Sherwin-Williams (SHW) Q1 2024 earnings call transcript

23-Apr-2024 The Sherwin-Williams Co. (SHW ) Q1 2024 Earnings Call The Sherwin-Williams Co. (SHW) Q1 2024 Earnings Call 23-Apr-2024 CORPORATE PARTICIPANTS James R. Jaye Senior Vice President-Investor Relations & Corporate Communications, The Sherwin-Williams Co. Heidi G. Petz President, Chief Executive Officer & Director, The Sherwin-Williams Co. Allen J. Mistysyn Senior Vice President-Finance & Chief Financial Officer, The Sherwin- Williams Co. OTHER PARTICIPANTS Vincent Stephen Andrews Analyst, Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC Gregory Scott Melich Analyst, Evercore ISI Jeffrey J. Zekauskas Analyst, JPMorgan Securities LLC David Begleiter Analyst, Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc. John McNulty Analyst, BMO Capital Markets Corp. Christopher Parkinson Analyst, Wolfe Research, LLC Joshua SpectorAnalyst, UBS Securities LLC Michael J. Harrison Analyst, Seaport Research Partners Patrick Cunningham Analyst, Citigroup Global Markets, Inc. Aleksey YefremovAnalyst, KeyBanc Capital Markets Inc. Ghansham Panjabi Analyst, Robert W. Baird & Co. , Inc. Michael Leithead Analyst, Barclays Capital Inc. Adam Baumgarten Analyst, Zelman & Associates Duffy Fischer Analyst, Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC Michael Sison Analyst, Wells Fargo Securities LLC Kevin W. McCarthy Analyst, Vertical Research Partners LLC John Roberts Analyst, Mizuho Securities USA LLC Garik Shmois Analyst, Loop Capital Markets LLC Steve Byrne Analyst, BofA Securities, Inc. Arun Viswanathan Analyst, RBC Capital Markets LLC Laurence Alexander Analyst, Jefferies LLC Eric Bosshard Analyst, Cleveland Research Co. LLC Aron Ceccarelli Analyst, Joh.

James R. JayeSenior Vice President-Investor Relations & Corporate Communications, The Sherwin-Williams Co. Thank you and good morning. In what is a seasonally smaller first quarter and with continued demand choppiness in several end markets, Sherwin-Williams delivered consolidated sales within our guided range, gross margin expansion, and diluted earnings per share and EBITDA growth. Throughout the quarter, we continued to execute on our strategy, demonstrate our value proposition with current and prospective customers, and position ourselves to take advantage of disruptions in the market. While our results were at the lower end of our sales expectations, we remain confident in our full year outlook and there is no change from the guidance we provided in January. We also remain highly confident in our differentiated business model and we are well positioned as the painting season begins.

While uncertainties persist in the macroeconomic environment, we see opportunity. We are encouraged by pro architectural sentiment in April, and customers in several end markets are optimistic about an improving demand environment as the year progresses. Competitor decisions coupled with our recent growth investments are enabling us to continue penetrating our targeted end markets at multiple levels. We expect share gains and returns to become more and more evident as the year progresses. Consolidated sales in the quarter were at the low end of our range, driven by lower than anticipated volumes, primarily in Paint Stores Group against the strongest comparison we will face this year, followed by Consumer Brands Group in North America. Contributions from price were modest as expected and we are now seeing our recently announced increases in Paint Stores beginning to ramp more fully in our second quarter.

Gross margin expanded 270 basis points year-over-year to 47.2%. Higher SG&A in the quarter reflects the deliberate and accelerated investments and growth we made in the second half of last year and which have not yet annualized. EBITDA margin improved by 60 basis points to 16.7%. And adjusted diluted net income per share The Sherwin-Williams Co. (SHW) Q1 2024 Earnings Call 23-Apr-2024 increased 6.4%. We also maintained our disciplined capital allocation approach and returned $728 million to our shareholders through dividends and share repurchases during the quarter, an increase of 59% year-over-year.

Let me now turn it over to Heidi, who will provide some commentary on our first quarter results by segment before moving on to our outlook and your questions.

Heidi G. PetzPresident, Chief Executive Officer & Director, The Sherwin-Williams Co. Thank you, Jim. We are successfully implementing our strategy, which at Sherwin-Williams we do with a very forward-looking and aggressive approach. While market conditions are choppy and may give others in our industry a moment of pause, let me be clear, we are not pausing. So, this morning, I'm going to talk as much about our results as I am about what we're doing to ensure the momentum of our company not only continues but accelerates our ability to widen the gap between us and our competition.

So, let me start with the results of the first quarter. As Jim mentioned, our first quarter is a seasonally smaller one, and our results do not necessarily dictate how our full year will unfold. While our sales came in within our guidance, it was at the lower end of our range. Going forward, I believe in our differentiated strategy, our deeply experienced leadership, and our team's ability to execute in lockstep with our customers to deliver above market growth. Here are several of the leading indicators that give me great confidence that we continue to strengthen our position. For example, we increased the number of exclusive national contracts we have with homebuilders and property management customers in the quarter.

New accounts and active purchasing accounts in our stores are up significantly from a year ago. Paint Stores Group rep call activity and unique accounts calls are also up in the quarter. Foot traffic in our stores is up and our Net Promoter Score is at an all-time high, and we're seeing multiple share of wallet and meaningful new customer wins across our industrial businesses. These are just some of the factors we expect will translate into strong performance as the year unfolds. As far as specifics on the first quarter, I'll begin with the Paint Stores Group where sales increased by 0.5% against a mid-teens comparison. We are not satisfied with this level of performance, as volume was basically flat in the quarter.

Exterior paint sales were pressured by challenging outdoor painting conditions in some geographies. As we've demonstrated in the past, we expect to see the benefit of our focused investments unfold throughout the balance of the year. A few strong weeks in June can more than offset first quarter challenges. Price was up modestly related to our February 1 announced increase. We are now seeing a ramp to typical effectiveness as our second quarter moves forward. Segment margin decreased to 17.2%, reflecting flat volume and the higher year-over-year planned growth investments. As a reminder, paint store sales were up by a double digit percentage in every customer segment in the first quarter a year ago. In this year's first quarter, pro sales were led by Residential Repaint, where gallons were up mid-single digits.

We see this above market growth as evidence that our increased investments in this segment are already beginning to deliver a return. Commercial and Protective & Marine grew modestly in the quarter. New Residential was down as expected, but there is momentum in Single-family starts that will increasingly turn to completions as the year progresses. Property management was also down, driven by delays in CapEx projects, even as apartment terms remained steady. From a product perspective, interior paint sales increased by a low-single digit percentage, while exterior sales decreased modestly. Encouragingly, spray equipment sales were up mid-single digits in the quarter. We opened seven net new stores in the quarter and expect to open 80 to 100 for the full year.

The Sherwin-Williams Co. (SHW) Q1 2024 Earnings Call 23-Apr-2024 Our doors are open. We are laser focused on the momentum we have created, serving both existing and new customers. We'll continue to win business and take share based on our differentiated solutions.

Moving on to our Consumer Brands Group. Sales decreased by 7.1% in the quarter. Lower volume and the impact of divestitures were partially offset by selling price increases, primarily in Latin America. Sales is North America decreased by a high-single digit percentage as our strategic partners manage the timing of their seasonal inventory builds. Outside of North America, sales increased by a double digit percentage in Europe and a low-single digit percentage in Latin America. Adjusted segment margin, which excludes acquisition related amortization expense, expanded to 20.9%. This was primarily driven by improved manufacturing and distribution fixed cost absorption, moderating raw material costs and improved results in Latin America and Europe, partially offset by lower North America sales volume. Sales in the Performance Coatings Group were in the range we expected, with continued choppiness across each of our businesses and regions.

Lower volume was partially offset by growth from acquisitions. Sales growth in Europe and Asia was offset by decreases in North America and Latin America. Adjusted segment margin, which excludes acquisition related amortization expense, improved to 17.1%. This is the fifth straight quarter this team has delivered year-over-year segment margin improvement and again reflects the disciplined strategy to growing operating margin in the industrial business to mirror that of our architectural business. Industrial Wood led the growth, including the impact of recent acquisitions. Coil also delivered solid growth. Auto Refinish was flat against a mid-teens comparison. We are confident recent share wins driven by our differentiated service and technology will begin to show up more meaningfully as the year progresses.

Packaging was down as expected, with improvement expected in the back half of the year. General Industrial was impacted by lower demand in all regions. Moving on to our guidance for the second quarter and full year.

First, I want to talk about our global team. It always comes down to our people. Our team is highly engaged, aggressive, and acting with determination and urgency. They're focused on the right priorities, and this will become more and more visible in our results. I would bet on this team all day, every day.

Second, on our January call, we acknowledged there are uncertainties in the economy. We don't expect to get material help from the macro environment this year, but a few bright spots are emerging. Single-family housing starts have improved, and this will increasingly turn to completions as the year progresses. Existing home sales are unlikely to get much softer. Last week's LIRA report from Harvard indicates that the remodeling outlook continues to improve, with declines easing and momentum building later in the year. On the industrial side, the manufacturing PMI has stabilized or improved in several regions.

Third, we are tilting the table in our favor by controlling what we can control. Year to date, we have signed 56 new exclusive national account agreements in Paint Stores Group, primarily in New Residential and Property Maintenance. We also have increased sales rep call activity and unique accounts call significantly. We have a robust plan and aggressive field activity to engage customers of competitors who have recently closed their doors or are otherwise distracted. As I said earlier, our doors are open. We are not distracted. You can expect us to be very aggressive here. In addition to our stores platform and team of experienced reps and store managers, we're driving customer stickiness through our digital initiatives. In March, we had the highest number of PRO+ users ever engaging with our platform, along with a near record number of new registrations.

We've opened our Tournus, France packaging The Sherwin-Williams Co. (SHW) Q1 2024 Earnings Call 23-Apr-2024 plant, which will support customers converting to non-BPA coating to meet the European Commission's 2026 mandate. We are specked on multiple new infrastructure and megaprojects that are gaining momentum, and we're introducing multiple new products in both the architectural and industrial businesses to drive our customers' success. Obviously, we're not going to share everything that we're doing for competitive reasons, but you can be certain that there's a long list of actions that we're taking in addition to these items. The key takeaway is this. At some point, the demand logjam in multiple end markets is going to break. We will be there to capitalize.

We're very confident. It's a matter of when, not if. As for our specific outlook, the slide deck issued with this morning's press release includes our expectations for consolidated and segment sales for the second quarter of 2024. The deck also contains our full year sales and earnings per share outlook, which again is unchanged from what we provided in January. We expect to provide an update on our 2024 full year outlook when we report our second quarter results in July. Our slide deck also provides guidance on our expectations for raw material costs and other items helpful for modeling purposes. All of these remain unchanged from our January call as well. As you can see, we have high expectations of ourselves.

Our team is aggressive, determined and focused on the right priorities. I want to be clear. We are playing to win. We know our strategy is the right one, and we have demonstrated for decades that it works. We expect to outperform the market and we are confident our differentiated solutions will continue to drive our customers' success while also rewarding our shareholders. This concludes our prepared remarks. And with that, I'd like to thank you all for joining us this morning. We'll be happy to take your questions.

Good morning, Vincent. Thanks for the question. I would tell you weather is a part of it, but certainly there's no excuse. The last thing we're going to do is sit back and point to weather. We're trying to create our own The Sherwin-Williams Co. (SHW) Q1 2024 Earnings Call 23-Apr-2024 weather here at Sherwin-Williams. So, I would say not so much with relative execution, but I think in some regards a lot of this is delayed activity. Let me just take a minute here. If you look broadly at stores and I'm spending, as you would imagine, a lot of time out in the market right now with our team and with existing customers, also with potential and newly acquired customers.

And a theme that we're hearing over and over and I'm getting a lot of validation is that our differentiated strategy of distribution, certainly with our paint store – unique specialty paint store model, our quality of people, the availability of our products, the list goes on, that is really critical right now in this environment. And I'll point to a few areas that give me a lot of confidence as we head into the balance of the year, the ability to be accessible, to be dependable, the consistent route execution that our contractors are experiencing store to store with us, certainly, is really critical going forward an important launch pad. I'd point to a few areas relative to the quarter, weather certainly is part of it.

The choppiness in the market, you're going to see that ranging by segment. I'm going to ask Al to jump in here and give you a little bit of color and then I'll come back with some additional points.

Allen J. Mistysyn Senior Vice President-Finance & Chief Financial Officer, The Sherwin-Williams Co. A Yeah, Vincent. It's Al Mistysyn. We did talk about in the opening about softer than anticipated exterior sales, which were pressured by that challenging outdoor painting conditions. And we saw it. If you look at our slide deck, the Southeastern division, which is our largest sales division in the first quarter, was a laggard, which is typically not the case. Commercial, we saw slower exterior sales, Property Maintenance, and then Protective & Marine got off to a slow start than we were expecting. All of these three segments, we have confidence that these jobs and projects have just been moved. And not all of them will get done in the second quarter, some will be pushed into the balance of the year, but certainly have a high level of confidence there.

One highlight I think – that I think is worth mentioning, and Heidi mentioned it in our opening remarks, we talked about Res Repaint market being flat for the year. But with the investments we've made, we're up mid-single digits in the fourth quarter, we're up mid-single digits in the first quarter. And I think if you look at how the quarter unfolded on a same day basis, March was the strongest month for Paint Stores Group in the in the first quarter and we see that continued momentum in April.

Heidi G. Petz President, Chief Executive Officer & Director, The Sherwin-Williams Co. A One piece I would add just on the Residential Repaint side [indiscernible] (00:19:51) but remind all of us obviously that we – not only did we [ph] say we would be flat and we had (00:19:57) mid to high in the range. But we're looking at our comparisons. They're not only indicative of now but of the previous year, we had a pretty aggressive comp last year. And I do think it's evidence that we're making the right investments here, delivering this above market growth, we expect to continue to do so here. We're taking this segment very seriously, as you can think about the value proposition that we have designed specific for the segment, not just the products but certainly the services, everything that we're doing to try to continue to help this contractor be as successful as possible.

I think that's what you're seeing now and this above market growth relative to Res Repaint.

James R. Jaye Senior Vice President-Investor Relations & Corporate Communications, The Sherwin-Williams Co. A The Sherwin-Williams Co. (SHW) Q1 2024 Earnings Call 23-Apr-2024 Thank you, Vincent.

Or was it all price versus ROS in 1Q? Allen J. Mistysyn Senior Vice President-Finance & Chief Financial Officer, The Sherwin-Williams Co. A Yeah, Greg, it's primarily the moderating raw material costs and modest price increases of Paint Stores Group. And also another tailwind is the Paint Stores Group volumes were higher than the other segments, which has a higher gross margin in the company. So, those are the primary drivers of the year-over-year improvement. The call out on the higher fixed cost manufacturing affected the Consumer Brands operating margin and some – including the gross margin, but that was offset by other segments. And if you recall, I did talk about this on our year end call that I expected our global supply chain to improve performance throughout the year 2024.

I also – if you recall, I talked about it on our financial community presentation last August that our consumer operating margin was under pressure and underperformed due to the supply chain inefficiencies. We've experienced choppy production swings that negatively impacted our costs, plus higher wages, energy and other costs. And so, as we typically do annually, we update our product costs as we do expect to continue to see improvements in incremental cost per gallon with our global supply chain, continuous improvement and simplification efforts. There is an impact on Paint Stores Group and PCG. I talked about not getting into the detail of that on our year end call, and it's really not a material impact in the quarter.

It is on consumer because it's a small quarter for consumer. But if you look at paint stores as we talked about, that's volume driven and the incremental investments in SG&A. On PCG, we're still in the high-teens performance, nice improvement year- over-year and we'd expect that kind of performance as the year goes out.

James R. Jaye Senior Vice President-Investor Relations & Corporate Communications, The Sherwin-Williams Co. A Thank you, Greg.

The Sherwin-Williams Co. (SHW) Q1 2024 Earnings Call 23-Apr-2024 Allen J. Mistysyn Senior Vice President-Finance & Chief Financial Officer, The Sherwin-Williams Co. A Yeah, Jeff. Even though we don't give operating margin guidance by segment, I will add color that, yes, we would expect sequential margin improvement in the second and third quarter because of the seasonality – seasonally higher architectural sales in 2Q and 3Q. I do expect North America sales volume to be less of a headwind in our second quarter compared to our first quarter, with our guidance in – our second quarter guidance for consumer sales being down low-single digits. I do expect that the higher fixed costs, absorption and manufacturing and distribution operations will continue in our second – in the remaining quarters of the year.

But I agree with that. We should be back to a more typical bell curve with the seasonality of architectural going into 2Q and 3Q and then dropping as it typically does in our fourth quarter.

James R. Jaye Senior Vice President-Investor Relations & Corporate Communications, The Sherwin-Williams Co. A Thank you, Jeff.

Heidi G. Petz President, Chief Executive Officer & Director, The Sherwin-Williams Co. A Yeah. Good morning. Dave, thanks for your question. I won't share the numbers, but I appreciate your question. What I would tell you is it's material. And I would also tell you that what's also – it's evidence of our ability to put on display what it is that only Sherwin-Williams can do relative to servicing these contractors, certainly both from a New Residential and a Property Maintenance standpoint in a way that only a specialty paint store can do. And so, it's a function of our footprint, of our team, of the expertise that we have, not just on a broad base nationally leveraging that platform, but our ability to be nimble and local and support the needs of these local contractors.

So, I think what you're seeing, it's a material pickup, but it's evidence of our value proposition and what we're able to do uniquely in the market.

James R. Jaye Senior Vice President-Investor Relations & Corporate Communications, The Sherwin-Williams Co. A Thank you, David.

James R. Jaye Senior Vice President-Investor Relations & Corporate Communications, The Sherwin-Williams Co. A Yeah, sure. This is Jim. And good morning, John. Yeah, maybe I'll just start with the first quarter, our basket was down year-over-year, a mid-single digit percentage. And that's likely the biggest benefit of the year, also down slightly sequentially. Where we saw the biggest benefit in the first quarter was monomer, resins, solvents, and TiO2 I would say was flattish year-over-year. You look out for the rest of the year, 2Q raw is still down probably low-single digits year-over-year. A little bit less benefit than what we saw in 1Q. And then in the back half of the year, I think it's just down slightly flattish in the back half year-over-year.

So the full year right now, we're still looking at down low-single digits for the year. We'll see if there's some upside as the year progresses. But right now, we're still on the down low-single digit. Your question about some of the commodities specifically, John, crude right now $80, $81 a barrel. That's up year-over-year and since December, but it's still down from where we were in the fall when it ran up into the $90s. Now, propylene has ticked up sequentially here. Now, it's sort of flattish year-over-year. And then, I'd say on TiO2, we're seeing some of the producers do a little bit of restocking, but the true end demand in some of these markets is still choppy.

Their utilization rates are picking up a little bit. They're seeing some lower input costs. I'd say for us, we expect to still see a little bit of moderation in TiO2. And the other thing that's out there always is China. And with their domestic demand in China being softer, they're exporting a lot of that. And I think that's going to continue to put some pressure on the demand environment for TiO2. So, summarize it, still down low- single digits for the year, a bit in 2Q and then flattening out. And thanks for the question, John.

The Sherwin-Williams Co. (SHW) Q1 2024 Earnings Call 23-Apr-2024 Allen J. Mistysyn Senior Vice President-Finance & Chief Financial Officer, The Sherwin-Williams Co. A Yeah, Chris, I don't think our spending thesis has changed. Yeah. I think you look at what we talked about on our second half and our year end call, leaning in with additional investments or accelerated investments to influence the share gains and accelerate the share gains that we expect to see. And we saw that with Res Repaint. I think as we get through the second quarter, as we've typically done, we'll look at the indicators, market indicators and what we see happening not only in the second half of 2024, but to your point looking at the first half of 2025, look at the trends in volumes, the trends in our gross margin.

And as we've done not just in 2023 but in the past, if we believe that we have upside in our volumes, upside in our gross margin, we will lean in and add more investments than we would normally do or typically do because of the confidence we have in our strategy, because of the confidence we have in long-term new single-family construction and the need for housing in this country, and as interest rates – and we talked about this on our first quarter call. As interest rates moderate, we would expect to see existing home sales improve. We'd expect to see an acceleration of new single-family starts and in Property Maintenance improved CapEx, and we will be better positioned as those turn to get a greater share of that market.

Heidi G. Petz President, Chief Executive Officer & Director, The Sherwin-Williams Co. A Chris, I would add to that as well. Just to reiterate what we said earlier, it's not a matter of if, it's when. And we're spending a lot of time strengthening our position in the market. We've pointed to a few examples. I shared some of the indicators that gave me a lot of confidence. So, I will just give you a little bit more color here. If you think about the short-term, executing some actions here, you mentioned increased call activity. But the other way to think about this is because of our controlled distribution model, as you well know, we own that data. We're unleashing our selling team right now on the world's largest database of painting contractors.

So, the team is out hunting in a very surgical and a very targeted fashion. We're not guessing where to spend time or energy. We're being very prescriptive in terms of where we want the team focused. So, I think in terms of my confidence relative to how the team is hunting, our new account activation and I mentioned earlier on the unique accounts but also a significant increase in our active accounts. We're also working hard in the store with our reps and our managers getting paint out of the bucket, getting products into the hands of these painters and the pro who paints. So, in the short-term, making sure we're very clear and deliberate about how we want to go into the painting season.

And when you think about some of these actions that are going to impact the long-term, they give us a lot of confidence in market share. It's investing a lot in these activities, such as specifications, applications, and then working with owners to make sure that the projects are meeting their expectations. So, a lot of factors here that we're making sure that we're continuing to control what we can control, which is strengthening our position coming out of this. We will be in a position to take outsized growth share.

James R. Jaye Senior Vice President-Investor Relations & Corporate Communications, The Sherwin-Williams Co. A Thank you, Chris.

Allen J. Mistysyn Senior Vice President-Finance & Chief Financial Officer, The Sherwin-Williams Co. A Yeah. Josh, as we talked about on our first year end call, we went out – just as a reminder, we went out with 5% February 1 and we said we would realize the increase – the full price increase over the next few quarters – the next couple of quarters as we typically have done, I would say, prior – pre-COVID. So, it's more typical. As we talked about, we had a 0.5% increase in our first quarter split pretty evenly between price and volume. And we'd expect that price to ramp up and get fully realized as we exit the second quarter.

James R. Jaye Senior Vice President-Investor Relations & Corporate Communications, The Sherwin-Williams Co. A Thanks, Josh.

James R. Jaye Senior Vice President-Investor Relations & Corporate Communications, The Sherwin-Williams Co. A Hey, Mike.

Heidi G. Petz President, Chief Executive Officer & Director, The Sherwin-Williams Co. A Thanks for the question. The answer is no. And I would tell you the way that we're looking at this is this is an acquisition without the cash outlay. We got a lot of excitement in terms of the opportunity to demonstrate our value proposition in the market. I think there's a lot of confusion out there as a result of some of these decisions. And quite frankly, this – again, this is our opportunity to reinforce the consistency and the reliability of Sherwin- Williams. The Sherwin-Williams Co. (SHW) Q1 2024 Earnings Call 23-Apr-2024 So, when customers want to partner with us and choose to partner with us, they know and they trust that we're going to be there with them every step of the way, whether it's product or project or planning or bidding, helping them with leads.

We're going to help make sure that without a doubt that they are successful. So, there's the stability and the continuity of our strategy. I think it's on display here, and it's our opportunity to go out and continue to demonstrate that. Allen J. Mistysyn Senior Vice President-Finance & Chief Financial Officer, The Sherwin-Williams Co. A Yeah.

Mike, we have purchased store chains before. The last one I want to say was PPI, which was a part of Comex, and that was back in 2010. I think, as Heidi mentioned, we're confident in our strategy. And opening 80 to 100 stores is like acquiring a small store chain in the US as it is. So, we're happy with that strategy and we'll continue executing against that.

James R. Jaye Senior Vice President-Investor Relations & Corporate Communications, The Sherwin-Williams Co. A Thank you, Mike.

Heidi G. Petz President, Chief Executive Officer & Director, The Sherwin-Williams Co. A Yeah. Good morning. I'll take the first piece of that relative to the segments and some of the outlook and then I'll hand over to Allen on some of the pricing. I think if you look across the board, Packaging, Auto Refinish, Industrial Wood, Coil, and P&M, I would say, there's upside to all of that. There's absolutely choppiness. If you look at this a bit more by geography, I would say that that's true. GI certainly continues to be, as we said last quarter, the most under pressure segment. But if I just start with Packaging, we said this in our prepared remarks, while the sales are down in the quarter as we expected, there were some customers – some of our customers out there that were required to make a short- term commitment.

And we're really proud and excited that our plant in Texas is back up and running. As we mentioned earlier, our plant in Europe is now producing. So, we do expect to regain these customers through the use of our non-BPA coating, which is a superior technology. It allows our customers not only to be faster, more efficient, more profitable, but also to be more sustainable as a result of this advanced technology that we have in the market. So, there's a lot of excitement in terms of what we can do to take this technology in a more global basis to support our customers and their sustainability agendas. Automotive Refinish, we've talked about this. Our installed continue to be up double digits in North America.

We are taking share. There's a unique technology and service that we're offering together. So, it's the package, along with our ability to leverage our automotive branches, much like our Paint Stores Group, to provide that consistent The Sherwin-Williams Co. (SHW) Q1 2024 Earnings Call 23-Apr-2024 and reliable service. So, another point of differentiation. It's something that we're really proud of it now. And I don't think everyone can say that they're taking share here. We know the customers that we're winning. We know the competitors we're taking business from. And we certainly know the volume we're gaining. So, these numbers will be clearly evident as the year unfolds. We've got a lot more work ahead, but we're winning with small customers, we're winning with medium sized customers, and we're absolutely winning with large customers here.

Just briefly on Coil, I mentioned this earlier, but North America is holding up a bit better than other regions. We have had some significant new business wins in North America. There's some positive tailwind as it relates to near shoring. Mexico is helping to create some demand here. Industrial Wood, another positive story here for us. We believe that the market has bottomed out in all regions. But to your point, demand does continue to be choppy going into the second quarter. Some of the recent acquisitions, ICA and Oskar Nolte. EBITDA dollars and percent continue to be ahead of plan. So, we're seeing this as very accretive to the Industrial Wood program and we're chasing new accounts pretty aggressively, and we expect a lot more as – again as the year unfolds.

And I won't go into much detail on General Industrial, but that's choppy and down in all regions and we're continuing to fight hard to make sure that we best position ourselves as we recover there.

Allen J. Mistysyn Senior Vice President-Finance & Chief Financial Officer, The Sherwin-Williams Co. A Yeah. Patrick, on the volumes, with our second quarter guidance to be up or down low-single digits, I would tell you our first half volumes will be down low-single digits. Full year guidance is flat to up low-single digits. There was no change to that, which tells you that our volume in the second half has to be up – flat to up low-single digits.

James R. Jaye Senior Vice President-Investor Relations & Corporate Communications, The Sherwin-Williams Co. A Thank you, Patrick.

James R. Jaye Senior Vice President-Investor Relations & Corporate Communications, The Sherwin-Williams Co. A Yeah. I'll take that Aleksey. I think the sentiment among our homebuilder customers continues to be very positive. Matter of fact, I was in Texas traveling with our national accounts team earlier in the quarter and spoke to several of our customers down there. And they remain optimistic about where things are heading. The rate environment, we'll see how that plays out. It seems to change month to month of what's going to happen there. But I think, Al started to hit some of the demographics that are there driving people to need a place to live are intact. And I think also what you're seeing a little bit is people may be adjusting some of their expectations around what type of a The Sherwin-Williams Co. (SHW) Q1 2024 Earnings Call 23-Apr-2024 home they might be able to afford or buy.

And the homebuilders are working to drive affordability, and we're part of that as well. Thanks for the question.

Heidi G. Petz President, Chief Executive Officer & Director, The Sherwin-Williams Co. A Yeah. Good morning, Ghansham. No, I don't think anything has materially changed. But I do think as you – again, as you look segment-by-segment, I'd point to Protective & Marine was a segment, certainly, we see upside and I think I'll use them as an example because there continues to be demand strength in all markets. Some of the projects have been delayed. So there's been some timing issues here. But I think when you look at the visibility that we're gaining relative to some of these megaprojects, we're launching some pretty significant new technology into the market this year, in fire and flooring and protective coatings, which is an indicator not just of our incremental investment but I think some good upside.

Having said that, I want to go back to where I started, which is there's nothing that's materially different from where we came in last quarter. But, again, as rates fluctuate as some of these jobs pick back up, then we'll be back out in July if there's any more upside than what we have today.

Allen J. Mistysyn Senior Vice President-Finance & Chief Financial Officer, The Sherwin-Williams Co. A Yeah. Ghansham, I would say that I feel very good about our strong net operating cash flow generation for the year. You saw us return a big increase in shareholder cash in dividends and buybacks in our first quarter. I think when you look at our debt, I do expect our total debt to remain flat in 2024 and we'll refinance the – to your point, the $1.1 billion of debt maturing, albeit they'll be at higher rates. Likely, we'll take out short-term debt and then – and mature it out as we see fit. But just to reiterate it, I mean, we're going to stick to our capital allocation philosophy.

We've been very disciplined about that. We invest in CapEx, we pay the dividend, which was a nice increase of over 18%. In our first quarter, we expect that to continue. And then absent acquisitions, we're going to buy our stock back. And I do expect to be in a 2x to 2.5x debt to EBITDA target range by end of the year.

James R. Jaye Senior Vice President-Investor Relations & Corporate Communications, The Sherwin-Williams Co. A Thank you, Ghansham.

Allen J. Mistysyn Senior Vice President-Finance & Chief Financial Officer, The Sherwin-Williams Co. A Yeah. Mike, I think – think about it this way. The wage inflation for 2024 is more typical to prior years, so think about a low-single digit impact. I think what you're seeing in our first quarter is the start of the annualization of the accelerated long-term growth investments we made in the second half of last year. As you recall on our year end call, I said I thought SG&A would be up a mid-single digit percentage for the full year with the first half being above that range because we're annualizing the investments that we made in the second half and then that'll level out in the second half of this year.

James R. Jaye Senior Vice President-Investor Relations & Corporate Communications, The Sherwin-Williams Co. A Thank you, Mike.

Heidi G. Petz President, Chief Executive Officer & Director, The Sherwin-Williams Co. A Yeah. Good morning. I think certainly there's been a challenged quarter, I would say is maybe the best way to characterize Pros Who Paint in the first quarter, which was below our expectations. But we have a lot of confidence in our investments and I would also say a lot of confidence in our strong alignment with our retail partners. I don't know that the alignment has ever been in a better place. It gives us a lot of confidence that we are going to continue to grow share in the space for the balance of the year. But no doubt we've got some work to do here.

James R. Jaye Senior Vice President-Investor Relations & Corporate Communications, The Sherwin-Williams Co. A Thank you, Adam.

Allen J. Mistysyn Senior Vice President-Finance & Chief Financial Officer, The Sherwin-Williams Co. A Yeah. Duffy, it's primarily volume. As we have talked about in the past, volume is the single biggest driver of operating margin leverage in I'd say all of our segments, but for sure in our Paint Stores Group. So, that's going to be the majority of it. And then, yes, we also have an impact from the investments we made, but we do expect to continue to get a return for those investments as the year progresses.

James R. Jaye Senior Vice President-Investor Relations & Corporate Communications, The Sherwin-Williams Co. A Thank you, Duffy.

Allen J. Mistysyn Senior Vice President-Finance & Chief Financial Officer, The Sherwin-Williams Co. A Yes. On all of that.

James R. Jaye Senior Vice President-Investor Relations & Corporate Communications, The Sherwin-Williams Co. A Thanks, Mike.

The Sherwin-Williams Co. (SHW) Q1 2024 Earnings Call 23-Apr-2024 Heidi G. Petz President, Chief Executive Officer & Director, The Sherwin-Williams Co. A Yeah. Good morning. I'll start with the P&M piece, and then I'll hand over to Al. We look at some of the gallons year-over-year. I think you said it in your question, it is timing. And I think with some of these project delays, we don't believe in any regard that they have gone away. It's simply timing. And as I mentioned earlier, what gives us confidence is our increased visibility into some of this project work. So, again, the team is working hard to make sure that with some of these launches, we are best positioned in the industry.

So, when the timing does recover, we're at the front of that line. And then I'll hand it over to Al to talk about your question relative to....

Allen J. Mistysyn Senior Vice President-Finance & Chief Financial Officer, The Sherwin-Williams Co. A Yeah. Kevin, I think the P&M, we do expect to grow faster in architectural just because of – as we talked about New Res, we expected to be softer in the first half and stronger in the second half. We've commented that commercial we had a better line of sight to the first half being strong and then likely softening. I think that maybe has changed a little bit with the first quarter project delays that we're experiencing. So, some of that will probably find its way into our third quarter this year. So – but we have a lot of confidence in P&M and the strength in that.

I think that when you talk about industry volume, I think 2023 is likely down maybe low single. And I think 2024 we talked about because of the – because the New Res was down so much. But I think in 2024 with better indicators coming into the year, we talk about it probably being flattish.

James R. Jaye Senior Vice President-Investor Relations & Corporate Communications, The Sherwin-Williams Co. A Thank you, Kevin.

Allen J. Mistysyn Senior Vice President-Finance & Chief Financial Officer, The Sherwin-Williams Co. A Yeah. I think, from a project delay relative to what we saw from weather in the first quarter, we'll see those pickup in the second quarter and into the third quarter. As far as CapEx projects, we talked about this on our first quarter call, as rates moderate, we do expect to start seeing CapEx projects improve. Both rates and lending gets easier if lending standards ease up a little bit. John, we don't have a material growth impact in our forecast for Property Maintenance CapEx growing a significant amount in our second half. So, turns (53:28) are going to continue to improve and then as CapEx returns, we'll benefit with that as a slight tailwind.

James R. Jaye Senior Vice President-Investor Relations & Corporate Communications, The Sherwin-Williams Co. A Thank you, John.

Heidi G. Petz President, Chief Executive Officer & Director, The Sherwin-Williams Co. A I'll start with that and ask Al to jump in. I would say we're not going to, obviously, comment on materiality because that's certainly something we would ask our customers to comment on. But I think it goes without saying that as we've all come through the last few years, wanting to come into the season in a very strong position is a signal that there's opportunity ahead. And, Allen, anything you want to add to that?

Allen J. Mistysyn Senior Vice President-Finance & Chief Financial Officer, The Sherwin-Williams Co. A Yeah. Garik, I mean, think about it. Our first quarter is a small quarter for consumer in North America and it ramps up as the architectural season ramps up. So, we have seen this in the past and it's not overly material. You think about a couple percent on $800 million, it's not huge.

James R. Jaye Senior Vice President-Investor Relations & Corporate Communications, The Sherwin-Williams Co. A Thanks, Garik.

My question for you is, how are you incentivizing that or driving that with your investments? Is it head count related or are you doing something to drive more servicing to existing accounts? And is this really to drive share gains or can this also drive mix shift to higher performing products? Heidi G. Petz President, Chief Executive Officer & Director, The Sherwin-Williams Co. A Well, see, that's a great question. I would say a few things. I think, if you look at we use the word ecosystem a lot to talk about what it is that we're trying to bring to our contractors. So, it's basically everything you said. When you look at the reps and certainly our suite of digital tools, the goal here is regardless of where these contractors are at in their business maturity, their selling cycle, their growth plans, we are going to intercept them exactly where they are in that cycle.

And so, it differs by segment. The needs obviously of those contractors different by segment, if it's Residential Repaint versus New Res versus Commercial. So, the readiness of our team and the digital tools to support them to intercept these contractors is where we're investing. We obviously won't go into a lot of details on that for obvious reasons. But when we're out hunting and I The Sherwin-Williams Co. (SHW) Q1 2024 Earnings Call 23-Apr-2024 mentioned the word surgical, it is just that we've got the data. We've got the team prepared. We've got the right set of tools to help make our team more efficient, to help make our customers more successful.

Allen J. Mistysyn Senior Vice President-Finance & Chief Financial Officer, The Sherwin-Williams Co. A Steve, the only thing I would add to that is we often talk about surveys of painting contractors and the number one driver of their loyalty is who helps them make the most money. So, the more reps we have in the field and our ability to spend more time with those painting contractors and doing demos with higher quality products, we can show them the efficiencies that they can gain so that they can grow their topline and their bottom line with the same number of painters. Because the labor markets haven't improved dramatically, so that's a value add that I think we can provide.

James R. Jaye Senior Vice President-Investor Relations & Corporate Communications, The Sherwin-Williams Co. A Thank you, Steve.

Heidi G. Petz President, Chief Executive Officer & Director, The Sherwin-Williams Co. A Yeah, Arun. Good morning. I'll start with the first one and then I'll hand it over to Al to cover your second one. And by the way, nice job getting two questions into the one question. You did that really gracefully. So, on the first one, yeah, I think your point on what was happening in the West, we've recognized the – Kelly- Moore's closure and I would tell you that we have long and aggressively competed against Kelly-Moore. We have a lot of respect for them as a competitor. We are well-positioned and are already beginning to serve some of their former customers. We expect to gain continued share here.

We're not going to comment on the potential size of the gains. But as I said earlier, you can expect us to be very aggressive. And I wouldn't look at this through the lens of opening new stores necessarily there. I think, when something like this happens in our industry, we want to make sure that we're being very thoughtful about where real estate makes sense for us, talent, so we've taken the steps and the actions to take the best of. And we're ready to go.

The Sherwin-Williams Co. (SHW) Q1 2024 Earnings Call 23-Apr-2024 Allen J. Mistysyn Senior Vice President-Finance & Chief Financial Officer, The Sherwin-Williams Co. A Yeah, Arun, I think you're right. We would expect that our second half would be in that mid-single digit range. Of course, as we see the summer selling season unfold, we'll look at those trends, look at indicators and certainly give an update to the Street on our July call as appropriate.

James R. Jaye Senior Vice President-Investor Relations & Corporate Communications, The Sherwin-Williams Co. A Thank you, Arun.

Allen J. Mistysyn Senior Vice President-Finance & Chief Financial Officer, The Sherwin-Williams Co. A Yeah. Laurence, as you said, I think in this type of uncertain environment, you do see multiples start to decline. You also see maybe a smaller pipeline than you would typically see in a growing market. That being said, I think we're out. We know our – we're confident in our strategy in industrial. We are actively pursuing bolt-ons that fit that strategy and accelerate that strategy. And as the markets turn and as there's better line of sight to growth and that will be certainly well positioned with our balance sheet to make any acquisitions that we want to make and that fit our strategy.

James R. Jaye Senior Vice President-Investor Relations & Corporate Communications, The Sherwin-Williams Co. A Thank you, Laurence.

And then the second piece of this is once we cycle this incremental investment, do we get back to where SG&A growth is slower than sales? Heidi G. Petz President, Chief Executive Officer & Director, The Sherwin-Williams Co. A The Sherwin-Williams Co. (SHW) Q1 2024 Earnings Call 23-Apr-2024 So, Eric, no, we don't see a situation or an environment where we pull back. We're confident again in our strategy. The comment we made earlier, these are very focused investments. And so, we're not trying to be all things to all people, water all the trees. But where we know we've got points of differentiation that are meaningful in the market, you can expect that we'll continue to be very bullish there.

So, no, I don't see us pulling back in any regard there. And, Al, I'll let you speak to the rates relative to...

Allen J. Mistysyn Senior Vice President-Finance & Chief Financial Officer, The Sherwin-Williams Co. A Yeah. Eric, as you know, I mean, we're focused on growing operating margin and sometimes that's your gross margin expansion. Sometimes that's in SG&A leverage. Whenever we see outsized gross margin expansion, we take that opportunity to accelerate the investments again because of the confidence you have – we have in our strategy. But yeah, as rates start to come down, existing home sales improve, new single-family starts improvement and CapEx that I talked about with Property Maintenance and we see those volumes improving. I would expect to start seeing leverage on our SG&A in the 2025 into 2026 and the go forward.

James R. Jaye Senior Vice President-Investor Relations & Corporate Communications, The Sherwin-Williams Co. A Thanks, Eric.

Heidi G. Petz President, Chief Executive Officer & Director, The Sherwin-Williams Co. A It's a great question. I would say the opportunity continues to be – first and foremost, while there is opportunity in every segment, the biggest opportunity for us, as we've said historically, is Res Repaint where we've got more share there and I would say that it's on top of already very healthy growth. So, I don't think in any way this incremental traffic is going to help correct. I think this incremental traffic is going to continue to help us to outperform kind of the flat environment that Res Repaint sits in today. So, it'll be accretive and it's something that we're confident that this is an opportunity, as you mentioned or as I mentioned earlier, an increased call activity and increased new unique accounts, rather and active accounts.

So, this is evidence that we're taking share.

James R. Jaye Senior Vice President-Investor Relations & Corporate Communications, The Sherwin-Williams Co. A Thank you, Aaron.

The Sherwin-Williams Co. (SHW) Q1 2024 Earnings Call 23-Apr-2024 James R. JayeSenior Vice President-Investor Relations & Corporate Communications, The Sherwin-Williams Co. Yeah. Thank you, everybody, for joining our call today. I think you heard that the team is very aligned, very confident in our strategy and what we're doing. We've made the right investments and we're driving those solutions for our customers and we're pretty confident that you're going to see as the year unfolds, those share gains and those returns become more and more evident. The other thing I would do is just remind you we will have our annual financial community presentation this year in Boston, that's on August 29th. In addition to Heidi and Al, you'll hear commentary from our group presidents as well.

So, additional information on that will be coming out sometime soon. So, look for that, please. And as always, thanks for your interest and we'll be available for your follow up calls over the next several days. Have a great day. Thank you.