Q4 2024 HNI Corp Earnings Call

In This Article:

Participants

Matt McCall; Vice President, Investor Relations and Corporate Development; HNI Corp

Jeffrey Lorenger; Chairman of the Board, President, Chief Executive Officer; HNI Corp

Vincent Berger; Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer; HNI Corp

Reuben Garner; Analyst; The Benchmark Company

Greg Burns; Analyst; Sidoti & Company

Steven Ramsey; Analyst; THOMPSON RESEARCH GROUP

Brian Gordon; Analyst; Water Tower Research

Presentation

Operator

Good morning and welcome to HNI Corporation 4th quarter and year-end fiscal 2024 results conference calls. (Operator Instructions)
As a reminder, today's call is being recorded. I will now hand today's call over to Matt McCall. Please go-ahead sir.

Matt McCall

Good morning. My name is Matt McCall. I'm Vice President Investor Relations and Corporate Development for HNI Corporation. Thank you for joining us to discuss our fourth quarter and fiscal year 2024 results. With me today are Jeff Lorenger, Chairman, President and CEO, and VP Berger, executive Vice President and CFO.
Copies of our financial news release and non-gap reconciliations are posted on our website. Statements made during this call that are not strictly historical facts are forward-looking statements, which are subject to known and unknown risk. Actual results could differ materially. The financial news release posted on our website includes additional factors that could affect actual results.
The corporation assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements made during this call. I'm now pleased to turn the call over to Jeff Lorenger.

Jeffrey Lorenger

Jeff, thanks. Good morning and thank you for joining us. I'm going to divide my commentary today into three sections. First, I will provide some comments on our 4th quarter and full year results. 2024 non-GAAP, EPS granted double-digit case for the third consecutive year. Next, I will discuss our initial expectations for 2025.
We anticipate one fourth consecutive year of double-digit non-gap earnings improvement. And finally, I'll discuss how we see our markets playing out over the course of the year and provide additional detail about our EPS growth visibility. Following those highlights, VB will provide more detail around our first quarter and full year 2025 outlook, including some thoughts on our ability to offset the impact of new tariffs.
He also comments on our strong balance sheet. I will conclude with some general closing comments before we open the call to your questions. I will start with the 4th quarter and full year. In the 4th quarter, non-GAAP EPS was $0.87.
This result was better than we anticipated. While revenue did moderate as expected, our members' continued focus on productivity, drove more financial benefit than we had forecasted and limited the decremental margin to only 17% for the quarter. As the year ended, workplace furnishings experienced softness with small and medium sized customers.
The transactional business within SMB, where products are sold through wholesalers and national supply dealers, was particularly soft throughout the fourth quarter. As we discussed last quarter, this business has a short selling cycle, typically involves smaller item purchases, and historically has been highly sensitive to macroeconomic changes. As a result, revenue trends can be volatile and shift rather quickly.
In our contract furniture business, fourth quarter revenue was down slightly versus the prior year, as the timing of larger projects temporarily limited segment growth in the fourth quarter. Finally, in residential building products, fourth quarter revenue declined 5% year over year as housing market weakness persisted.
Moving to some commentary on the full year, our members delivered another year of excellent operational and financial performance. Non-GAAP EPS totalled $3.06 up 15% from 2023 levels, reaching a new record high for the full year. Importantly, we deliver these results despite our markets remaining near cyclical low points. Consolidated operating margin in 2024 expanded 130 basis points on a non-gap basis to 8.6%, the highest level since 2005.
This strong performance was driven by workplace furnishings, profit transformation initiatives, KII synergy capture, and successful price/cost strategies. From a segment perspective in 2024, in workplace furnishings, our profit transformation plan and acceleration of KII synergies drove a 44% increase in non-gap operating profit. While segment non-gap operating margin of 9.5% reached the highest level since 2007.
In residential building products, ongoing housing market weakness pushed revenue lower for the year. However, segment operating profit margin expanded 50 basis points to 17.5% in 2024. The consistent profit margins in this segment are evidence of the business' unmatched price point, breadth and channel reach, along with the benefits of its vertically integrated business model and overall operational agility.
To summarize, 2024, our profit growth and workplace furnishings and marginal expansion in residential building products continue to demonstrate the strength of our strategies and customer first business model, along with the resilience of our members. During the year, we again demonstrated our ability to manage through all parts of the economic cycle.
Going forward, we expect continued earnings improvement driven by our margin expansion efforts and a return of revenue growth as we move through the year. However, as we enter the new year, we do see demand volatility across our businesses. That leads to my comments about our current expectations for 2025.
First, in our workplace furnishings business, our internal metrics and external indicators support our outlook for revenue improvement. And we are increasingly focusing our investments on driving growth in this segment. However, tariff uncertainty and rising inflation expectations provide reasons to expect ongoing volatility. Internally, orders and pre-order metrics continue to show improvement and backlog levels are up, pointing to a return of revenue growth in 2025.
Segment orders in the fourth quarter were up 2% compared to the prior year period. Consistent with recent revenue trends, fourth quarter orders from contract customers perform better than those from small to medium sized customers. Overall workplace backlog was also up double digits year over year at the end of 2024. And pre-order metrics remain encouraging with our order funnel and workplace furnishings up at a mid to high single digit pace year over year. Our internal metrics are consistent with what we are seeing in various external metrics that typically drive industry demand.
For example, office sublease activity and office space absorption are heading in the right direction. Both are leading indicators for office furniture demand and are providing additional reasons for encouragement. We're also continuing to see return to office momentum build as well. So as you look out into 2025, we have signals that are encouraging and support our view of a return to revenue growth, while at the same time, we are increasingly focusing our investments on driving revenue growth in this segment.
Moving to residential building products. Our current view is that any real housing recovery continues to push out, and our revenue outlook points to the majority of segment growth occurring late in the year as year over year comparisons ease and our growth initiatives gain traction. As is well documented, the dynamics in the housing market remain difficult.
After bottoming at 39 in August, the housing market index reached 47 in January. Well, this is solid improvement, the January reading remains below the 10-year average of 62. Builder sentiment continues to reflect the impacts of elevated interest rates and ongoing affordability issues. Despite these headwinds, we believe in the long-term opportunities tied to the broader housing market and the strength of our market leading positions and profitable operating model, and we continue to invest accordingly.
I will finish by making a few comments about our markets and provide additional detail around our elevated 2025, EPS growth visibility. As is evident from our commentary, it is and in the in the release and on the call, we are increasingly focused on driving revenue growth in both businesses. However, we do expect the year to start off a bit slow with revenue declines in the first quarter.
In workplace, the first quarter revenue softness is being driven by the transactional portion of SMB and large project timing within the hospitality business. Overall SMB activity lagged in the final quarter of 2024. I'll remind you, prior to the second half of 2024, S&P was an area of strength for us with consistent order growth over the previous two years, and we remain bullish about the fundamental backdrop.
As you look at 2025, our strength in the SMB space and our broad price point breadth continues to be competitive differentiators, especially as more cost-conscious customers embrace price mixing across projects, increasingly mingling S&B products in the contract settings.
In our contract business we see growth on the horizon. Contract orders were up 4% on a year over year basis in the fourth quarter. We continue to see encouraging signs within larger projects, and we saw order our performance from the workplace and health and markets during the last quarter of 2024. In addition, education order patterns improved as 2024 progressed, and the education order backlog is up double digits to start 2025.
We are still experiencing longer selling to order timeframes, which makes it a bit more challenging to predict revenue timing. So, while underlying demand drivers are encouraging in the contract space, the level of macro uncertainty, including the ultimate impact of tariffs, will affect how demand plays out. Looking ahead, we believe we are particularly well positioned to benefit as the workplace furnishings market continues to improve.
We have a portfolio of brands with unmatched products and breadth and pricing breadth and depth, allowing us to meet any future need a customer has. We have products that work for customers ranging from small businesses to the largest multinationals. Our brands are distributed widely across geographies, from tertiary markets to the top MSAs. And we can broadly meet the needs of workplaces, schools, healthcare facilities, and hotels.
Moving to residential building products, we continue to believe in the positive long-term market fundamentals. The near term remains dynamic, and we expect the market-driven revenue recovery takes some time, given the current housing environment. We are, however, optimistic about our opportunities to increase revenue through our growth initiatives.
Specifically, we continue to develop market leading new products and provide customers with more options and features. We are driving new programs to increase consumer awareness of the fireplace options, ensuring our products are considered in all remodel and new construction projects.
And we are strengthening our already strong relationships with builders across the country, helping them deliver the best overall value to the homeowner. While we invest in growth, we will continue to deliver high margin results and strong profits in this business. Longer-term, single-family housing remains under supply and demographics will support additional command growth.
The results of our ongoing investments which enhance our connection to customers and build on our leading brands will fortify our position of strength in the industry. Finally, and importantly, we have elevated earnings visibility this year and next. While our earnings expectation for 2025 does include revenue improvement, we continue to have high visibility of significant profit growth driven by operational improvements.
And as we have discussed, we have two initiatives underway, Mexico and KII synergies that will drive a total of $0.70 to $0.80 of EPS growth through 2026. That represents approximately 25% EPS growth on top of our 2024 earnings, with the savings expected to be divided roughly equally over the next two years. In addition, we continue to manage our cost structure and residential building products to align with the demand environment.
Early in the fourth quarter of 2024, we took actions to lower our cost structure by approximately $5 million in this business. Most of that benefit will be recognized in 2025, further adding to our overall profit visibility. So without help from the cycle, we expect our double-digit earnings growth to extend to at least five years. I will now assume the call of the VB to discuss our outlook for 2025. VP, thanks, Jeff.