Edited Transcript of FBM.N earnings conference call or presentation 12-May-20 12:30pm GMT

Additionally, during today’s call, we will discuss non-GAAP financial measures, which we believe could be useful in evaluating our financial performance. Other companies may calculate these measures differently, and our presentation of these non-GAAP measures should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for measures prepared in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles or GAAP. A discussion of how we calculate these non-GAAP measures, which includes net debt leverage ratio, adjusted EBITDA, adjusted net income and adjusted earnings per share as well as a reconciliation of each of these measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measure, can be found in our earnings release, which has been furnished to the SEC and is available on our website.

With that, I will turn the call over to Ruben.

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Ruben D. Mendoza, Foundation Building Materials, Inc. – President, CEO & Director [3]

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Thank you, John. Good morning, and thank you for joining us for a review of our first quarter results. Before we discuss our first quarter results, let me share with you an overview of how we are managing the COVID-19 pandemic. In March, we launched a business continuity effort to safeguard our team members, customers, suppliers and the communities we serve. We’ve also taken proactive steps to rightsize our business to reflect current market conditions and measures to strengthen our liquidity and capital resources. The health and safety of our team members is a core FBM value. And we have implemented measures to help to ensure their welfare, including the use of additional personal protective equipment, frequent cleaning of our facilities and practicing safe social distancing. Due to certain COVID-19 related restrictions, we have reduced branch operations and furloughed employees, mainly in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Michigan, the state of Washington and Northern California. As of Monday, May 11, our company continues to operate as an essential critical infrastructure sector company, with the vast majority of our branches operating in the United States and Canada utilizing safety precautions based on recommendations from federal, state and local authorities.

The COVID-19 pandemic is also impacting the communities in which we operate. In response, we have taken action to support communities through the donations of thousands of N95 masks to local hospitals. FBM entered the COVID-19 pandemic with a solid balance sheet. Since then, we have taken additional actions to further enhance our financial flexibility, liquidity and cash flow to put the company in a strong position to return to normal operations when conditions allow, including deferring or limiting nonessential operating expenses; reducing salaries for exempt team members led by voluntary salary reductions by our certain members of our senior management team, including a 50% salary reduction for myself; restricting hiring; deferring wage increases; and reducing other costs to protect existing jobs, including the suspension of matching contributions to our 401(k) employer plan; optimizing all areas of working capital; furloughing team members associated with temporary branch closures; reducing independent Board member compensation by 50%; delaying or reducing capital expenditures that are not anticipated to impact near-term business; temporarily suspending acquisition-related activity and drawing down an additional $120 million of cash in March under our revolving credit facility.

We believe these actions will provide additional financial flexibility and help us navigate the current uncertain business conditions.

Now turning to our first quarter results. Foundation Building Materials recorded net sales of $524 million, up 2% with average net daily sales up 20 basis points compared to the prior year quarter. Base business net sales decreased by 30 basis points, primarily due to the reduced revenues due to the COVID-19 pandemic. We estimate the negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic to base business net sales to be in the range of $14 million to $18 million in the first quarter as shelter-in-place orders from state and local authorities impacted our ability to deliver products to our customers. Excluding the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, we estimate our year-over-year base business net sales growth would have been approximately 3%, as we saw steady demand for much of the first quarter.

Now turning to our product line results. Wallboard base business net sales decreased 1.5%, primarily due to price mix with flat volumes compared to prior year quarter. Before the COVID-19 virus, our wallboard volumes were steady, reflecting solid demand in both nonresidential and residential end markets. Suspended ceilings base business growth for the first quarter was 5%, primarily due to higher average selling prices and mix compared to the prior year quarter. The positive performance of our suspended ceilings product line is primarily due to the resilience of the commercial repair and remodel market. Metal framing base business net sales decreased 7% due to lower product prices compared to the prior year quarter.

Our strong underlying profitability highlighted our first quarter results with gross margins of 31%, adjusted EBITDA margin of 7.7% and adjusted EPS of $0.23. The improvement in our profitability is primarily due to our ongoing pricing and purchasing initiatives.

As we enter the second quarter, April net sales were down approximately 20% compared to the prior year quarter, and we forecast April to be our biggest year-over-year decline on a monthly basis, with gradual improvement for the balance of the second quarter. As we return to normal operations, we will continue to drive organic growth through greenfield expansions in underserved markets with the 2020 objective of opening 3 to 5 greenfield branches and a long-term goal of 4 to 6 branches per year. Our greenfield branch investments yield high returns on invested capital in the first few years of startup, leverage our national scale, increase our market share and support our long-term growth.

In addition, we continue to invest aggressively in our e-commerce platform to drive long-term organic growth. We started the initial phase of our e-commerce initiative in the fourth quarter of 2019. And we expect to begin a pilot launch in the third quarter of 2020. Our e-commerce initiative is a natural evolution of our digital platform, which began with the launch of the FBM app in 2017. Today, the FBM app has thousands of customer downloads, and we see opportunities to further drive adoption with our e-commerce platform. In addition, we believe this is the opportune moment to enhance the customer experience through empowering our customers to purchase our products online with ease and convenience, building brand awareness and customer loyalty, increasing the range of products we offer our customers, improving purchasing and logistics, improving e-commerce search engine optimization, streamlining our inventory from branches to distribution centers and improving our speed-to-market.

Our e-commerce initiative also enhances our existing sales channels by building a gateway to our existing complementary product offerings. We believe our e-commerce initiative will be a key driver in growing our complementary products, full year net sales from $530 million at the end of 2019 to a goal of $1 billion in net sales by 2023. In addition, we are investing in our digital platform to streamline our supply chain by lowering the cost of goods sold, increasing inventory velocity and improving our supply chain efficiency.

Now more than ever, building a digital platform is a strategic imperative to enhance the customer experience and drive organic growth.

Acquisitions also remain a strategic priority for the company. Since 2013, we have completed more than 35 acquisitions, and we see ample opportunities to further consolidate the industry. In February, we announced the purchase of 2 specialty building product branches in the Washington, D.C metropolitan market, which sold wallboard suspended ceilings and metal framing product lines.

As business conditions improve, we expect to resume our acquisition activity later in the year. Our company is well positioned to withstand market changes with a highly variable cost structure that allows us to scale costs with revenues and changing economic environments. We are adjusting our business to reflect the current challenging market conditions by rightsizing our business and enhancing our financial flexibility, and we have well-developed contingency plans to reduce costs further if business conditions continue to weaken.

During the second quarter, our focus is to navigate the impact of the COVID-19 virus. Our #1 priority is the health and safety of our team members and their families, our customers and our business partners during this challenging time. We have instituted enhanced safety procedures to safeguard the health of our team members, while fulfilling our responsibility to our customers. We continue to operate in the vast majority of the markets we serve, and we will continue to provide superior service to our customers while delivering long-term value to our shareholders.

Now I’ll turn the call over to John Gorey for more details on the first quarter results.

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John Gorey, Foundation Building Materials, Inc. – CFO [4]

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Thank you, Ruben. I would also like to welcome everyone on today’s call and extend well wishes to you and your families during this difficult time. As Ruben highlighted, we recorded first quarter net sales of $524.3 million, up 1.8%, and base business net sales of $493.4 million, a decrease of 30 basis points over the prior year period. Net income for the first quarter was $14.4 million compared to $3.5 million in the prior year period. First quarter net income included a onetime favorable legal settlement of $8.6 million. Adjusted EBITDA for the first quarter was $40.3 million, up 7.5% compared to the prior year period, with an adjusted EBITDA margin of 7.7%.

Now turning to our product line results. First quarter wallboard net sales were $202.3 million compared to $202.9 million, a decrease of 30 basis points compared to the prior year period. Wallboard base business net sales declined 1.5% with a 1.4% decrease in price and mix and a 10 basis point decrease in unit volume. The decrease in wallboard base business net sales is primarily due to the shelter-in-place orders from the state and local authorities related to the COVID-19 pandemic, which impacted deliveries to our customers.

Suspended ceilings net sales were $98.5 million compared to $89 million, up 10.7% compared to the prior year period. Base business growth for suspended ceilings was 4.8% compared to the prior year period, primarily driven by higher average selling prices.

Metal framing net sales were $93.3 million compared to $99.3 million, a decrease of 6%, primarily due to lower average selling prices compared to the prior year period.

Complementary and other product net sales were $130.2 million compared to $123.7 million, up 5.2% compared to the prior year period.

Increase of complementary and other product net sales was primarily due to ongoing initiatives to expand the range of products we offer our customers.

Gross profit for the first quarter was $162.2 million compared to $153 million in the prior year period, increase of $9.2 million or 6%.

Gross margin for the first quarter was 30.9% compared to 29.7%, up 122 basis points compared to the prior year period.

The increase in gross margin was primarily due to improved profitability across our wallboard, metal framing and complementary and other products, lines driven by our ongoing pricing and purchasing initiatives.

Selling, general and administrative, or SG&A expenses for the first quarter were $123.1 million compared to $117.2 million in the prior year period. SG&A expenses as a percentage of net sales were 23.5% compared to 22.8% in the prior year period. The increase in SG&A as a percentage of net sales was primarily due to the loss of net sales leverage resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic and our continued investment in company-wide initiatives.

Now turning to our balance sheet and liquidity. At the end of the first quarter, our debt leverage ratio was 2.98x, and we finished the quarter with cash of $141 million and $140 million available on our ABL credit facility.

In March 2020, we drew $120 million from our existing ABL credit facility to provide financial flexibility and liquidity due to volatile financial market conditions.

Currently, we do not anticipate any additional drawdowns from our revolver credit facility, and we believe that we have sufficient cash and liquidity to meet our business objectives for the foreseeable future.

Given the unprecedented uncertainty of both the macroeconomic environment and our end markets, we withdrew our financial guidance on April 8, 2020. However, we do understand the need for transparency for our team members and business partners. As Ruben indicated earlier, April net sales were down approximately 20% compared to the prior year period. We estimate our second quarter net sales to have the biggest decline year-over-year with gradual improvement over the second half of the year as branches ramp-up in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Michigan, Washington and Northern California. These assumptions are based on a very broad survey of our customers’ current jobs that are postponed and not canceled. We believe these jobs will restart and will continue through the balance of 2020 and into 2021.

Now I’ll turn the call over to Ruben for some closing remarks.

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Ruben D. Mendoza, Foundation Building Materials, Inc. – President, CEO & Director [5]

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Thanks, John. Before I begin my closing remarks, I would like to send a heartfelt thank you to all our FBM team members, who have worked tirelessly during this period of unprecedented uncertainty. We have a senior management team averaging 30-plus years of building products experience, leading our team through this challenging period. Our team members have proven that being resilient is not just about maintaining operations. It is our culture of teamwork that will guide us through this challenging time and drive our future success.

In closing, our long-term strategic focus is unwavering. As we navigate through these challenging market conditions, we remain committed to our 4 strategic priorities that will lead to long-term value creation for our company.

As business conditions improve, let me reiterate our long-term goals. First, we will continue to strengthen our balance sheet by reducing our debt leverage ratio. Second, we will drive organic growth by opening greenfield branches to grow our market share and expand the range of products we offer our customers through e-commerce. Third, we will continue to focus on profit margin expansion across our business by leveraging our economies of scale, executing our cost-out initiatives and by investing in company-wide initiatives that will drive long-term profitability. And finally, we will continue to make strategic acquisitions when business conditions improve. Our industry remains highly fragmented, and we continue to see opportunities to expand our geographic footprint and build our presence in the markets we serve. We continue to believe these actions will drive growth, improve profitability and deliver long-term value to our shareholders.

That concludes our prepared remarks, and now we’ll be happy to take your questions.

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Questions and Answers

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Operator [1]

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(Operator Instructions) Our first question comes from the line of Keith Hughes with SunTrust.

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Keith Brian Hughes, SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, Inc., Research Division – MD [2]

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We’ve seen some of your peer companies report similar April results of the closed markets overly impacting the quarter, should be the month. But I guess the longer-term question is the health of the commercial backlog. How — my question is: Are you seeing jobs canceled? Are you seeing your quotation activity come down? Just what’s the health longer term as you look at the nonresidential market?

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Ruben D. Mendoza, Foundation Building Materials, Inc. – President, CEO & Director [3]

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Thanks, Keith. As John said in his prepared remarks, we’ve done an extensive survey of our customers. In our CRM, there’s over 7,000 jobs, worth over $1.6 billion. And over the last 1.5 weeks, we’ve pulled thousands of customers, and we found 134 of those jobs canceled worth about $23 million, about 1.8%. The rest are postponed and plan on continuing as ongoing now or restarting in the states that we talked about.

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Keith Brian Hughes, SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, Inc., Research Division – MD [4]

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Okay. Interesting. Another question, a little bit shorter term. As you look over the next couple of months, do you expect to get more price pressure on jobs, there being big — given that there is a lot of disruption overall here in the market?

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Ruben D. Mendoza, Foundation Building Materials, Inc. – President, CEO & Director [5]

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We’ve seen some price pressure as we’ve shifted some of our business from commercial to residential. But you may or may not remember in our last call, we said that, that was going to happen. And we expected it, and it’s no different than what we said. So it’s not a huge amount of price pressure, but we have seen some in our drywall business. And in our metal framing, as you note — as you can see in our results, is down a bit. But I don’t know if John said it earlier or not in the prepared remarks, but our metal framing, we’re still above the long-term averages for our pricing.

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Operator [6]

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Our next question comes from the line of Mike Dahl with RBC.

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Michael Glaser Dahl, RBC Capital Markets, Research Division – MD of U.S. Homebuilders & Building Products [7]

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Ruben, just want to dig in a little bit on the April. And maybe could you give us in those markets that were most heavily impacted a, what percentage of sales does that typically represent for you; b, help us quantify were those markets down 50% or some of them literally close to 0? And then any color on just — I think there’s a comment in the press release about not seeing the typical seasonal improvement in some of those. And just curious if that relates to those still being closed or just any additional color you can give us on trends in some of those markets in recent weeks?

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Ruben D. Mendoza, Foundation Building Materials, Inc. – President, CEO & Director [8]

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Yes. I want to say something about the markets, and then Pete and Kirby, probably chime in about the products or how much we’re going forward on them. But Michigan is a very large market for us. We have a lot of branches in Michigan, Pennsylvania as well, northern California as well. And Washington is a good market for us as well. So all of those were closed and down 85% to 90%. Maybe Pete and Kirby can comment on back up and running.

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Alan Kirby Thompson, Foundation Building Materials, Inc. – SVP of Sales & Marketing [9]

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Yes, Mike. We’ve seen over half the employees that we furloughed in mid-March to late March already back to work in May. So we’ve already seen a real spike in our business in those states that Ruben just mentioned. So that we were quite slow. We were not completely out of any of those markets, but we’ve started to gain momentum every day in our billings and our backlog. Our salespeople are continuing to quote work and secure projects. So we feel very strongly that all of those markets are going to rebound nicely for us in the second half of the second quarter.

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Michael Glaser Dahl, RBC Capital Markets, Research Division – MD of U.S. Homebuilders & Building Products [10]

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Okay. That’s really helpful. And then the follow-on is — so then if we think about — that definitely helps to explain why April could be a bit of a trough. And then you’ve got a bit of a — a push and pull with some lag in terms of what we’re now seeing on lower builder activity, lower home sales. I know you guys were trying to push a little bit more into residential this year, but can you give us the puts and takes when you’re talking about kind of gradual improvement from April? Is it that those harder-hit markets bounce back relatively quickly, but you’re down low single digits kind of fade to more like down high single, down 10%, anything you could give us in terms of just helping us to gauge your vision of what gradual means?

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Ruben D. Mendoza, Foundation Building Materials, Inc. – President, CEO & Director [11]

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I think our vision changed. Initially, Mike, or — it was about a 20% in April. This is just our management estimate. The 20% in April, maybe 20% in May, 15% in June, 10% in July and then back to normal. And we — our vision has changed a little bit since we think we’ll be down less in May and June than we were in April. And we think there will be a pause in residential, obviously, because there hasn’t been as much trenching in the last 1.5 months as there was previously. So there will probably be a pause at the end of the second quarter and the beginning of the third quarter for housing. But I don’t know that, that goes away. We just see it as a pause and talking to our customers and listening to some homebuilders. And commercially, I know I talked to Keith yesterday about the ABI. And I know that, that’s down. But we’ve — I’ve seen Dodge, I’ve seen Morgan Stanley, I’ve seen John Burns, I’ve seen a lot of things out there, and I know you guys have, too. But the best thing that we can do is talk with our customers, pull their backlogs, see what’s postponed and continuing and what’s canceled. And we still believe the vast majority of the work that we’re looking at and that’s in our customers’ backlog is postponed and not canceled.

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Alan Kirby Thompson, Foundation Building Materials, Inc. – SVP of Sales & Marketing [12]

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Mike, this is Kirby Thompson. Just to add to Ruben’s comments, I would tell you in the process of doing this survey, I can tell you that our customers are generally optimistic with the backlogs.

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Operator [13]

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Our next question comes from the line of Sam Darkatsh with Raymond James.

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Samuel John Darkatsh, Raymond James & Associates, Inc., Research Division – Research Analyst [14]

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A couple of questions. Your allowance for uncollectibles actually went down sequentially from the fourth quarter as a percentage of your gross receivables. Could you help us understand why that might have occurred? And also remind us, back last recession, where did this — where did your allowance for uncollectibles peak to give us a sense of your ability to collect receivables?

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Alan Kirby Thompson, Foundation Building Materials, Inc. – SVP of Sales & Marketing [15]

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Our allowance method didn’t change at all. We had a large write-off in the first quarter. It was a customer in the Minnesota area. And it was not related to COVID-19. It was a customer that struggled for a while, and we made a large adjustment for that customer. Going forward, that will catch up for the rest of the year. So that allowance is kind of in line where we expect it to be at the end of the year. In the past, when we run this, our DSO hasn’t changed dramatically. We’ve moved up a couple of days in DSO collections in the slower times. So far, this COVID-19, we’ve been able to collect our money relatively strongly, and we feel confident we’re going to go through this year without much impact.

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Samuel John Darkatsh, Raymond James & Associates, Inc., Research Division – Research Analyst [16]

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Second question — sorry…

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Ruben D. Mendoza, Foundation Building Materials, Inc. – President, CEO & Director [17]

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Just to follow up quickly on that. We have preliminary rights notices in all of the United States and similar in Canada. And we’re able to file leans on jobs or stop notices on public jobs as time goes on if there’s a problem getting paid, just a reminder.

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Samuel John Darkatsh, Raymond James & Associates, Inc., Research Division – Research Analyst [18]

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Second question, and I respect you’re not giving guidance. So even if this is directional, that’s fine. But what does your gross margin look like here into the second quarter and prospectively for the year? And what is your presumed wallboard pricing therein as it relates to your gross margin expectations?

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Ruben D. Mendoza, Foundation Building Materials, Inc. – President, CEO & Director [19]

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Our gross margin for April is a little bit higher than our gross margin was for last April. So I think that’s — and we think it’s going to stick around there through the second quarter.

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John Gorey, Foundation Building Materials, Inc. – CFO [20]

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Yes. Sam, it’s John. Yes. We think for the gross margin this year that we’re probably going to stay in that 30% handle range. It will probably be more towards the lower end of the range as we have a mix shift, particularly as our move towards residential. So I would look for us to stay right in that historical range that we’ve been trending, which is that 30% handle.

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Samuel John Darkatsh, Raymond James & Associates, Inc., Research Division – Research Analyst [21]

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And what does that presume for wallboard pricing, John?

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Peter A. Welly, Foundation Building Materials, Inc. – COO [22]

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It’s going to be relatively flat, maybe a slight reduction, but not too much of an impact.

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Operator [23]

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Our next question comes from the line of John Lovallo with Bank of America.

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John Lovallo, BofA Merrill Lynch, Research Division – VP [24]

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The first one on SG&A. Historically, SG&A has kind of ticked up sequentially as the year has gone on. Curious with some of the cost actions that you guys have put in place and some of the pushout of investment, could we actually see second quarter SG&A dollars down sequentially? And could that perhaps continue through into the third quarter? Or how should we think about that?

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Peter A. Welly, Foundation Building Materials, Inc. – COO [25]

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Yes. We reacted quickly in implementing our cost reductions, and we saw about a 20 to 25 basis points of SG&A expense as a percentage of sales reduction in April and we do see sequentially that continuing, and it’s really going to be based on our business demand as we move forward throughout the year. But we were able to take some costs out of the second quarter sequentially, and we continue to think it will follow through the rest of the year.

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John Lovallo, BofA Merrill Lynch, Research Division – VP [26]

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Okay. That’s helpful. And then as we think about some of the states that have begun to reopen, as you — as your business has kind of progressed with these reopenings, what types of products have been — have come back quicker? I mean, has there been any kind of skew towards any segment or product line that has responded more quickly to the reopenings?

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Alan Kirby Thompson, Foundation Building Materials, Inc. – SVP of Sales & Marketing [27]

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Yes. It’s been pretty consistent across all of our mix of products. For instance, Michigan, yesterday, we had our best day in a long time with our billing. So that was very encouraging to see. And it’s a broad-based continued FBM platform of products that we’re seeing. We’re not seeing a spike in drywall or spike in ceilings or steel. It’s just a good, consistent flow of business for us.

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Operator [28]

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Our next question comes from the line of Trey Grooms with Stephens.

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Noah Christopher Merkousko, Stephens Inc., Research Division – Research Associate [29]

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This is actually Noah Merkousko on for Trey. So my first question here is how should we be thinking about any kind of decremental? And would the decremental be higher than an incremental, at least initially?

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Peter A. Welly, Foundation Building Materials, Inc. – COO [30]

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It will be slightly higher. We’re expecting anywhere from 12% to 18% in the decremental margin decrease. And incrementally, we’ve always talked about 10% to 12%, so a little bit more, but not much as we move through the year.

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Noah Christopher Merkousko, Stephens Inc., Research Division – Research Associate [31]

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All right. That’s helpful. And then just a follow-up, historically, ceilings have seen steady price increases. But maybe looking back to the last recession, what typically happens when there’s a significant reduction in demand? Should we still be expecting steady price increases? Or has that thought changed?

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Ruben D. Mendoza, Foundation Building Materials, Inc. – President, CEO & Director [32]

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Kirby?

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Alan Kirby Thompson, Foundation Building Materials, Inc. – SVP of Sales & Marketing [33]

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Yes. No, thank you. I think the ceilings pricing has historically been very, very consistent. The fact that there are only 4 domestic manufacturers of ceilings and that a big percentage of that volume is done on a repair and remodel basis throughout the year. That pricing continues to be very stable in comparison to some of the other commodities like steel and drywall.

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Operator [34]

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Our next question comes from the line of Trey Morrish with Evercore.

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James A. Morrish, Evercore ISI Institutional Equities, Research Division – Analyst [35]

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You guys have talked fairly optimistically, more so than a lot of other companies about a cadence of recovery. And I think it speaks to the health of that commercial backlog that you highlighted. But I guess the first question is: Looking at commercial, you talked about delays and not cancellations, do you expect there to be like an acceleration catch-up period where a bunch of jobs get done in a small window? Or do you think this is going to be a longer-term pushout where everything is pushed out 2, 3, 4, 5 months, what have you?

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Ruben D. Mendoza, Foundation Building Materials, Inc. – President, CEO & Director [36]

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Yes. I don’t know about everything, but I do think it’s a longer-term pushout where things got stopped or delayed, it is a longer-term pushout, not a huge catch-up. It’s hard to catch up quickly when the job sites are going a little bit slower because of the — somewhat restrictions.

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James A. Morrish, Evercore ISI Institutional Equities, Research Division – Analyst [37]

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Got it. And then, again, about your optimism, and you’re definitely thinking fairly constructively, which I think is warranted given the data you’re seeing, but is it possible or likely or how do you guys think about revenue gains flipping back positive at some point late this year? Is that something that’s potentially on the table? Based on the backlog schedule you’re looking at? Or would that be a bit aggressive?

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Ruben D. Mendoza, Foundation Building Materials, Inc. – President, CEO & Director [38]

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You mean year-over-year gains like the fourth quarter over fourth quarter ’19? Is that what you’re talking about, Trey?

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James A. Morrish, Evercore ISI Institutional Equities, Research Division – Analyst [39]

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Correct.

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Ruben D. Mendoza, Foundation Building Materials, Inc. – President, CEO & Director [40]

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Yes. We’re hoping to catch up with fourth quarter of last — we’re looking to more than catch-up. So we really can’t forecast gains yet in third and fourth quarter. We just think that, hopefully, a catch-up for our second half…

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Alan Kirby Thompson, Foundation Building Materials, Inc. – SVP of Sales & Marketing [41]

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Sequential.

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Ruben D. Mendoza, Foundation Building Materials, Inc. – President, CEO & Director [42]

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A sequential catch-up.

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Operator [43]

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Our next question comes from the line of Matthew Bouley with Barclays.

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Matthew Adrien Bouley, Barclays Bank PLC, Research Division – VP [44]

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I wanted to ask on the complementary product sales by 2023. I think you said the goal was to double that, and please correct me if I misheard that. But I guess, number one, are acquisitions included in that? And then number 2, can you just elaborate a little more on how e-commerce might lead to such a strong uptake in wallet share or if there’s a presumption of meaningful growth in new customers? How do you bridge to that $1 billion?

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Ruben D. Mendoza, Foundation Building Materials, Inc. – President, CEO & Director [45]

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Yes. Thank you, Matt. It’s a great question, and it’s aggressive. It’s — on Slide 16, I rarely point out our slide deck. But on Slide 16 of our deck, we state our value creation for our e-commerce platform. And really think there’s some — just some great points in there that what we can accomplish. And yes, we do believe that there’s some acquisitions included in those next 3 years as well as some great market share gains from new customers. But also, we have a lot of existing customers that buy drywall, metal framing, ceiling tile and accessories, ceiling accessories from us that don’t buy other complementary products from us. And we believe our e-commerce platform will enhance that, give some adoption to it.

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Matthew Adrien Bouley, Barclays Bank PLC, Research Division – VP [46]

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Okay. Understood. That’s helpful. And then secondly, I just wanted to ask what you’re seeing in the competitive environment. I know it’s going to vary by market, but should we think that sort of in the near term, there is any further risk to pricing as a result, perhaps in those markets that have been a bit harder hit?

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Ruben D. Mendoza, Foundation Building Materials, Inc. – President, CEO & Director [47]

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It’s hard to forecast that. And we — obviously, we monitor what our competitors are doing, but we’ve — I try to make sure that all of us here at Foundation keep a really close eye on what we’re doing and try to do it the best we can. So it’s hard to say what’s going to happen in the future with our competitors. And in the markets that are reopening, it’s actually really pleasantly surprising. Pete mentioned Michigan having their best day yesterday, and things like that are happening. So it’s good news. We’re seeing some good news come out of our reopening.

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Operator [48]

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Our next question comes from the line of Ryan Merkel with William Blair.

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Ryan James Merkel, William Blair & Company L.L.C., Research Division – Research Analyst [49]

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So I just had 2 questions. I think first off, can you just discuss the complexion of the non-res backlog, is it broad-based? And does it include offices and hotels? Because I would think that, that sort of stuff might be canceled.

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Ruben D. Mendoza, Foundation Building Materials, Inc. – President, CEO & Director [50]

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It is very broad-based and it’s not that — I don’t know that there’s that many hotels that were on it before. It does include some offices, Ryan, definitely, it includes health care, it includes data centers, it includes airports that are still going, it includes schools,that have mostly repair and remodel for schools that are not brand-new schools. And it includes a lot of broad-based things. We didn’t do a lot of retail, or there’s not a lot of malls going or things like that. But it includes very broad-based array of product.

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Ryan James Merkel, William Blair & Company L.L.C., Research Division – Research Analyst [51]

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Okay. That’s helpful. And then just secondly, how impactful could social distancing be on job sites to construction spending? And — because it seems possible that it could slow the pace of spending, depending on how strict the states are. But is there anything there? Is that — could that be a governor?

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Peter A. Welly, Foundation Building Materials, Inc. – COO [52]

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Ryan, it will slow down the stocking of materials just because the amount of manpower is somewhat limited by the number of trades on a floor. So that will slow the project down, but I don’t think that will slow the amount of money into the project. It actually might help the municipalities because if the project takes a little longer than the crunch for cash is lessened a little bit. So we don’t really view that as a detriment to the business going forward.

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Operator [53]

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(Operator Instructions) Our next question comes from the line of David Manthey with Baird.

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David John Manthey, Robert W. Baird & Co. Incorporated, Research Division – Senior Research Analyst [54]

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What are you hearing from your suppliers, mainly on the wallboard side regarding their near-term production levels?

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Ruben D. Mendoza, Foundation Building Materials, Inc. – President, CEO & Director [55]

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Thanks, David. I’m going to answer a little bit here, and I think Pete and/or Kirby might have to chime in as well as they have information as well. But I do know that some of our wallboard suppliers are taking shifts out just due to closedowns and slowdowns. I do know that one of our suppliers has actually shut down a plant or 2 plants. And not sure if 1 of them is going to come back on. And I don’t know if that’s a — Pete.

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Peter A. Welly, Foundation Building Materials, Inc. – COO [56]

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Yes. So that’s Saint-Gobain and Continental, as you know, joined forces, and they closed their Fort Dodge or furloughed their Fort Dodge plant and then they — earlier in the year, they shut down their Cody, Wyoming facility. They had plenty of capacity elsewhere in the combined entity to support the business, and it was lower-cost capacity. So that was, I think, as much an economic move as anything. As far as — up until COVID-19, we were really on a role in the industry. Housing starts were 1.6. We had a lot of volume in the pipeline, and everybody was quite enthusiastic about the year. And then obviously, it hit the brakes. But it is our belief that as time improves and the housing recovers that there’s going to be a lot of demand for drywall increasing, especially on the housing front. So we’re very optimistic that once we get past this, that we will regain some real strong momentum in the industry and obviously, in that product category.

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David John Manthey, Robert W. Baird & Co. Incorporated, Research Division – Senior Research Analyst [57]

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Okay. And then what are the — when you think about that 30% range for the next quarter or 2 in terms of gross margin. What are the key factors that could push your gross margin above or below that level that you’re considering?

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Ruben D. Mendoza, Foundation Building Materials, Inc. – President, CEO & Director [58]

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Thanks, Dave. I think a factor that could push it above would be a V-shape recovery, things going quicker than we thought, some sort of vaccine, which I don’t know that anybody is expecting, but just something quicker than we thought and just demand going crazy. But — and then below would obviously be a flat at the bottom and maybe just a more — a slower — slowdown in business more than we anticipated.

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Operator [59]

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Our next question comes from the line of Clark Orsky with Alcentra.

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Clark J. Orsky, Alcentra NY LLC – Senior High Yield Analyst [60]

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Can you remind us what your commercial resi split is in your 2 segments?

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Ruben D. Mendoza, Foundation Building Materials, Inc. – President, CEO & Director [61]

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We’re about 65 to 70 commercial and the rest resi, and about 45% of that is R&R.

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Operator [62]

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We have reached the end of the question-and-answer session. I would now like to turn the floor back over to management for closing comments.

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Ruben D. Mendoza, Foundation Building Materials, Inc. – President, CEO & Director [63]

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I’d just like to thank everybody, thank all the FBM employees for their hard work and through this tough time, and appreciate everybody joining.

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Operator [64]

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Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today’s teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation, and have a wonderful day.