AZZ Fiscal 2027 Q1 Earnings Call - Record Sales and Raised Guidance on Infrastructure Tailwinds

Conference Operator: Good day, and welcome to the AZZ Fiscal 2027 first quarter results conference call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today’s presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on a touch-tone phone. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Philip Cooper, Managing Director of Three Part Advisors. Please go ahead.

Philip Cooper, Managing Director, Three Part Advisors: Good morning. Thank you for joining us today to review AZZ’s Fiscal 2027 first-quarter results for the period ended May 31st, 2026. Joining the call today are Tom Ferguson, President and Chief Executive Officer, Jason Crawford, Chief Financial Officer, and David Nark, Chief Marketing, Communications, and Investor Relations Officer. After today’s prepared remarks, we will open the call for questions. Please note that the live webcast for today’s call is available at www.azz.com/investor-events. Before we begin, I would like to remind everyone that our discussion today will include forward-looking statements made in accordance with the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.

By their nature, forward-looking statements are uncertain and outside the company’s control, except for actual results, AZZ’s comments containing forward-looking statements may involve risks and uncertainties, some of which are detailed from time to time in documents filed by AZZ with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the latest annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. These statements are not guarantees of future performance, therefore, undue reliance should not be placed upon them. Actual results could differ materially from these expectations. In addition, today’s call will discuss non-GAAP financial measures, which should be considered supplemental and not as a substitute for GAAP financial measures. We refer shareholders to our reconciliations from GAAP to non-GAAP measures contained in today’s earnings press release. I would now like to turn the call over to Tom Ferguson.

Tom Ferguson, President and Chief Executive Officer, AZZ: Thank you, Philip. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. We appreciate your interest in AZZ and the opportunity to discuss our first quarter Fiscal 2027 results. We are off to a strong start. For the first quarter, we delivered record sales in both segments, generated solid cash flow, maintained a strong balance sheet, announced raising our dividend, and raised our full year guidance. These results reflect the strength of our strategy, the durability of our end markets, and the continued execution of our teams. Our results consistently reflect our ability to convert demand into high-quality, profitable growth. We continue to leverage our market leadership positions in both Metal Coatings and Precoat Metals to expand earnings and generate robust cash flow while investing strategically to extend our competitive advantages. In Metal Coatings, we’re investing in added capacity where demand supports attractive returns.

In North Texas, for instance, we successfully commissioned a new large kettle to meet growing regional demand for hot-dip galvanizing, effectively doubling our capacity at Crowley, Texas. This low-risk, high-return investment supports growing customer demand and strong market fundamentals. David will discuss U.S. end market demand in more detail in just a moment. Additionally, a key element of our growth strategy is identifying innovative ways to grow, share, and deepen customer partnerships. One example of this is a vertically integrated manufacturer who chose to partner with AZZ to divest its non-core galvanizing operation to reduce complexity and cost. As part of this agreement, we acquired their galvanizing kettle and zinc, providing them with immediate cash liquidity while securing a long-term service agreement. We believe this de-verticalization model creates value for our customers while delivering long-term revenue streams for AZZ. We view this as a scalable blueprint for future partnerships.

At Precoat Metals, our Washington, Missouri facility continues to ramp production as planned. We remain on track to reach targeted utilization with our strategic partner while actively seeking the commercialization of the remaining capacity. The facility is approaching expected contribution margin levels for this year, and performance with our partner in this beer and beverage-related container category has been very encouraging. Across both segments, our focus remains clear. Increase share of wallet, capture incremental market share, and deploy capital into high-confidence organic and inorganic growth opportunities. These investments drive operational efficiencies and position us to deliver sustained long-term growth. Underlying all this progress and momentum are our structural advantages that differentiate AZZ, including our proprietary technologies. In Metal Coatings, our Digital Galvanizing System drives consistency, efficiency, and data-driven decision-making at scale.

In Precoat Metals, CoilZone enhances customer visibility with real-time insights that improve throughput and enable benchmarking across our footprint. These digital capabilities are not just operational tools, they are scaled strategic assets that strengthen customer relationships, improve execution, and are forming the basis for utilizing AI to improve customer intimacy, fine-tune pricing decisions, and support operating efficiency improvements and sustainability. Looking ahead, we remain confident in our ability to execute on our strategic priorities Winning in our markets, deploying capital with discipline, investing in high-value capacity expansion, delivering superior customer service, and leveraging AZZ’s differentiated capabilities. Collectively, these efforts position us to drive profitable growth, enhance shareholder value, and reinforce our leadership across our end markets. With that, I will turn it over to Jason.

Jason Crawford, Chief Financial Officer, AZZ: Thank you, Tom. We delivered record first quarter sales of $448.5 million, up 6.3% year-over-year, driven by strong double-digit sales growth in our Metal Coatings segment, which increased 12.3%. This performance reflects continued momentum across construction, industrial, and infrastructure end markets. Precoat Metals sales increased 1.5% year-over-year, supported by the pass-through of higher paint and input costs and the continued ramp-up at our Washington, Missouri facility, partially offset by softer volume in certain construction, HVAC, and appliance end markets. From a profitability standpoint, gross profit was $112.2 million or 25% of sales, representing a 30 basis point improvement year-over-year. This reflects favorable mix, pricing discipline, and improved operational execution. SG&A expenses were $35.1 million or 7.8% of sales, compared to 8.2% last year. Even after excluding the $2.2 million non-cash retiree incentive charge in the prior year, we demonstrated good cost control while supporting growth.

Operating income increased to $77 million or 17.2% of sales, an improvement of 70 basis points versus the prior year, reflecting strong incremental margins on higher volumes. Turning briefly to the AVAIL JV. As a reminder, our first quarter of the prior year included $173.5 million of total equity in earnings, of which a substantial portion was related to the divestiture of its Electrical Products Group. While this creates a difficult year-over-year comparison, it is important to note that our current results reflect our 40% interest in the remaining business. Our JV partner continues to pursue the divestiture of its remaining Avail operations. Interest expense improved to $11.3 million, down $7.3 million from the prior year, driven by deliberate debt reduction following the Avail distribution and financing optimization initiatives discussed in more detail in our SEC filings.

This highlights the strength of our balance sheet, support from our capital market partners, our continued focus on reducing debt and the company’s cost of capital. First quarter’s income tax expense of $14 million reflects an effective tax rate of 21.2% compared to 22.2% last year when we exclude the impact of the JV equity earnings. GAAP net income was $52 million, and adjusted diluted EPS was $1.85, up 3.9% year-over-year, demonstrating continued earnings growth despite the absence of the prior year JV-related earnings. Consolidated adjusted EBITDA was $99.5 million or 22.2% of sales. Infrastructure Solutions’ adjusted EBITDA dropped from $7.6 million in the prior year first quarter to a loss of $0.8 million in the current quarter, reflecting the impact of the business divestitures in the AVAIL JV that occurred throughout fiscal year 2026.

In our Metal Coatings segment, an increase in large projects and the sale of land in the prior year quarter contributed to a drop on year-on-year margins. While margins in our Precoat Metals segment improved modestly on operational performance and mix from our Washington, Missouri facility. Importantly, underlying margins remain strong and consistent with our long-term expectations. As Tom noted, our Washington, Missouri facility volumes continue to ramp in line with expectations and will remain on track to contribute meaningfully to revenue and profitability as we move through fiscal year 2027. In addition, we are starting to make progress in commercializing the remaining capacity at this facility. Turning to our balance sheet and capital allocation. We generated $37.1 million of operating cash flow in the quarter, driven by earnings growth and disciplined working capital management.

Our net leverage remained low at 1.4 times, providing significant flexibility to fund growth and return capital to our shareholders. Capital expenditures totaled $18.7 million, with a growing focus on high-return organic investments. We remain committed to returning capital to our shareholders. We recently increased our quarterly cash dividend from $0.20 per share to $0.24 per share, representing a 20% increase and further underscoring our confidence in the sustainability of our earnings and cash flows. In addition, we continue to maintain a strong share repurchase program with $133.2 million available. However, no shares were repurchased in the first quarter.

Tom Ferguson, President and Chief Executive Officer, AZZ: Overall, our capital allocation priorities remain unchanged. That is to maintain a strong balance sheet, invest in high return growth opportunities, and return excess capital to our shareholders. With that, I’d like to turn the call over to David.

David Nark, Chief Marketing, Communications, and Investor Relations Officer, AZZ: Thank you, Jason, and good morning, everyone. This quarter, we have enhanced our disaggregated sales disclosure in the 10-Q to provide greater transparency and improved end market comparability. Our reporting now reflects six primary categories. Construction, which remains our largest end market, and includes commercial, residential, agriculture, and data centers. Industrial, mainly comprised of processing plants for a variety of applications, including power, food, and water as examples. Infrastructure includes electrical, transmission and distribution, solar, petrochemical, and bridge and highway projects. HVAC and appliances includes both residential and commercial HVAC as well as appliance. Transportation includes truck, trailer, bus, and RVs, and finally, container, which represents food and beverage related end markets. Our other category represents all other miscellaneous sales. This updated framework better aligns our disclosures with how we manage and evaluate the business and no longer calls out consumer or electrical. Turning to performance.

Consolidated sales grew 6.3% year-over-year. Construction grew at 3.9%, driven by continued strength in large data center and manufacturing related projects. Industrial sales increased by 7.8%, supported by increased demand for utility scale power projects. Container was up 194%, primarily resulting from the ramp at the new Washington, Missouri plant, as mentioned by both Tom and Jason. While infrastructure was essentially flat compared to the same quarter in the prior year, with mixed results by segment. Offsetting our growth in construction, industrial, and container end markets were transportation, down 1.2% on lower commercial trailer activity, and HVAC and appliances down 2.4% on lower residential new construction. Looking ahead, we believe we are in early stages of a significant and sustained investment cycle. Modernizing the aging electric grid to support our nation’s accelerating electrical demand will require a meaningful step up in capacity and capital deployment.

This dynamic, combined with ongoing investment in infrastructure, energy, and industrial capacity, supports our view that a once in a generation infrastructure rebuild is underway. Our thesis is that AZZ is well positioned to benefit from a multi-decade capital investment cycle across utility, transmission, distribution, and grid technology. Importantly, these trends are not cyclical. They are structural, long duration drivers that are increasingly central to our customers’ capital spending priorities. We continue to see strength at the customer level. For example, one of our largest galvanizing customers has recently reported a 35% growth in their utility related structures backlog. While we do not operate the business on a backlog basis, this customer’s demand forecast, along with others, provides us confidence in future activity and the durability of certain end markets. With that, I will turn the call over to Tom.

Tom Ferguson, President and Chief Executive Officer, AZZ: Thank you, Dave. Adding to Dave’s commentary on industrial infrastructure and utility momentum, we are evaluating how our footprint aligns with anticipated demand. Regionally, the Southern U.S., beginning with Texas and expanding east through key growth states, is expected to account for nearly half of the country’s proposed utility capital spending. This reinforces our recently completed capacity expansion in North Texas, which we believe is both well-timed and strategically aligned with our growth priorities. Reflecting strong sales momentum and operational resilience, we are confident in raising our fiscal 2027 outlook. We now expect sales of $1.8 billion-$1.85 billion, adjusted EBITDA of $375 million-$415 million, adjusted diluted EPS of $6.75-$7.15. As we drive growth, we also expect to reduce debt by $130 million-$170 million in fiscal 2027, demonstrating our continued commitment to balance sheet strength alongside expansion. Looking forward, our strategy remains clear and consistent.

We are scaling the business through a combination of organic investments, market share gains, and a disciplined M&A approach. We are actively evaluating a robust pipeline of high-quality acquisition targets that align with our core capabilities and meet our return thresholds. We expect to announce a deal later this month. We are also evaluating greenfield galvanizing opportunities where we can partner with strategic customers. These efforts position AZZ to capitalize on what we believe is a long-duration, secular growth cycle driven by increasing demand for infrastructure, electrification, data centers, and grid modernization. At the same time, aging infrastructure across North America continues to require significant reinvestment, further reinforcing the long-term opportunity set. Our confidence is reflected in the board’s recent decision to increase our quarterly cash dividend to $0.24 per share.

Finally, we believe AZZ is uniquely positioned operationally, strategically, and financially to deliver sustained, profitable growth and long-term shareholder value. Before we open the call to questions, I would like to recognize and thank our employees. I am proud to work alongside such a talented and dedicated team that brings pride and passion to everything they do to serve our customers. Operator, we are ready to take questions from analysts.

Conference Operator: We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your touch-tone phone. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. If at any time your question has been addressed and you would like to withdraw your question, please press star then two. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. The first question today comes from Ghansham Panjabi with Baird. Please go ahead.

Josh Vesely, Analyst, Baird: Hey, guys. Good morning. It’s actually Josh Vesely on for Ghansham. Thanks for taking my question. Maybe, Tom, if we could just start off on just the overall market conditions. Obviously, it sounds like end market demand’s pretty robust for you guys, but just in terms of the volatility over the past few months with energy costs from the Middle East, et cetera, just curious how that’s kind of translated into customer decision-making, how they’re thinking about going forward with projects. Are they getting delayed right now and getting pushed into the back half of the calendar year anyway? Any thoughts on your end would be great.

Tom Ferguson, President and Chief Executive Officer, AZZ: Sure thing, Josh. A couple of things. One, on the Metal Coatings side, I think, the markets are robust. You see it in the growth in the quarter, and us taking our guidance up is because we see a lot of strength there going forward for at least the balance of this calendar year. There’s been talk of project delays, depending somewhat on interest rates or energy costs, things like that. For the most part, the things that we’re seeing, they’ve got to put towers and poles in the ground. They’ve got to continue to improve the grid, and then data centers. I’d say the majority of our plants have at least one data center project going on at any given time lately. We have not seen much in terms of headwinds there.

Matter of fact, it’s mostly stuff moving forward, customers converting capacity to where they can focus more on poles, towers, and things related to electrical infrastructure. On the Precoat side, I’d say we had encountered the tariff impact, which has made substrate less available in many ways or of higher cost. I think that’s probably stabilized at this point as we’re looking forward. Not much more impact on tariffs, and as substrate prices have gone up, it could actually bring some imports back into play, which is generally good for our customers on the Precoat side. I think everything we’re looking at, it’s pretty positive, and we feel like on Precoat, we’ve bottomed and stabilized in terms of market conditions.

We’re benefiting from the container demand, especially for the new Washington site, which is ramped up according to schedule and pretty much hitting its pace now and almost at its run rates early. On the Metal Coatings side, there’s just not a lot of clouds on the horizons. Obviously, we battle it out at 48 sites every day, but most of those sites are, I’d say, we’re winning every day.

Josh Vesely, Analyst, Baird: That’s great. Thank you for that. Just for my second question, Tom, on that de-verticalization model that you’re talking about with your customers. Just any more color on that would be great. It sounds like a lot of it are maybe customers that you kind of serve as flex capacity for right now. Is that correct? Is this a trend that’s kind of growing across your customer base? How should we think about that?

Tom Ferguson, President and Chief Executive Officer, AZZ: Yeah. It’s something we talk about and we like. We talk to a lot of our customers about it if they’ve got a kettle. Especially when that kettle goes down and they’ve got to replace it or repair it, that’s a great time for our teams to be in there talking to them. "Why do you want to go through this headache? We’ve got plants within relatively short distances from you. We can negotiate a long-term agreement. We can take that furnace and kettle off your hands and give you a decent price for your zinc." We’re having those conversations with customers all the time. There’s a target list of those. We’re happy that we finally got one closed. We had not done one of these since, I’m gonna say about five or six years now.

We’d love to see this turn into. That’s why we wanted to talk about it, because we just want to make sure our customers, we’ve got their attention, that this is something we can do. We’re happy to deploy some of our capital towards helping them with what we think is a better long-term solution for them. We just like to think we’re a whole lot better at hot-dip galvanizing than they probably are, since it’s not their focus.

Josh Vesely, Analyst, Baird: That’s great. Thank you, guys.

Tom Ferguson, President and Chief Executive Officer, AZZ: Sure.

Conference Operator: The next question comes from Nick Giles with B. Riley. Please go ahead.

Henry Hurrell, Analyst, B. Riley: Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone. This is actually Henry Hurrell on for Nick Giles.

Tom Ferguson, President and Chief Executive Officer, AZZ: Hey, Henry.

Henry Hurrell, Analyst, B. Riley: Hey, guys. To start off on M&A, it’s been in the background for a while now. You mentioned likely announcing one this month. I’m just curious on what some of the gating factors might be. Willing sellers, sites that make sense geographically. Any color there would be really helpful. Thanks.

Tom Ferguson, President and Chief Executive Officer, AZZ: I think the one I’m hoping we’re gonna close, I’d say we got a little bit rusty, even though we did Canton Galvanizing last year. Normally, I’d like to see us get these done in 45-75 days, and this one’s kind of drug along for about six months now. Particularly on a, what I’ll call a one-off galvanizer. I think this is us being disciplined and making sure that it’s not just that we’re crossing the Ts and dotting the Is, it’s that we’ve got to have a sense of urgency about getting these things done and because they just drag and of course it costs us money to do that, but it also delays our ability to take them on and get them into our process and our playbook. There’s more out there. I think we’re having a lot of conversations.

Obviously, galvanizing market’s fairly hot right now. Some of these owners, I think they’re kind of sitting on what they view as good demand at the moment and just not at that peak point where they’re ready to transact something. Yeah, I’d say our guys are having conversations every week, every month with a pretty good number of these independent owners, and I’d like to see more of them break loose. We’re paying better multiples than probably we have historically, but part of that’s just our ability and our confidence in our ability to drive the synergies and grow those businesses. I’m hoping some more will break loose. It’ll be good to get this next flag on the map for us. Then on the Precoat side, we’re also working some things.

Obviously, those are typically bigger, but they would still be a bolt-on because we want to be able to bolt it on, drive the synergies, run the playbook, and not disrupt anything. We’re not looking for anything like a third leg.

Henry Hurrell, Analyst, B. Riley: Got you. That’s very helpful color. Then just to confirm, would the one that might close at the end of this month, would that be the same one you mentioned on your last call that was in due diligence?

Tom Ferguson, President and Chief Executive Officer, AZZ: That’s correct.

Henry Hurrell, Analyst, B. Riley: Okay. For my second question, 1Q came in really strong here, and your EBITDA run rate is now at the higher end of your updated guide. As we try to model 2Q and 3Q, knowing 4Q tends to be softer, are there any seasonality or other factors we should be keeping in mind? Thanks.

Tom Ferguson, President and Chief Executive Officer, AZZ: No, we’re feeling pretty good. The things that affect us, fourth quarter usually tell us what the severity of the winter’s gonna be, and we’ll tell you what our forecast is gonna be for that quarter. I think, which is why we’ll re-forecast that as we can see what winter’s stacking up to be. In terms of summer and early fall right now, there’s nothing on the horizon that gives us any concern. If a hurricane pops up, usually that, unless it hits our sites directly, it’s usually more positive than negative for us. Not that we’re projecting any. Yeah, there’s nothing within our control or that we’re hearing from our customers that would indicate we’re gonna see anything unusual. We would anticipate second and third quarters tracking.

I will say, we’re almost halfway through the second quarter, and we got off to a really good start, we’re feeling good.

Henry Hurrell, Analyst, B. Riley: Understood. Thanks a lot, continued best of luck.

Tom Ferguson, President and Chief Executive Officer, AZZ: Thank you.

Conference Operator: The next question comes from Daniel Rizzo with Jefferies. Please go ahead.

Daniel Rizzo, Analyst, Jefferies: Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. Just you mentioned, well, a couple of things. One, you mentioned like potentially doing some greenfield facilities with customers. For you to build that, would there be like the customer has to be responsible for agreed to taking on 75% of EBITDA? How would it be structured? Is that like a take or pay component? I mean, any color, I guess what would be the cost too to you guys in terms of CapEx?

Tom Ferguson, President and Chief Executive Officer, AZZ: On the galvanizing side, we typically. On Precoat, we went with the take-or-pay because it was a huge investment, and particularly for AZZ, we were new into Precoat, so we wanted to make sure that we had the demand there and that we had a great partner customer committed. For galvanizing, we’re just usually looking for anchor customers, usually existing customers that we do a lot of business with, but maybe they’ve expanded a site. They’re investing in some new production capacity, and we want to be partnered with them. We’re not looking for a contractual arrangement. I would just say that we’ve probably got about 12 of our sites that have that anchor customer that makes up anywhere from 10%-25% of potential of volume.

As long as we’ve got that kind of knowledge and clearly the relationship, we don’t require a contract. We’re typically, probably with inflation, the way it’s been on materials, kettles, furnaces, everything else, which you’ve seen in our run rate, CapEx. We’re looking at $35 million-$40 million, including real estate, or even, I would say somewhat dependent on the cost of the real estate in some cases. 18 months, build out and then ramp up. Because we’re talking to what we would consider anchor customers, the ramp up should be much quicker than we did in Reno, which was our last greenfield plant. The ramp up took longer.

If we didn’t have an anchor customer in the area, we did it just because it was a high-growth region that had a lot of potential for the future, which we’re very pleased with at this time.

Daniel Rizzo, Analyst, Jefferies: Are there other high-growth regions you could point to? I don’t know if you can do that on public call or anything like that, or places you’re looking within the U.S. or wherever.

Tom Ferguson, President and Chief Executive Officer, AZZ: I think when I’m not gonna point to anything specifically. Once we commit to some real estate, we’ll get an announcement out and let folks know where we’re at and what we’ve committed to. There’s quite a few. When we look at a map, even though we’ve got 42 hot-dip galvanizing plants, there’s still quite a bit of open space out there with growth. We tend to be either in the high-growth states like Texas right now and some of the Southeast. Yeah, there’s several places where we think we could provide a better solution than some of the competitors and provide it closer to some of the customer concentrations. I’d say this is a balanced strategy.

If we could buy a decent competitor in the area, we’d love to do it, but these are areas where there is some competition, but they’re not going to be willing to sell. That brings forward the greenfield opportunity, and particularly when we’re talking to major customers who want to have that discussion.

Daniel Rizzo, Analyst, Jefferies: Thank you very much.

Tom Ferguson, President and Chief Executive Officer, AZZ: Sure thing.

Conference Operator: The next question comes from Adam Thalhimer with Thompson, Davis & Co. Please go ahead.

Adam Thalhimer, Analyst, Thompson, Davis & Co.: Hey, good morning, guys. Congrats on the strong Q1.

Tom Ferguson, President and Chief Executive Officer, AZZ: Good morning.

Adam Thalhimer, Analyst, Thompson, Davis & Co.: Hey. Tom, I wanted to ask, and you’ve talked around this, but I still feel like it’s worth asking. You guys beat the first quarter by, on the EBITDA line, $2 million, but you raised the full year guide by, at the midpoint, by $15 million, which is a pretty strong move, and I’m just curious what gave you the underlying confidence to do that.

Tom Ferguson, President and Chief Executive Officer, AZZ: Part of it is that the new Washington site, it’s hit its dates and commitments. We’re feeling bullish about that new site and working with our partner and what they’re telling us. A chunk of it’s just tied to the new site getting to its run rate targets, and we believe being sustainable at those run rates sooner than we had budgeted for, if you want to call it that. That’s one piece of it. As I mentioned on the Precoat side, there are two things going on. We’re seeing, even though the markets in some areas are still soft because of the lack of substrate, still you’ve got paint price increases that have gone through, and we’ve got our usual material burden and stuff we put on top of that.

We are pushing price to either keep up with material inflation, and in some cases, we are adding surcharges on the zinc because zinc stayed high. You factor all those things in, and we felt good about taking the EBITDA up significantly more than what we had generated in the first quarter.

Adam Thalhimer, Analyst, Thompson, Davis & Co.: Awesome. Yeah, that’s great to see. On the expansion at Crowley, is that fully ramped yet? I’m curious if there are other facilities where you could do the same thing, adding a kettle.

Tom Ferguson, President and Chief Executive Officer, AZZ: Yeah. It’s always nice when we can do that. It’s not even really a brownfield, basically. We were structured to be able to tuck in that second kettle and ramp it up. We had the demand for it. We feel good about that. That’s another piece, as we look at the outlook for the second half of the year, that that’ll be at full run rates. We’ve got others. We look at this. Texas, it’s a hot market. I’d say there’s probably two others. The other thing we’re doing is we talk about secondary services, as we put in ground line coating and things like that. We’ve done that in two sites. We put in a spin kettle not that long ago.

These are things we’re continuing to look at, I don’t think we have another kettle ready to go the balance of this year. As we get to the planning process, we’ll start looking at that. This was one that we pulled forward late last year, which is why we were able to get it ramped up this early in the year instead of waiting. We’ll continue to look at that. I think we’re feeling good. I think we talked about this. We put a team in place, call it operational excellence and support, which allows us to probably be more aggressive on some of these investments and get them in the ground faster and get the production from them. We’re feeling real good about what the team’s doing in that regard.

Adam Thalhimer, Analyst, Thompson, Davis & Co.: All right. Perfect. Good luck with the rest of Q2. Thanks.

Tom Ferguson, President and Chief Executive Officer, AZZ: All right. Thank you.

Conference Operator: The next question comes from Timna Tanners with Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.

Timna Tanners, Analyst, Wells Fargo: Yeah. Hey, good morning. I wanted to ask about the Metal Coatings sales progress, so double digits for the last four quarters, and that’s coincided with a really strong move, of course, upward in zinc at the same time. Can you just remind us how to think about what a flatter zinc outlook could mean for the sales growth in that segment?

Tom Ferguson, President and Chief Executive Officer, AZZ: Well, a couple of things. One, unlike with paint on the Precoat side, generally we don’t tie the pricing directly to zinc. With zinc, where it’s at now, and even if it doesn’t continue to trend up, we would still move forward with the surcharges because of the level it’s at. Unless it took a significant dip down, you’re going to see the surcharge impact flowing through in sales. I think that’s one piece. In terms of the other, typically the zinc we’re buying today is going to flow through our kettles in six to eight months out. We’re very confident that we understand what the cost is going to be going through those kettles. Which also makes us confident in what we’re going to be doing with the surcharges.

We did do some general pricing, Tim, as you probably remember, we price individually at all 42 sites, but pretty much every day. They’re reacting to the market. Obviously, we have some margin targets and pricing guidelines in place. When we put through a blanket or when we put through surcharges, those are mandated from the top, but in reaction to what’s going on in the local market. We feel real good about the sustainability of the actions we’ve taken and how that’s going to flow through into continued sales and revenue.

Timna Tanners, Analyst, Wells Fargo: Okay, that’s helpful. Thank you. Can you elaborate on the comments you were making about some of the struggles to obtain substrate? What do you mean by that? I know there’s higher tariffs on imported material, you mentioned that there may be more coming in, going forward. I think that’s a function of the higher prices maybe starting to attract supply. Can you elaborate on what that means for your business to understand that dynamic better, please?

Tom Ferguson, President and Chief Executive Officer, AZZ: Because most of our customers, their choice is to either buy from a mill who paints or buy their substrate from a mill or distributor and then have us paint it. The imports used to be When our customers were buying imports, imported substrate, that was a high percentage chance that we’re obviously going to be one of the ones that paints it. Versus domestic, it’s a little less so. The availability for our customers is costing them more for the substrate as they’re buying it today, either because of the tariffs, and what domestic mills are pricing it at, which to your last point, is now making some of the imports potentially more attractive, because it’s at a price point that makes sense, even including the tariffs.

That’s just been a thing that we’ve run into where our customers are managing their inventories a little tighter, their ability, and Jason can probably add something to this since he’s close to it. It’s just created some disruptions in ability to plan, ability to know for sure that you’ve got the substrate available for your demand and how you’re making those decisions.

Jason Crawford, Chief Financial Officer, AZZ: To be fair, Tom, I wouldn’t add much more on top of that. Just the supply constraints that our customers are seeing is having an impact on their decisions that we’re working very closely with them to get through those disruptions. As the supply starts to ease itself up a little bit and hopefully some imports come into that equation, then it gives our customers more options that a lot more of that business starts to flow through Precoat versus other alternatives. It’s been a challenging environment over the last 18, 24 months, and we see the horizon. It’s starting to ease itself up a little bit.

Timna Tanners, Analyst, Wells Fargo: That makes sense. Thanks for the detail.

Tom Ferguson, President and Chief Executive Officer, AZZ: Sure. Thank you.

Conference Operator: The next question comes from Mark Reichman with Noble Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Mark Reichman, Analyst, Noble Capital Markets: Thank you. With respect to the Washington, Missouri facility, you’d mentioned that it’s approaching its target run rate. If we could just step back a minute, could you just remind us the full capacity? You’ve got roughly, I think, 75% of the capacity that’s under contract. What are your production targets and where is the facility operating now, and how long will it take to get to your production target?

Jason Crawford, Chief Financial Officer, AZZ: Yeah. Good question, Mark. We spoke about the facility in the $50 million-$60 million sales range for that 75% capacity. As you look at our Q1 performance, we are starting to approach that on a run rate basis, so ±$15 million. Certainly, we’re not at $15 million, we’re starting to approach that as you look at our progress through the quarter. As we start to get into the second half of the year, we should be starting to hit those targets from aligning with our contracted customer. Equally as we come through the quarters, we come through the year, our margin profile, our operating performance starts to get up to kind of full run rate.

To the point that once we get to the end of the year, via our contracted customer, we should be at those full run rate metrics and performance. Then it really starts to provide a meaningful impact to our financial performance. On top of that, the other 25%, as we start to really get into the swing with our partner customer, allows us the opportunity to start to think about that next 25%. It’s starting to become a part of our thought process and our discussions out there in the market, but that’s still further out there into the second half of the year.

Mark Reichman, Analyst, Noble Capital Markets: Is it more helpful to talk about it in terms of the revenue versus, say, like the tonnage or the output?

Jason Crawford, Chief Financial Officer, AZZ: Yeah. The tonnage. We certainly convert it into tons. We’ve always spoke about revenue. We don’t really speak a lot about tons. The challenge with this facility is it’s 100% aluminum, and you start to talk about tons, and they really add another layer of confusion in comparison to the vast majority of our world is steel.

Mark Reichman, Analyst, Noble Capital Markets: Okay. Well, that was very helpful. Just a second question, I did appreciate the disaggregated sales section in the 10-Q, and I was hoping that David, he provided a lot of color on this call, but if he could just maybe dive a little deeper in terms of the construction and industrial, what really kind of drove that growth. Was it data centers? How durable do you see that? Are there any puts and takes for the remainder of the year in any of the other categories? I guess we would expect to see container continue to grow with Washington, Missouri, but what about some of the other categories?

David Nark, Chief Marketing, Communications, and Investor Relations Officer, AZZ: Sure, Mark. Couple of things. Certainly, one of the and in fact, the highest growth area in our construction segment was data centers. Certainly outpaced the rest of the group. Double-digit growth there as well as in general construction as well. I think we feel pretty good about what we’re seeing overall, as Tom had mentioned, with the customers and the backlog for the back of the year. Certainly data centers led that segment or that end market, rather.

Mark Reichman, Analyst, Noble Capital Markets: Okay. Well, thank you very much.

Tom Ferguson, President and Chief Executive Officer, AZZ: Sure. Thanks, Mark.

Conference Operator: The next question comes from John Franzreb with Sidoti & Company. Please go ahead.

John Franzreb, Analyst, Sidoti & Company: Good morning, guys, and congratulations on another good quarter. I might have missed this, but when you raised your revenue guidance, it seems to me like it was entirely in Metal Coatings. I didn’t hear any underlying meaningful improvements in Precoat. Am I reading this properly, and does that explain a lot of the EBITDA improvements? I’m just curious about how you deconstruct the revenue guidance by segment.

Tom Ferguson, President and Chief Executive Officer, AZZ: I can certainly add to that. When you think about both segments and where we put our guidance out at the start of the year, coming out of the winter season, coming into our construction season, and equally, as Tom has commented, as you think about our Washington facility, all of those have contributed to us providing an update to our guidance and an improvement in our guidance. I wouldn’t necessarily say it is only centered in the Metal Coatings segment, especially when you bring the new Washington facility in. It’s more across the board.

Yeah

It is as you look at it. Certainly, that’s what we are seeing as we look at it more from a market point of view as opposed to the two businesses.

John Franzreb, Analyst, Sidoti & Company: I’m just curious. With the new facilities, the greenfield facilities, were they included in the revenue guidance, the original revenue guidance?

Tom Ferguson, President and Chief Executive Officer, AZZ: No.

John Franzreb, Analyst, Sidoti & Company: No, they were not.

Tom Ferguson, President and Chief Executive Officer, AZZ: No.

Okay.

No.

That’s helpful. Thank you very much. I’ll get back in the queue.

Yeah. Thanks. Bye.

Conference Operator: The next question comes from Eric Boyce with Evercore. Please go ahead.

Eric Boyce, Analyst, Evercore: Good morning, and thank you. 765 kV higher voltage transmission is kind of an interesting storyline in T&D. I’m just wondering, with your kettle size and footprint, how do you see that flowing through to AZZ? Is that incrementally meaningful? Do we maybe see that in calendar 2027, or is that something that’s further out? Thanks.

Tom Ferguson, President and Chief Executive Officer, AZZ: Yeah. We do think that that’s going to be meaningful to us. As you know, AZZ operates the largest kettles in the nation. Certain locations, like we mentioned Crowley, Texas, Arizona, areas where we’ve got some of the largest kettles in our fleet are ideally positioned for some of the larger kV projects. Most of those towers, too, are ones that have multiple sections to them. When you think about the way they are constructed and then galvanized, they fit pretty well into our kettle. We do think that as that segment of the market continues to grow, we’re going to be really positioned well to take advantage of it.

Eric Boyce, Analyst, Evercore: Okay, thanks. For my second, can you just speak to how the large project mix in Metal Coatings and T&D data center, solar, et cetera, may impact EBITDA margin structurally there? Thanks.

Tom Ferguson, President and Chief Executive Officer, AZZ: Yeah. I think the team’s done a great job of, as I mentioned, some of the surcharges and things like that they’re doing going forward. To protect margins and offset the material inflation and things like that. Even though large projects are more competitive, we still have a really good mix of business overall. I do know that the mix as we look forward, we don’t anticipate it being a whole lot different than what it’s been the last couple of quarters. We feel good about that margin profile and the team being able to drive their scale and their leverage and do what they need to do on surcharges and things like that to offset the material inflation to be able to protect those margins in the 30% range.

Eric Boyce, Analyst, Evercore: Appreciate that.

Tom Ferguson, President and Chief Executive Officer, AZZ: Sure.

Conference Operator: This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over for any closing remarks.

Tom Ferguson, President and Chief Executive Officer, AZZ: Thank you for joining us today. I don’t think it came up on the call, but at least I don’t recall any questions about it. We obviously, Jason had mentioned, we do have an approved share buyback facility that if the stock continues to trade in the range it has for the last week or so, we would anticipate being in the market to buy some shares back. Good point in time for us. Other than that, I think we’ve pretty much answered what we hope you all wanted to know. Look forward to finishing up a good Q2 and having another conversation here in a couple of months. Thank you very much.

Conference Operator: The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today’s presentation. You may now disconnect.