Joining me now down here on the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange, say hello to Peter Matt, CMC's president and CEO, and to his right, Mr.
Paul Lawrence, CMC's CFO.
Peter, Paul, great to see both of you guys.
Thank you both for making some time for us.
Thank you, Peter, I'm going to kick things off with you.
CMC has long been known as a steel company.
Talk to me about some of the ways that the business continues to evolve.
Oh great, absolutely.
So we continue to be a steel company.
It's an important piece of our overall company.
We've recently diversified into a broader range of early stage construction products to meet the needs of some of the big construction projects going on around the US.
Talk to me a bit about the quarter.
What do we see driving a lot of the strong results that you and your team, I'm sure, very proudly, eagerly reported to investors?
You know, it all comes down to the heart and strength of the construction market, and there's tailwinds for us.
It's infrastructure, it's private non-res that being manufacturing, reshoring, that being.
Uh, you know, energy build out that being chip plants, you know, that's what's really driving strong construction activity and that's the strength behind our business.
Yeah, Paul, stay with you for the next one.
Talk to me a bit about the precast business.
How is it performing and talk to me a bit about the integration and how it's going.
Precast business is a great business, uh, you know, in comparison to steel, it really provides very stable, elevated margins.
That's what we like to add to our financial profile at CMC.
Integration is going great.
It's, uh, we're in the early innings, but as, as, as Peter said, it's all about extending our offerings to our customer base, and we're excited around how customers will really appreciate the uh the benefits of being able to acquire both precast and steel products from our business.
Right, right on.
Peter, the mic is yours.
A bit more about precast.
Why was it the right bet for this moment?
Well, we spent a lot of time thinking about that and working on different areas and.
It fits really nicely with our business.
It is a value added product.
It addresses critical construction challenges.
It, it has very attractive margins, as Paul said, and, and it really complements our business.
Peter, I'll stay with you for the next one.
We've had a lot of conversations here on Wall Street, especially since the beginning of this particular administration down in DC.
Tariffs and the importance of reshoring a lot of this manufacturing these conversations back here to the United States, back here stateside.
How do you think?
CNC stands to benefit.
Yes, tariffs have been an important piece for our company in, frankly, in keeping out unfairly traded imports, and so it's been, it's been a positive for our company.
We do believe that there's bipartisan support for tariffs, and we are 100% in favor of Section 232 tariffs.
All right, fair enough.
Let's talk a little bit more about the finances.
So to do so, over to the CFO if we can.
What are the key financial milestones you think investors should watch?
Especially over the next 4 quarters or so, you know what we're really focused on is two aspects.
One is improving our EBITDA margins.
We're doing a number of actions towards that, including a lot of self-help, getting more out of our existing assets, and the other one is cash flow.
We're at a point where over the last 10 years or so we've invested heavily in the business.
Now is the opportunity to reap the benefits of those investments, and those will turn into cash flow generation.
And Paul, stay with you.
How about investor debt?
Talk to me all about it.
What should people know and some of the top of mind priorities that you most want to communicate for investor day this year?
Yes, today, you know, it was a great day sharing our story with the investors, you know, really three key takeaways, you know, from an earnings perspective, EBITDA growth of target for 2029 and mid-economic cycle 1.65 to $1.8 billion free cash flow 1.4% to $1.5 billion and returns on invested capital of 13 to 14.5%.
That represents a very materially different financial profile than the CMC of the past.
I'm going to wrap up with Peter.
I've got about 30 seconds if I can.
Some of the top trends you're seeing across the US construction ecosystem these days.
It's worth paying attention to.
Absolutely.
Well, infrastructure is clearly one.
Uh, we believe there's going to be a follow on infrastructure bill.
We're excited about that pipeline of non-residential projects.
There's just an enormous number of projects coming through the pipeline on things like chip plants and energy, uh, sources and so forth for the data center.
Build out.
So tremendous amount of activity in both those spaces.
Paul Lawrence, Peter Matt from CMC, we've got it right above your head here, gentlemen, 4.2%.
That's a nice intraday gain.
Congratulations.
Thank you for taking some time for us here for the show today.
Appreciate it.
Travel safely.
We'll talk to you guys soon.
