we get into calendar year 'twenty three.
We continue to see good activity levels, even inside of <unk>.
Residential construction activity in terms of new multifamily projects being put in the ground. So generally speaking still very supportive.
In terms of what that customer group looks like.
Got it thank you.
Follow up question I guess, just on gross margin compression in the quarter. I think was 80 basis points you guys touched on this throughout the call, but I guess just to clarify that.
Truly a function of the price cost gap narrowing from inventory pre buy dynamics.
Or were there any actual pricing declines in other categories. So far thank you.
Yeah, Brian no pricing declines as we indicated earlier pricing.
We are still experiencing price inflation, and we haven't seen any significant price deflation nor do we expect that in the short term.
If you think about that 80 basis point decline year on year, it's really more a factor of what how we performed last year. When we had significant commodity inflation and that gross margin of 31, 3% that we delivered last year. It was really a peak gross margin for us than we had expected that to normalize as price.
Being traded more more sideways on a sequential basis. So we've seen that compress over the last few quarters.
But really pleased with that 35% delivery in Q1.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question is from well James from Redburn. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Thank you.
Couple from me if I could please the first is just around you.
Guidance, which I think implies a small sales decline for the remaining nine months of the year.
Does that start in Q2 or is that more of an H two issue against tough comps.
<unk>.
And then maybe how much perhaps you could just talk around overheads, which I think grew around 14%.
In the quarter, given where head count has been in like for like wage inflation, we would've expected that to be slightly higher run rate inflation. So could you just talk about some of the measures you're taking to keep that in check. Please. Thank you.
Yeah, well I'll take.
The start of both of those questions from a guidance perspective.
You are correct. It does imply a slight revenue decline for the rest of the year in that low single digit range based on where we where we delivered our Q1 results.
Look I think growth is going to get more challenging as we progress through the year as those comparable step up. So if you just look at let's take a two year stack fiscal 'twenty, one and 'twenty two from a comparable perspective growth rates in Q1 were in the high Twenty's range stepped up or will step.
Up to the low <unk> in Q2, and we will step up into the low forties in Q3, and Q4, a combination of inflation and volume. So I think those growth rates will continue to decline as we move throughout the year in light of that we're making sure that we're taking the right actions from a cost base perspective to ensure that.
We past past the cost base of the company appropriately so to your point, we have started to reduce head count.
Think about head count on a full time equivalent basis.
So we start in a cascading.
In a cascading effort between reducing overtime, followed by reduction in temporary associates, followed by allowing attrition to play through and ultimately taking targeted actions, where we need to so in Q1, we actually reduced full time equivalents by about 400 from July through October .
And as I said, we're continuing to take some targeted actions as we step into Q2 to ensure that we pass that cost base down appropriately and you saw the total cost dollars decreased slightly from Q4 into Q1.
And we'd expect that to continue.
As we make sure we manage the cost of the business.
Thank you and just a follow up there's a couple of your peers have talked about some of the extra cost think they've incurred in the last couple of years when supply chains are being tight.
To maintain service to their customers and the supply chains normalize some of those extra costs.
Sticks and so on might start to ease out is that something you experienced again, you might get some benefit from if supply chains get better or not so much.
Yeah.
We certainly had some inflationary cost pressures over the last couple of years, but I would submit that those inflationary cost pressures are not decreasing yet excuse me about our cost base well you know it well, 60% is labor, we're still experiencing wage inflation in the mid to high single digit rate.
And so we're working hard to offset that but we're still seeing cost inflation in other areas such as truck cost rents.
Effectively everything that we buy is still impacted by some level of inflation. So we don't see.
Cost inflation pressures alleviating significantly, but we're working very hard to offset that.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Our next question today is from Gregg Scott Glitch from UBS.
Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning, Thanks for taking my questions.
I have a few questions. Please so the first one if you could just give us a sense, where you're currently trading so let's say compared to the 13% organic I think could you just give us a sense.
Where that's running at and I appreciate it's a sort of a slowing slowing slope I guess.
Second question would be then on gross margin. So you flagged for a long time, you'll be in the mid <unk>, That's where you landed do you think.
Is it just sort of that that's going to remain the same or is there anything going on that we should think about for the coming quarters.
As you know.
Trading come through but is anything impacting that gross margin. Thank you.
Yes Gregor.
Take our organic growth rate.
Maybe I'll just go back to Q4, we were about 20% organic growth in Q4 that stepped down to 13% in Q1 that was a pretty sequential step down as we went through the quarter, we exited in the high.
High single digit range organically at the end of the quarter in October and that has continued to compress as expected. So for the month of November where in the I'd say the low to mid single digit organic growth range, so continuing to.
Theres tougher comparable and stepping down as we expected in terms of gross margin. We were quite pleased to deliver that 35% gross margin I think we've talked about the fact that that could be anywhere in that 30% to 31% range likely for the year in the low 30% range. So.
So we will continue to manage that to Kevin's point conducting and focused on our product strategy of which own brand is a big component of that.
And then managing price in the marketplace and recognizing it look where we're operating in a pretty dynamic environment. So lots of impacts and factors that could play through gross margin, but pleased with where we landed in Q1 and Gregor will continue to work hard to take price in the coming quarters, but if we think more along the media.
<unk> term, we're going to consistently look to add value added services.
The construction process more productive for our customers will continue to add to that world class supply chain to make product availability better for our customers and we expect to see gross margins increase.
Modestly over time call it 10 basis points, a year for the foreseeable future.
Thank you that was really helpful. Thanks.
Thanks Pierre.
Thank you.
Last question today comes from Harry go to come back and back Harry Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Yeah.
Good morning, Thanks for taking my questions.
Two please the first one is that she just.
Just checking something you said.
Talking about inflation rate.
Well I think towards the end of the talks about mid to high single digit just to be clear are you talking about.
Rich.
'twenty.
Talking about that is the exit rate.
23.
And then the second question I had please was.
I think back at the capital markets day.
You talked about sort of potential for you all.
Adjusted operating margin of nine 2% I guess two things.
Is that still bothers I appreciate that's below the low end of the range, we've guided to but is that a sensible number to think about that.
Sort of worst case scenario and then also just remind us why why do you think it calm.
That said the more negative scenario.
The efficiency of the business changed materially since where we were two or three years ago. Thank you very much.
Yeah, Harry the inflation rate that mid to high single digit expectation from a market perspective that was a full year average.
Given the fact that we are at 15% in Q1 that stepped down through the quarter and it's continuing to step down that would be a full year average in terms of the adjusted operating margin to your 0.92 was below the guidance that we've put out this year of 93 to 99, we do believe that we've stepped up the opera.
Efficiency of this business over the last couple of years.
And that we can continue to operate in that range if.
If you think about part of the.
Part of the impact on that operating margin has been a step up in price.
A good portion of that step up in price has been on finished goods, which represents 85% of our product sales and finished goods pricing as we've talked about in the past tends to be more sticky. So we don't see.
Significant price deflation risk that would erode.
Operating margin below below that that nine 2% with that said you said a worst case scenario certainly if we got into a significant downturn.
There are different scenarios that could play out which we don't expect at this point. So we're very comfortable with the guidance for the full year remains unchanged from what we said coming out of Q4.
Atlanta that 93 to 99 range.
Okay alright, thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. This is all the questions. We have time for today, So I'll hand back to Kevin for any closing remarks.
Thank you Daisy and thank you all for your time today on the call.
And the way we began with a thank you to our associates really a remarkable effort to serve our customers and make their projects better make them more simple successful and sustainable and we were very pleased with the quarter with revenue up 17% operating profit up 13, and diluted EPS up 18, and so it came in.
Really as we expected and as we go throughout the year.
Albeit some macroeconomic headwinds, particularly in new residential construction, we do believe we're extremely well positioned with the balance of our business mix and our business model.
To continue to progress and outperformed what are fundamentally solid longer term end markets. So thank you very much for your time very much appreciate it.
Yes.
Thank you everyone for joining today's call you may now disconnect your lines and have a lovely day.
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Okay.
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