Q3 2024 Janus International Group Inc Earnings Call
Speaker Change: Please stand by, your program will begin momentarily.
Speaker Change: John Lovallo, John Lovallo, John Lovallo, John Lovallo,
Speaker Change: Hello and welcome to the Janus International Group 3rd Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call.
Speaker Change: Currently, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator's assistance during the conference, you may press star then zero on your telephone keypad.
Speaker Change: As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn your call over to your host, Ms. Sara Macioch, Senior Director, Investor Relations of Janus. Thank you, and you may begin, Ms. Macioch.
Sara Macioch: Thank you, Operator, and thank you all for joining our earnings conference call. I am joined today by our Chief Executive Officer, Ramey Jackson, and our Chief Financial Officer, Anselm Wong.
Sara Macioch: We hope that you have seen our earnings release issued this morning. We have also posted a presentation in support of this call, which can be found in the investor section of our website at janiceintl.com.
Sara Macioch: Before we begin, I would like to remind you that today's call may include forward-looking statements. Any statements made describing our beliefs, plans, strategies, expectations, projections, and assumptions are forward-looking statements.
Sara Macioch: The company's actual results may differ from those anticipated by such forward-looking statements for a variety of reasons, many of which are beyond our control. Please see our recent filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which identify the principal risks and uncertainties that could affect our business, prospects, and future results.
Sara Macioch: We assume no obligation to update publicly any forward-looking statements, and any forward-looking statement made by us during this call is based only on information currently available to us and speaks only as of the date when it is made.
Sara Macioch: In addition, we will be discussing or providing certain non-GAAP financial measures today, including Adjusted EBITDA, Adjusted EBITDA Margin, Adjusted Net Income, and Adjusted EPS.
Sara Macioch: Please see our release and filings for a reconciliation of these non-GAP measures to their most directly comparable GAP measure.
Sara Macioch: On today's call, Ramey will provide an overview of our business. Anselm will continue with a discussion of our financial results and 2024 guidance before Ramey shares some closing thoughts and we open up the call for your questions. At this point, I will turn the call over to Ramey.
Ramey Jackson: Thank you, Sara. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Janus has built an industry-leading self-storage and commercial solutions business that is resilient and delivers long-term value for our stakeholders.
Ramey Jackson: We are proud of all the developments we've made thus far and of the collective efforts of the entire Janus team.
Ramey Jackson: As I go through my prepared remarks, I'd like you to focus on some key themes.
Ramey Jackson: First, we are experiencing a persistent period of market uncertainty that is causing continued delays with our customers' projects.
Ramey Jackson: Second, we are taking proactive cost-cutting measures to better align the company with current market conditions while remaining agile and well-positioned to capitalize on market recovery when it occurs. Error.
Ramey Jackson: As we look to 2025, we see a number of catalysts that gives us optimism. And finally, our balance sheet remains robust with the strength and reliability of our cash flows, we are well positioned to execute against our capital allocation plans.
Ramey Jackson: During the third quarter, deferrals continued as a number of factors impacted demand.
Ramey Jackson: Anticipation of multiple rate cuts have developers waiting for better barring conditions, while uncertainty around the election has also given our customers pause. We are seeing this primarily with our mid-level non-institutional customers that make up a sizable portion of our base.
Ramey Jackson: As we deliver against the existing orders, that slowdown is causing what we expect to be near-term decline in our backlog. Self-stories of long-term business and our customers invest in the long-term future of their assets.
Ramey Jackson: In order to improve profitability, we have announced our Structural Cost Reduction Plan, which includes actions designed to improve margins, simplify and streamline our organizational structure, and enhance flexibility and effective efficiencies.
Ramey Jackson: To achieve these goals, we have evaluated our ongoing labor needs, driving savings in our SG&A expense, and rationalizing our real estate holdings.
Ramey Jackson: The focus is on right-sizing the organization while maintaining key resources to remain agile when market dynamics shift.
Ramey Jackson: Together, we expect these actions to generate approximately $8 million to $12 million of annual pre-tax cost savings. In connection with the plan, we expect to record total estimate one-time pre-tax charges of $2 million to $4 million.
Ramey Jackson: As we look ahead into 2025, we are encouraged by a number of factors. We are reassured by the results of our data testing and customer interest we are seeing in Nokia ION offering.
Ramey Jackson: which was rolled out in early October. We expect continued industry consolidation to drive R3 activity and in 2025 we will have a full year contribution from TMC and our commercial and other sales channel.
Ramey Jackson: We are confident in the long-term fundamentals of the business, despite the near-term challenges we face today.
Ramey Jackson: Now let me provide some high-level thoughts on our performance in the third quarter. Our financial results in the third quarter included revenue that was down across all three of our sales channels, reflective of general market conditions. Not surprisingly, the decline in revenues weighed on adjusted EBITDA margin performance. The resilience of our business model allowed us to still deliver solid cash flow generation despite the decrease in revenues.
Ramey Jackson: Our balance sheet remains stable, with net leverage at the end of the third quarter at 2.0 times, which is within our stated long-term target range of 2 to 3 times.
Ramey Jackson: Turning to the performance of our sales channels, which Anselm will expand upon shortly, total sales storage was down 22.4%. Tighter borrowing standards and elevated interest rates continue to cause operators and developers to delay projects until economic conditions get more clarity.
Ramey Jackson: Our commercial and other sales channel was down 7.8% for the quarter, relative to the third quarter of last year, reflecting decreased demand for carports and sheds, which was partially offset by the strength in TMC.
Ramey Jackson: Now turning to Nokia, our innovative suite of remote access solutions, expected new installs from Nokia One slowed slightly in the quarter, as customers held out for the Nokia Ion rollout in early October.
Ramey Jackson: As a result, the number of installed units increased to 346,000 from 323,000 at the end of the third quarter, representing a sequential growth of 7.1%.
Ramey Jackson: With its unique and flexible customization capabilities and updated pricing structure, we anticipate healthy demand for Nokia ION.
Speaker Change: Our combination of strong liquidity and continued solid cash generation put us in a position to be active in our capital allocation activities for the quarter. For the third quarter, we repurchased 4.3 million shares for a total cost of $45.5 million as part of our previously announced $100 million share repurchase program.
Speaker Change: In summary, despite near-term challenges, we remain encouraged by the fundamentals that we expect will drive long-term growth for our company. We are focused on the things we can control, safely and reliably delivering services and solutions for our customers.
Speaker Change: We are the premier provider for self-storage industry, and we will continue to innovate and evolve the business as the market changes.
Speaker Change: We look forward to expanding our strong market position and creating long-term value for all of our stakeholders in 2024 and beyond. With that, I'll turn the call over to Anselm for a further overview of our results, along with updates to our 2024 guidance. Anselm?
Speaker Change: and many more. Thank you. Thank you.
Anselm Wong: Thanks Ramey, and good morning everyone. As Ramey stated, we are executing against a challenging landscape.
Anselm Wong: In the third quarter, consolidated revenue of $230.1 million was 17.9% lower as compared to the prior year quarter, with declines in all three sales channels.
Anselm Wong: As Ramey stated, our self-storage business was down 22.4%.
Anselm Wong: New construction was down 12.6%.
Anselm Wong: while R3 was off 34.4% for the quarter.
Anselm Wong: We saw continued project deferrals in both new construction and R3s. While we haven't seen a material increase in project cancellations, we now expect these delays to persist through the end of 2024.
Anselm Wong: The decline in revenue was 90% volume and 10% price.
Anselm Wong: As we've discussed previously, our commercial actions are meant to reflect the premium solutions we offer. The price component of the impact on revenues this quarter reflects our proactive efforts to remain competitive.
Anselm Wong: Our commercial and other segments saw a 7.8% decline in the third quarter, driven by overall market softness and continued weakness in demand for carports and sheds, offset somewhat by contributions from the TMC acquisition.
Anselm Wong: and many more. Thank you. Thank you.
Anselm Wong: Third quarter adjusted EBITDA of $43.1 million was down 43.4% compared to third quarter of 2023.
Anselm Wong: This resulted in adjusted EBITDA margin of 18.7% compared to 27.2% in the prior year period.
Anselm Wong: While the decline in EBITDA margin was primarily due to volume decreases, we also had an adjustment to our provision for credit losses in the quarter due to a customer of ours filing for bankruptcy and marketing conditions impacting some customers' ability to make timely payments.
Anselm Wong: For the third quarter, we produced adjusted net income of $15.7 million, a 59.8% year-over-year decline, and adjusted diluted earnings per share of 11 cents.
Anselm Wong: We generated cash from operating activities of $43 million, continuing to demonstrate the robust cash generation profile of the business. Capital expenditures in the quarter were $3.7 million, compared to $3.9 million in the third quarter of 2023.
Anselm Wong: For the third quarter, we generate free cash flow of $39.3 million. On a trailing 12-month basis, this represented a free cash flow conversion of adjusted income of 134 percent.
Anselm Wong: We finished the quarter with $226.7 million in total liquidity, including $102.1 million of cash and equivalents on the balance sheet. Our total outstanding long-term debt at quarter end was $586.1 million and net leverage was two times.
Anselm Wong: During the quarter, we executed against our $100 million share repurchase program. Year-to-date, we have repurchased 6 million shares for $70.9 million.
Anselm Wong: Now moving to our 2024 guidance.
Anselm Wong: So far in the fourth quarter, we are seeing a continuation of trends that began earlier this year, with softness in demand and project delay persisting.
Anselm Wong: We now expect challenges in deferrals and demand to continue for the remaining year of 2024.
Anselm Wong: While we had hoped that the interest rate cut in September would have had a more positive immediate impact, anticipation of additional rate cuts before year-end has developers continuing to delay. As such, we have adjusted our full year 2024 guidance for revenues and adjusted EBITDA as follows.
Anselm Wong: We now expect revenue to be in the range of $910 million to $925 million. We anticipate adjusted EBITDA to be in the range of $195 million to $205 million, which equates to an adjusted EBITDA margin at the midpoint of 21.8% for 2024.
Anselm Wong: While we are adjusting the outlook for 2024 down from our prior guidance, we believe the long-term fundamentals for the self-storage industry are intact and our long-term framework remains in place. As a reminder, that long-term outlook does not factor in impacts from commercial actions.
Anselm Wong: As we mentioned on the second quarter call, in early third quarter we instituted commercial actions to better align our pricing for new projects with the recent declines in steel pricing that we have seen since the beginning of 2024. We expect to see the impacts from these actions during 2025.
Anselm Wong: As we look into 2025, we expect improving market conditions from a combination of factors that Ramey discussed earlier around R3 demand, Nokia, and a full-year contribution from TMC and our commercial and other sales channels.
Anselm Wong: We also anticipate that we will have realized some of the benefits of our structural cost reduction plan, which is expected to generate approximately $8 million to $12 million of annual pre-tax cost savings.
Anselm Wong: We expect to record total estimated one-time pre-tax charges of $2 million to $4 million in connection with the plan. One additional note, we expect to file our 10-Q on November 1st. Thank you. I will now turn the call over to Ramey for his closing remarks. Ramey.
Ramey Jackson: Thank you again, Anselm. The hard work we have done and the momentum we have built are allowing us to face near-term challenges while executing against our capital allocation goals.
Ramey Jackson: As Anselm mentioned, despite near-term headwinds, our long-term objectives remain intact. The demand drivers for self-storage are life-event driven, and those events continue to happen.
Ramey Jackson: Occupancy rates remain elevated from historical norms.
Ramey Jackson: We have conviction in our model and optimism going into next year and believe that we will be well positioned to capitalize on the market recovery when it occurs.
Ramey Jackson: We are the industry leader in self-storage, providing full solutions to our customers.
Ramey Jackson: With our balance sheet strength, our strong cash flow foundation, we will continue expanding our suite of offerings and capabilities while seeking out and delivering accretive shareholder value-enhancing opportunities.
Ramey Jackson: I look forward to continuing to execute on our plan as we work to drive long-term value creation for all of our stakeholders. Thank you again for joining us. Operator, we can now open up the lines for Q&A.
Speaker Change: Thank you. At this time, if you'd like to ask a question, please press the star and 1 keys on your telephone keypad. Keep in mind, you may remove yourself from the question queue at any time by pressing star and 2.
Speaker Change: We'll take our first question from Jeff Hammond with KeyBank Capital Markets.
Speaker Change: Please go ahead, your line is open.
Jeff Hammond: Hey, good morning, guys.
Jeff Hammond: Hey Jeff, how are you doing? Hey, so last quarter it seemed like you felt pretty good that you scrubbed the backlog and understood the deferrals, and I'm just wondering, you know, what really changed here, you know, to warrant kind of the...
Jeff Hammond: you know, the meaningful cut, and then maybe just speak to, you know, what you're seeing on new order, incoming order activity, and any cancellations.
Jeff Hammond: Thank you.
Speaker Change: Thanks Jeff. I think you know one of the big things that changes that we did do the scrub and continue to do the scrub
Speaker Change: is that a lot of the projects that we had hoped that would release based on the interest rate cut
Speaker Change: did not release. So we're just seeing the same as what we saw in the prior court with stuff not moving. That was a big, you know, change from the last kind of look of it when we did the scrub. I think the other thing is, as you guys know, it's public when the Fed kind of provided the rate cut.
Speaker Change: They also provided two further proposed cuts coming this year and I don't think that did us help in terms of to our developers now that they at least have visibility to two more by the end of this year. So I think we got more of the same pushback in terms of from a financial point of view.
Speaker Change: Thank you.
Speaker Change: Okay, can you just talk about incoming order rates and any cancellations?
Speaker Change: Yeah, look, um...
Speaker Change: In terms of new orders, it's status quo, the REITs and the larger operators continue to do business as usual. I think the most impacted customer segment was the non-institutional operator and the mom and pops.
Speaker Change: And that's kind of on the new supply side. The R3, there are some bright spots on the R3 side of it. We are starting to see some momentum.
Speaker Change: kind of in the pipeline and also conversion into backlog that we're optimistic and then also an acceleration on the Nokia ION opportunity and on the tech side of the business.
Speaker Change: Okay, and then lastly, you know, decrementals are, you know, obviously this has come pretty swift, but decrementals are pretty harsh. Anything else?
Speaker Change: you guys can do to mitigate the decrementals versus some of the restriction. I noticed SG&A kind of surprisingly ticked up here sequentially despite kind of expectations for...
Speaker Change: you know, for lower activity.
Speaker Change: Yeah, we're definitely continuing to look. That's why we gave a range. We're not complete with our Phase 2 of our structural, you know, cost adjustments. If you look through when the Q is published at the end of the week, you'll see that there is a bad debt that we had to take as one of our big customers went bankrupt that impacted that line.
Speaker Change: What was the magnitude of that? If you look at the queue, the adjusted amount was about $6.5 million. They hit the adjusted EBITDA.
Speaker Change: Okay, thanks a lot, appreciate it.
Speaker Change: Thanks Jeff.
Speaker Change: And we'll take our next question from Reuben Garner with Benchmark. Please go ahead your line is open.
Reuben Garner: Thank you. Good morning, guys.
Speaker Change: Morning, Ray.
Speaker Change: All right. Okay.
Reuben Garner: I guess, a couple things on the long-term framework that you're referencing. Can you remind us what...
Reuben Garner: detail on exactly how much those commercial actions are.
Reuben Garner: are going to reduce price over the next...
Reuben Garner: year and you know I guess that seems like a structural change I mean steel prices are still above where they were pre
Reuben Garner: 2020, so if you're having to reset prices, I'd imagine you don't expect steel to go back up anytime soon. So, does the long-term framework for margins and growth need to be adjusted?
Speaker Change: I'll make one comment and then you can kind of speak to the modeling, but Rube, in our opinion, I mean, depending on the election, I think one of the candidates is talking about further
Speaker Change: Yeah, tariffs. And so it's of our opinion that if that side of the house wins, we'll certainly see steel go the opposite direction. You are right. Steel's at a near-time low right now, but certainly not where it was.
Speaker Change: Thank you.
Speaker Change: you know, before 2020, so to speak.
Speaker Change: That's just our opinion on the steel movement as it relates to what happens with the election. Yeah, and Reuben, in terms of the long-term framework, I think we haven't changed the margins 25 to 27 percent. The reason why we're just pointing it out is that
Speaker Change: We identified last quarter that we had taken some commercial actions that will impact us in 2025. The guide, the kind of ballpark we said it would be, in fact, would be about kind of high single digits in the storage part of our business is the impact.
Speaker Change: We do have the offset from a cost point of view. That's why we're still holding to the long-term favor from a margin point of view. So despite having to give up some of the price on the storage piece, we'll get some offset on the cost side.
Speaker Change: and many more. Thank you. Thank you.
Speaker Change: Okay that's helpful and then in terms of the further delays or continued delays if you will, can you just help us
Speaker Change: understand how this works. I mean I understand it on the R3 side if projects are put on hold but I thought maybe there would be more visibility into the new construction side of the business given that you guys come later in the
Speaker Change: the cycle. Are those projects being stopped in the middle of a job or does impacts you're seeing now just from projects that didn't start six, nine months ago? Just help us walk through the dynamic there.
Speaker Change: Yeah, we're seeing both. So there's actually projects that have started and they just put it on hold in terms of where they're at. And then to your point, there's a lot of projects that were planned to start that have not started, that should have started if you look to follow the normal schedule.
Speaker Change: Great. Thanks, guys. I appreciate the color. Good luck.
Speaker Change: We'll take our next question from Phil Ng with Jefferies. Please go ahead, your line is open.
Phil Ng: Hey guys, I think Anselm you're still pointing to maintaining your longer term margins over time, but certainly if I look at your guidance for the fourth quarter, it implies I think mid-teen type EBITDA margins.
Phil Ng: You know, appreciating some of these cost efforts may not kick into overdrive right away.
Phil Ng: If the man stays pretty muted, like what we're seeing in the back half of this year, is mid-teen, even down margins, the way to think about 2025?
Speaker Change: Demand and pricing to kind of really bounce off of here you get back to like the the longer-term profile How should we think about some of these moving? Yeah without providing guidance if we're not fighting at 25 yet the way we look at it
Speaker Change: You look at the Q4 number, it's extreme low volume, yes.
Speaker Change: We're trying to put a realistic number into the Q4 number, and that's why you saw the adjustment there, and obviously the cost action that we announced.
Speaker Change: will have minimal impact in Q4. They'll probably hit majority in 25. And then the other thing is once, you know, we have obviously balance of PMC coming next year.
Speaker Change: We have some of the Nokia ION that we talked about that's driving, that's coming through as well next year. So I think the way we look at it, at least early on for right now, is that if volume gets back to a somewhat normalized kind of range that we think it's going to be, we'll get back into the above the teens. And that's why we haven't kind of changed from what we see from a margin point of view.
Speaker Change: And are you curtailing production in the fourth quarter because the demand is obviously much weaker than you would have thought? Does that have an impact on margins in the fourth quarter as well?
Speaker Change: Yes, that's that's why you see that margin rate hit in terms of what Q4 is by itself because the volume is down a lot I think what we try to do again, you know, we've been scrubbing the back line continuously
Speaker Change: What we want to do is really, at this point, not knowing when these projects are going to come up full, we say,
Speaker Change: I don't think we're going to forecast any release of the stuff that's on hold at this point.
Speaker Change: continue the stuff that is coming through and just let that
Speaker Change: be the assumption at this point. They eventually will have to get released, and I think the one thing I'll point to is that our international business, again, when you guys see the queue, we had mentioned that they went through this as well, and they finally got to, I would say, flattish to slight growth in Q3.
Speaker Change: went through a similar thing like this and that's kind of what we're hoping that these projects start releasing.
Speaker Change: Okay, how are your backlogs looking and how much visibility you have? I mean it doesn't sound like you're seeing cancellations but well I guess are you seeing cancellations? Like what are your backlogs telling you?
Speaker Change: Yeah, we're not seeing cancellations, any meaningful changes there. I think what we're saying is a small decline in the backlog, and that would make sense if you have customers thinking that they're putting projects on hold, they're not going to put more in the backlog until they start these projects, and that's kind of what we were seeing. It's not a meaningful change from what we've seen, but it is slightly lower.
Speaker Change: and the pipeline remains strong.
Speaker Change: When we talk about project delays, I believe it's really largely at the contractor level, not at the end customer level. Contractually, that's what you guys have. How much latitude do these customers have in terms of delaying?
Speaker Change: three months? Is there a window to like delay it to like a year or there's not much, you know, contractual limitations in terms of how long they can delay?
Speaker Change: Yeah, that's a good question. I think it's on both levels. I think you have kind of you know the the developers
Speaker Change: waiting for a better macro, and then you have the contractors that have the ability to press pause, but there's certainly a shelf life to that.
Speaker Change: You know, at some point in time, they'll certainly release. I mean, there's already investment made into the asset. And so time will tell. That's why we muted the Q4. But there's no question at some point in time they'll release out of the backlog.
Speaker Change: Au revoir.
Speaker Change: And then just one last one for me. Ramey, I think the weakness you're seeing is largely the mom and pop operators and the non-institutional side of things. Are you losing share in that market by any chance? And have you seen, you know, heightened price competition, just outside of steel prices, right? I mean, that I fully get, you're just passing that through, but are you seeing more...
Speaker Change: competition and share movement in this current backdrop.
Ramey Jackson: Yeah, I think there are more competitors.
Ramey Jackson: not concerned about losing share. I think when you look at our model, you know, we're not just a door manufacturer, and I think the market appreciates that. There certainly will be opportunistic, you know, decisions made on low price, but that's certainly not sustainable in a market like this.
Speaker Change: You want a supplier that has a strong balance sheet, that has a good business model to support the growth. So I'm not necessarily concerned about it. I'm certainly paying attention to it, but I'm not overly concerned about it. Welcome. Appreciate all the color, guys. Thanks.
Speaker Change: We'll take our next question from Daniel Moore with CJS Securities. Please go ahead, your line is open.
Speaker Change: David Tarantino, David Tarantino, David Tarantino, [inaudible]
Daniel Moore: Yes, thank you again Ramey and Anselm for taking the questions. Maybe a little bit of a repeat, but it's just, you know, big picture You know, trying to marry the idea that customers, you know, not wanting to delay investment for too long for fear of losing share versus the kind of pullback. So, you know, when you speak to those mid-tier, you know, self-storage customers
Daniel Moore: How much of it directly is interest rate and election uncertainty versus, you know, and any discussion around kind of supply demand balance That may take a little bit longer to work through
Speaker Change: It's hard to say. We don't have a direct saying it's this reason or that reason. I think we get both.
Speaker Change: from the internee, I think there's just...
Speaker Change: If you ask the customers and we ask, you know, we polled, you know, a lot of them, it's just...
Speaker Change: It's a wait-and-see game right now because, at least from an interest rate side,
Speaker Change: There's already the forecast of two more coming down and then from the election side is that
Speaker Change: which party wins and like Ramey alluded to is there something that from a cost point of view that they have to be worried about in terms of
Speaker Change: projects if the steel price, you know, goes up because of tariffs. So I think it's still a mix of both in that we're at least hearing. Yeah, just a little more color to it. I would say that the true mom and pops are 100% on the sidelines right now from an interest rate perspective and lending requirement perspective.
Speaker Change: And then there's more of the institutional non-REIT that have capital that are being opportunistic on interest rates. And then, like I mentioned earlier, the REITs are just business as usual.
Speaker Change: Got it, helpful. Just switching gears, the credit loss in the quarter, are there, is there any incremental or additional built into the Q4 guide and are there any other customers that are materially behind on payments?
Speaker Change: Yeah, I think that when we took the, had the one country that went bankrupt, we took a more thorough deep dive of all our customer sets.
Speaker Change: That's why there is an additional reserve that was put against kind of the other remaining account. There's not an incremental assumed in Q4 at this point in time based on what we see.
Speaker Change: But I think it's just a, you know, we just want to make sure we appropriately reserve for any risk that we see in there. And I think this was, unfortunately, the customer went bankrupt, was a long-time customer and a very large customer. So that did have a meaningful impact in the quarter.
Speaker Change: Got it, but nothing additional that's at least contemplated in the guidance right now? Yeah, nothing that we see additional at this point.
Speaker Change: Okay and then touched on this in the earlier questions but you know you've got the the impact from commercial actions coming through next year that you described previously.
Speaker Change: So are you saying that's going to be a little bit greater or sort of just reiterating that that's first and then second?
Speaker Change: Given the revised guidance off of certainly a lower base and the optimism that you're describing for 25, do you expect NetNet to be flattish down a bit in terms of top line in 25?
Speaker Change: I don't see a change from what we provided in Q2 in terms of the price.
Speaker Change: commercial access that we did. So it's still same assumption that we're saying for that piece of it and I think
Speaker Change: The other items that Ramey had referred to that are positives for next year still remain in terms of balance of TMC, the Nokia IM trend that's improving, and it's been a positive trend that Beta's worked out really well and we're seeing good orders coming through there. So our expectation is...
Speaker Change: We should see some positives from those pieces. The last one is that we're still seeing M&A action within the self-storage industry, which will drive more of that R3 that we're starting to see again.
Speaker Change: Okay, last for me, you obviously ramped up share repurchase activity, you know, with the further share price weakness this morning. What is your appetite to continue to aggressively buy back stock? And, you know, is it a situation where the board can re-up that you have that flexibility based on what's left in the current authorization? Thanks again.
Speaker Change: Yeah, and definitely, obviously we still feel the stock is undervalued, especially even at today's price, so it definitely won't be in the market again.
Speaker Change: Thank you.
Speaker Change: We'll take our next question from Brad Hewitt with Wolf Research. Please go ahead, your line is open.
Brad Hewitt: Good morning, guys. Thanks for taking my questions.
Speaker Change: Morning Brad. Morning Brad.
Brad Hewitt: So curious what you guys are assuming in terms of the phasing of when some of the delayed storage projects come back
Brad Hewitt: And as we think about the Q4 guidance, is there any way you could quantify the magnitude of those delays out of Q3 that you previously expected to come back in Q4 and those are now pushed to 25?
Speaker Change: So I tell you like if you just did you know without kind of giving exact number Brad if you look at the storage piece of it
Speaker Change: I would say it's equally among all the stories in the commercial in terms of what we're assuming here right now We just looked at and say hey look
Speaker Change: Storage looks like it's just not moving here. So we're just gonna keep the same assumption there. And I think commercial, again, we had thought that commercial would.
Speaker Change: had bottomed out and we just said, look, let's just look at it and say that doesn't come back as well and just leave it.
Speaker Change: One more thing, I think when you look at where we are today versus last quarter, the drivers of the headwinds remain the same.
Speaker Change: You know, there have not really been interest rate cuts. In fact, I believe it's been the opposite And then we also have this looming election. So the macro from from our perspective has not changed whatsoever That's why we just deferred it to the next quarter
Speaker Change: Okay, that's helpful. And then I guess just following up on the capital allocation point.
Speaker Change: It sounds like you're going to expect to be active deploying capital in the near term.
Speaker Change: I guess I'm curious, as we fast forward a couple quarters, I mean, it seems like the denominator, the EBITDA, the net leverage calculation will likely step down a bit. So the net leverage may mathematically step up. So just curious, you know, any thoughts on that and kind of how that could potentially constrain your willingness to deploy capital in the near term?
Speaker Change: Yeah, we've definitely looked at that, Brad, so great question there. I think we're still going to be well within our 2 to 3 net leverage ratio range that we've guided to, despite the pressure on the EBITDA coming down in the past 12 months. But I think I don't see at least a major constraint at this point in terms of what we need to do.
Brad Hewitt: Great, thank you.
Speaker Change: Thank you.
Speaker Change: We'll take our next question from John Lovallo with UBS. Please go ahead, your line is open.
Speaker Change: Hey guys, good morning. This is actually Spencer Koffman offer John. Thank you for the questions You know, maybe the first one just given that the headwind called out from
Speaker Change: election uncertainty. Do you expect a snapback in activity once we have more clarity on the outcome? Are projects being put on hold specifically because of this uncertainty? And what would it take for projects to just be outright canceled as opposed to delayed?
Speaker Change: Look, I think our view is, you know, not just really necessarily the election, but, you know, interest rates matter as well. I think it's a culmination of just the general macro.
Speaker Change: Thank you.
Speaker Change: And so, you know, our view is, you know, and I've been in this industry my entire career.
Speaker Change: I've been through some peaks and valleys, and my experience is when the macro, once we get through this law, and the environment gets better, there's tremendous tailwinds in self-storage.
Speaker Change: And so that's, you know, we're hopeful for kind of looking at the second half of 25, you know, very close to our customers and listening to kind of taking their pulse and we just need to get through these, you know, these uncertain times around the two kind of headwinds that we mentioned.
Speaker Change: Okay, that makes sense. And was there any impact from recent hurricanes or weather in Florida and Southeast either in your third quarter results or in your revised outlook for 2024?
Speaker Change: Yeah, it's very small that we looked at, fortunately, there. Most of the sites that we're working on that are active, we're not in those major areas. I think that one of the things that is at least positive for us from a business point of view is that we're starting to see some orders for replacement doors for some of the other sites that were hit, that we're starting to see as well.
Speaker Change: Okay, got it. Thanks, guys.
Speaker Change: And there are no further questions on the line at this time. I'll return the call to Ramey Jackson for any additional or closing remarks. Okay, thank you everyone for joining us today. We appreciate your support of Janus and look forward to updating you on our progress. Have a great day. Be well.
Speaker Change: This does conclude today's program. Thank you for your participation and you may now disconnect.
Speaker Change: and John Rohlwing. Thank you. Thank you.
Speaker Change: and you
Speaker Change: if you don't, you're nothing!