CSL April 23, 2026

Carlisle Companies Q1 2026 Earnings Call - Pricing Offsets Geopolitical Volatility and Weather Headwinds

Summary

Carlisle Companies faced a turbulent first quarter, grappling with harsh winter weather that stalled North American projects and the absence of previous year tariff-related order pull-forwards. Revenue dipped 4% year-over-year to $1.1 billion, yet management managed to squeeze out margin expansion through disciplined cost control and productivity gains via the Carlisle Operating System. The company is now playing a defensive game against rising petrochemical costs driven by geopolitical instability in the Middle East.

Despite the top-line pressure, the narrative remains one of resilience through reroofing demand rather than new construction, which continues to languish under high interest rates. Management has aggressively pivoted to price increases to neutralize high-single-digit raw material inflation. While the second half of 2026 carries uncertainty due to global volatility, Carlisle is doubling down on its Vision 2030 goals, banking on product innovation and margin expansion to drive long-term value.

Key Takeaways

  • Q1 revenue fell 4% year-over-year to $1.1 billion, primarily due to adverse winter weather and a lack of repeat tariff-related orders from Canadian customers.
  • Adjusted EBITDA margin expanded by 50 basis points to 22.3%, demonstrating management's ability to drive productivity even when volumes are pressured.
  • Reroofing remains the company's bedrock, providing stable, recurring demand that offsets the ongoing weakness in new construction markets.
  • Geopolitical tensions, specifically in the Middle East and the Straits of Hormuz, have driven up petrochemical-linked raw material costs.
  • Carlisle has implemented two rounds of price increases (5% to 8%) to offset rising input costs like MDI and TPO resins.
  • The company reaffirmed its full-year 2026 outlook, expecting low single-digit revenue growth and roughly 50 basis points of adjusted EBITDA margin expansion.
  • Management updated its revenue growth guidance toward the higher end of the low single-digit range, now targeting approximately 3% due to pricing actions.
  • CWT segment margins are a work in progress, with a target to reach 20% by year-end through automation and footprint consolidation.
  • New product innovation, such as ThermaThin R7 insulation, is expected to drive momentum in the second half of the year.
  • The company maintains a strong balance sheet with $771 million in cash and a net debt-to-EBITDA ratio of 1.7x, providing flexibility for M&A or capital returns.

Full Transcript

Colby, Conference Operator: Good afternoon. My name is Colby, and I’ll be your conference operator today. At this time, I’d like to welcome everyone to the Carlisle Companies’ first quarter 2026 earnings conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise, and after the speakers’ remarks, we will conduct a question and answer session. I would like to turn the call over to Mr. Mehul Patel, Carlisle’s Vice President of Investor Relations. Mehul, please go ahead.

Mehul Patel, Vice President of Investor Relations, Carlisle Companies: Thank you, and good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to Carlisle’s first quarter 2026 earnings call. I’m Mehul Patel, Vice President of Investor Relations for Carlisle. We released our first quarter financial results today, and you can find both our press release and the presentation for today’s call in the investor relations section of our website. On a call with me today are Chris Koch, our Board Chair, President, and CEO, along with Kevin Zimmel, our CFO. Today’s call will begin with Chris providing key highlights for the first quarter. Kevin will follow Chris and provide an overview of our Q1 financial performance and our reaffirmed outlook for the full year of 2026. Following our prepared remarks, we will open up the line for questions. Before we begin, please refer to slide 2 of our presentation, where we note that comments today will include forward-looking statements based on our current expectations.

Actual results could differ materially from these statements due to a number of risks and uncertainties, which are discussed in our press release and SEC filings. As Carlisle provides non-GAAP financial information, we’ve provided reconciliations between GAAP and non-GAAP measures in our press release and in the appendix of our presentation materials, which are available on our website. With that, I will turn the call over to Chris on slide three.

Chris Koch, Board Chair, President, and CEO, Carlisle Companies: Thank you, Mehul, and good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Carlisle’s first quarter results exemplify the focus and execution our teams consistently deliver, even in challenging operating environments. Revenue for the first quarter was $1.1 billion, down 4% year-over-year, driven primarily by two timing-related factors. First, winter weather delayed projects and shipments across many regions in North America. Second, last year’s first quarter benefited from approximately $15 million of tariff-related order pull forward from Canadian customers, which did not repeat this year. Despite those headwinds, the underlying fundamentals of the business performed as expected and delivered better EBITDA margins in the quarter despite the sales challenges. As we reflected in our year-end 2025 call, improving profitability was a top priority for 2026.

Q1 results reflected strong execution on that priority, with adjusted EPS rising to $3.63, up 1% versus last year, and adjusted EBITDA margin expanding by 50 basis points to 22.3%. It’s important to underscore that margin expansion in the quarter was a result of our focused efforts, particularly worth noting in a quarter where volumes were pressured. The margin improvement reflects work that has been underway for several quarters. Our teams have been systematically driving productivity, improving manufacturing efficiency, tightening cost discipline, and simplifying execution across the network, effectively using all parts of the Carlisle Operating System, or COS. Those actions will continue to compound over time and will drive our forecasted margin expansion under our Vision 2030 goals. This is another reminder that Carlisle is built to perform through cycles, not just at peaks, regardless of the environment.

Q1 was a demanding quarter operationally, and the team responded exactly the right way. We stayed focused on the areas we can control: cost discipline, thoughtful pricing execution, and supporting customers through innovation and the Carlisle Experience. That execution is clearly reflected in our results. Underlying demand trends in our end markets were consistent with the information from our Q1 outlook based on the Carlisle Market Survey, with weather being the key variable that caused a slight shortfall to projections for the quarter. Reroofing activity grew low single digits, continuing to provide the stable, recurring demand base that defines Carlisle’s resilience across economic cycles. Commercial reroofing remains our primary revenue engine, accounting for roughly 70% of CCM’s commercial roofing business, supported by an aging installed base with 20- to 25-year roof life cycles and increasing content per square foot, driven by innovation that improves energy efficiency and reduces labor costs.

We also understand that to protect and grow our position in the market, we must drive to be the leader in specifications, systems performance, comprehensive warranties, the Carlisle Experience, and most importantly, trust with contractors, architects, and building owners, areas where Carlisle continues to lead. Importantly, orders improved as the quarter progressed, and we exited March with better momentum than we entered the year. April activity to date has been encouraging, with reroofing work in line with seasonal norms and backlog conversion improving as weather disruptions have subsided. Offsetting this is the continued uncertainty in new construction related to the issues we have discussed before, notably interest rates and economic and geopolitical uncertainty.

While we remain early in the quarter, the level of order activity we are seeing gives us increased confidence in the trajectory of the business as we move into the second quarter and into the heart of the roofing season. However, at the same time, we remain cautious about the second half given the ongoing geopolitical volatility. New construction remains soft across both residential and non-residential markets as expected. Our full-year outlook does not assume a near-term recovery. A higher for longer interest rate environment continues to weigh on construction activity and our plans appropriately reflect that reality. Turning to pricing and input costs, recent geopolitical escalation has materially increased uncertainty in global energy markets. Rising oil prices impacted our petrochemical-linked raw materials and freight. We acted quickly in mid-March, announcing price increases across both CCM and CWT effective mid-April, and implementing real-time freight surcharges to drive more immediate recovery.

In addition, we announced a second round of price increases at CCM today to offset the additional cost pressures that disruptions in the petrochemical supply chain are driving. Those actions are beginning to work their way through the market, and we expect price cost dynamics to improve sequentially through the remainder of 2026. It is also important to be clear that we are constantly evaluating the actions in the market by our suppliers and will act accordingly to address any misalignment. More specifically, heightened risks surrounding the Iran conflict and sustained disruption through the Straits of Hormuz introduces uncertainty, which we are monitoring very closely. If volatility persists, structural cost levels reset higher, we are prepared to take additional pricing actions as needed. Our approach remains disciplined and deliberate. We’ve seen this type of situation play out repeatedly during periods of significant disruption.

Whether during the global financial crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic, or now amid elevated geopolitical risk, Carlisle has demonstrated exceptional margin sustainability. That durability is reinforced by the discipline embedded in Vision 2030, the depth and tenure of our team, our recurring reroofing revenue base, the fact that over 90% of our revenue is generated in North America, and our superior capital allocation approach. Another important contributor to that durability is the way Carlisle allocates capital. We view capital allocation as a core competency, not a byproduct of the business. Across cycles, we have consistently prioritized returns over growth for growth’s sake, investing organically where we have durable competitive advantage, pursuing acquisitions only when they meet our stated criteria, and returning excess capital to shareholders when that represents the highest and best use. This balanced and disciplined approach continues to differentiate Carlisle and supports our ability to compound value over time.

Based on our execution and the actions already underway, we are reaffirming our full-year 2026 outlook of low single-digit revenue growth and approximately 50 basis points of adjusted EBITDA margin expansion. Kevin will now walk through the financials in detail. Kevin?

Kevin Zimmel, Chief Financial Officer, Carlisle Companies: Thank you, Chris, and good afternoon, everyone. I will review our first quarter financial results and then provide additional details on our full-year outlook for 2026, which is unchanged from the outlook we provided in our previous earnings call. Beginning with consolidated results on slide four. First quarter revenue of $1.1 billion was down 4% compared to last year. As Chris mentioned earlier, the two primary drivers of that decline were the adverse impact of this winter’s harsh weather, limiting the number of days that roofing contractors were able to spend on the roof, and the absence of approximately $15 million of tariff-related pull-forward that benefited the first quarter of 2025. M&A contributions from our recent acquisition slightly offset the organic shortfall. Adjusted EBITDA was $235 million in the quarter, resulting in adjusted EBITDA margin of 22.3%, a 50 basis points improvement from the first quarter of 2025.

The margin expansion on decreased revenue is the result of strong execution led by COS-driven productivity gains, procurement discipline, and efficient management of selling and administrative costs. Adjusted EPS was $3.63 for the quarter, up 1% year-over-year. This increase was driven by share repurchases, which more than offset lower organic earnings and higher interest expense. Our segment performance starts on slide five. CCM generated first quarter revenue of $758 million, a 5% decline year-over-year, reflecting lower volumes due to this winter’s weather and last year’s tariff-related pull forward along with continued softness in commercial new construction activity, partially offset by solid reroofing growth. CCM adjusted EBITDA was $208 million in the quarter, down 4% year-over-year. However, adjusted EBITDA margin increased 30 basis points to 27.4%.

COS productivity gains, disciplined procurement, and selling and administrative cost controls all contributed to the improvement in the EBITDA margin. Moving to CWT on slide six. CWT reported Q1 revenue of $294 million, down 1% year-over-year. The slight decline reflects contributions from recent acquisitions, which mostly offset volume pressure from continued softness in both residential and non-residential new construction activity. CWT adjusted EBITDA was $45 million, down 3% year-over-year. Adjusted EBITDA margin was 15.2%, a decrease of 40 basis points compared to the first quarter of last year. This margin decrease reflects the impact of lower volumes, partially offset by the benefits of internal initiatives, including footprint consolidation and the expansion of in-house production of expanded polystyrene resin from our Plasti-Fab acquisition.

We continue to see a clear path to meaningful margin expansion at CWT over the balance of 2026 as these actions compound and integration synergies build. For your reference, slide 7 provides our first quarter adjusted EPS bridge. Turning to slide 8, Carlisle’s financial position remains strong. As of March 31st, 2026, we had $771 million in cash and cash equivalents and $1 billion available under our revolving credit facility. Our net debt-to-EBITDA ratio was 1.7 times, within our target range of one to two times. This financial strength continues to provide us with significant flexibility to invest in innovation and capital expenditures, pursue synergistic M&A, and consistently return cash to shareholders. Moving to our cash flow on slide 9, seasonality Q1 is the quarter where we deploy cash to pay down year-end incentives and rebate liabilities and build working capital ahead of the construction season.

Net cash used in operating activities was $45 million in the quarter, and free cash flow used in continuing operations was $73 million, reflecting a $125 million post-year-end settlement of an accrued tax-related liability. Excluding this tax-related payment, operating cash flow improved year-over-year as we deployed less cash into working capital. During the quarter, we invested $28 million in capital expenditures. We also returned $296 million to shareholders through $250 million of share repurchases and $46 million of dividends, and we are maintaining our pace toward our annual repurchase target for 2026 of $1 billion. Now turning to our outlook on Slide 10. Oil cost volatility, interest rate uncertainty, and prolonged geopolitical conflicts are adding broader macroeconomic pressure to an already soft new construction market. However, based on our progress to date, we are reaffirming our 2026 outlook.

We continue to expect full year consolidated revenue growth in the low double-digit range, and with our recent price increase announcements, we now expect revenue growth at the higher end of that range, along with double-digit growth for EPS. Our consolidated full year revenue outlook reflects CCM revenue growth in the low single digits driven by higher prices, continued strength in reroofing more than offsetting slower new construction, and CWT revenue also up low single digits as contributions from higher prices and share gain initiatives more than offset continued end market softness. Consistent with our guidance at the beginning of the year, we still expect consolidated adjusted EBITDA margins to expand by approximately 50 basis points for the full year, supported by price realization building through the year to offset raw material increases, continued COS-driven productivity gains across both segments, and the structural operational improvement actions underway at CWT.

We will continue to execute the levers within our control while remaining mindful of the macro risks and limited visibility in this dynamic environment. We remain confident in Vision 2030 and our long-term financial targets of $40 of adjusted EPS and 25%+ ROIC. Our path to Vision 2030 is founded on organic growth anchored in steadily increasing reroofing demand and content per square foot, COS-led margin improvements in both segments, disciplined capital return through share buybacks, and targeted synergistic M&A when the right opportunities are available at the right price. These are flexible, independent levers. Our strategy does not depend on all of them contributing significantly in every year. As we showed under Vision 2025, the trajectory toward the target can accommodate choppy periods and cumulative execution across these levers over time is what ultimately drives us to our destination.

With that, I’ll turn the call back to Chris for closing remarks.

Chris Koch, Board Chair, President, and CEO, Carlisle Companies: Thanks, Kevin. Overall, the first quarter was challenging, but the team delivered results with the kind of perseverance and disciplined execution that compounds over time and ultimately distinguishes Carlisle from its peers.

While we are very cognizant of the volatility that continues in the markets, what we are targeting for 2026 is designed to place a minimal reliance on new construction from current levels or a broader macro tailwind. We remain an imperative business with a leading position in what we believe is the most attractive building products market in the world. The structural demand drivers in North America are secular and intact. Our balance sheet is strong, our operational capabilities are advancing, and our capital allocation remains disciplined. We remain very confident in Carlisle’s position as we move further into 2026. Before I close, I want to acknowledge and thank the Carlisle employees who produced these results through their daily effort and commitment to excellence. Over the years, they have made the commitment to ensuring our success. Thank you all for your time and continued interest in Carlisle.

We look forward to providing further updates as the year progresses. With that, I’ll turn it over to the operator to open the line for questions.

Colby, Conference Operator: Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. For the sake of time, we kindly request each person limit themselves to one question to give everyone the opportunity to participate in the question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question at this time, please press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad to raise your hand and enter the queue. If you’d like to withdraw your question at any time, you can simply press star one again. We’ll pause just for a moment to compile the roster. With our first question, it comes from Susan Maklari with Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.

Bryan Blair, Analyst, Oppenheimer1: Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone.

Chris Koch, Board Chair, President, and CEO, Carlisle Companies: Good afternoon, Sue.

Bryan Blair, Analyst, Oppenheimer1: Good afternoon, Kevin. My first question is, talking a bit about demand. Can you give us an update on the new products, how they’re doing in the market, the path for further introductions that you expect this year? And within that, can you talk a bit about how these product offerings and the service that Carlisle has for contractors helps in terms of price elasticity? And do you think that that’s partially what you’re seeing when you’re talking about the level of activity and the improvement that you’re getting into the spring season?

Chris Koch, Board Chair, President, and CEO, Carlisle Companies: Okay. Sue, I’ll try to remember this. New products. That’s good. Good question, Sue. The new products, we are forecasting to release just over 10-12 new products this year. Probably the biggest one is our ThermaThin R7 insulation, which, I’m sure you’ve read about in other stuff too, what it’s doing for R-value per square inch and the implications of this for cold storage, for reduced inches on the roof in terms of insulation or being able to put more inches of insulation on per linear inch, vertical inch, is really pretty significant. We’ve been out doing testing. We launched at IRE. We won two awards. I was really proud that we won two awards that really symbolized two different sectors. One was around basically specifiers and people who are industry experts, for a new product award.

Then the other one was just the people that were coming to the show and voted it, I think, the best new product at IRE. That’s really nice to see that, let’s just call it specifiers and contractors both thought there was a value proposition in that. Now, that product is gathering momentum in terms of recognition, more testing. We do have test sites that are out now where people are getting to use the product and give us feedback on it. Not so much to determine whether it’s a good product or not, but just how it works and validating some of the other things we wanted to know about it from a marketing perspective. That won’t really hit the market in terms of delivery still. Probably July of this year, deliveries will start. That’s been good.

It’s creating a lot of enthusiasm, but not really impacting any growth in Q1 or Q2. We have a new gun for our foam adhesives that has come out that, again, introduced but will be really reflected in more of Q2. We’ll start to sell that. A lot of these new products, the growth is going to come, I won’t say it’s second half loaded, but yeah, it’ll be back basically second half loaded. To try to shorten this up. When you get into service and new products and how they help, it really does differentiate us in the eyes of the contractor. Again, we had two things we want to do. One is we want to increase energy efficiency, which is important to specifiers and building owners. The other one is get labor off the roof.

As we know, we already have issues with labor. We want to grow as an industry. We’re going to have to find ways to use the existing labor pool more efficiently. Things like ThermaThin and our new FAST-FIX gun and things like that, APEEL, our Seam Shield, these are the kind of things that are really, really designed to get the contractor to be able to put that down. When you couple that up with another labor saving initiative, which is the Carlisle Experience, it truly is labor saving because it’s about the right product at the right place at the right time, means you don’t have contractors standing around wondering where the shipment is, when it’s going to be there, and this kind of stuff. They can depend on us.

I think that plays into growth because I think it means that when you deliver on new products and you deliver on service, obviously you get stickier with your customer, you get stickier with your architects. People depend on you, and hopefully that allows you to grow share, as well as, and we’ve been talking about this, increase the profitability and sales dollars per square foot because people, as we said, we’re going to price to value. Hopefully I covered enough of that for you.

Bryan Blair, Analyst, Oppenheimer1: Yes. No, that was perfect. My second question is on the CWT margins. Can you talk about the efforts that are coming through there, how we should think about the path of improvement and your ability to realize some level of expansion this year despite the tough environment?

Chris Koch, Board Chair, President, and CEO, Carlisle Companies: Right. Well, this profitability growth in CWT was key for Frank Reddy and his team over at CWT. I think they’re well on their way. We had put a goal in this year of getting as close as we could to 20%. We want to show a return to those margins that when we bought Henry, we had expected, which is, let’s say mid-20s% and we wanted to get to 30%. Frank and his team are committed to that. Obviously, the volumes in the resi side and what’s impacted Frank have been tough to overcome, but the team’s done a lot of good work. Automation has been a sizable impact. Footprint consolidation has been a sizable impact, insourcing. When we look at Q1, we would’ve made more traction towards our 20% goal.

In fact, I’m still pleased with what they did, but would’ve made more traction if the mix had been a little different. Our sales had a heavier mix on the foam side, and that was a lower margin sale than the retail side that we had anticipated in our plan of having. There’s a little bit of a drain there to all the good things they’ve done. Still even with that, I think they’re going to have good traction, and I think it’ll play out pretty linearly along Q2, Q3, and Q4. Hopefully we can get some rebound in volume, which will really make a huge difference.

Bryan Blair, Analyst, Oppenheimer1: Okay. Is it reasonable then to assume that you start to see some year-over-year expansion in the second quarter and it’ll grow from there?

Kevin Zimmel, Chief Financial Officer, Carlisle Companies: Yes. We see it play out during the year. We think we’ll see improvement from quarter to quarter. Q2 might be around 19% and then improving to 23% in Q3 and overall for the year in our guidance that we provided, we’re looking for at least 100 basis points of margin improvement year-over-year for CWT.

Bryan Blair, Analyst, Oppenheimer1: Okay. All right. Thank you both, and good luck with the quarter.

Chris Koch, Board Chair, President, and CEO, Carlisle Companies: Thanks.

Colby, Conference Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Tim Wojs with Baird. Your line is open.

Bryan Blair, Analyst, Oppenheimer2: Hey, guys. Good afternoon.

Chris Koch, Board Chair, President, and CEO, Carlisle Companies: Hey.

Bryan Blair, Analyst, Oppenheimer2: Hey, thanks. Maybe just on the pricing piece, I guess what are you seeing? I guess pricing on the first round’s only been effective for a couple of weeks, but I guess any sort of context or commentary you could give us on just kind of what you’re seeing in terms of stickiness there. I guess secondly, usually when you need price, it’s because of demand-driven inflation, and this is more kind of a supply-side shock. I guess, does that change how the industry deals with price or how contractors accept price? Just kind of, it is a little different this time. If you could just kind of walk through how you think that plays out.

Chris Koch, Board Chair, President, and CEO, Carlisle Companies: Yeah. I’ll start, Tim, and then Kevin can jump in on his comments as well, and then he will. We did have the two price increases, one in March and then one in April. Obviously, the effective date of the first one is around April 15th, and then as you know how the mechanics work on this, we are protecting jobs that were quoted to contracts that already had orders in there. We didn’t go back and retroactively increase those. That wouldn’t be terribly fair to them. We’ll see it move through into the second quarter and then into the third quarter. I think the stickiness with the price increases is going to be pretty good.

I don’t think this is, in terms of line of sight to the driver, I don’t think there’s anybody out in our contractor base or our distributor base that doesn’t see what’s happening on the news every night and doesn’t see the price of oil and doesn’t understand that these are derivatives of the petrochemical industry, that we are selling. I think people understand that certainly on freight charges with diesel fuel and things like that’s also hitting people that are moving around job sites with their own diesel fuel and their trucks and things like that. I think the stickiness will be there. I also think there will be resolve throughout the industry because again, this isn’t a unique event for one manufacturer or one distributor or one contractor. We’re all experiencing this. It’s broad-based. I think the stickiness will be good.

We’ll have to watch it play out, but obviously that’s what’s going to be important in the second quarter is to see how that plays out. When you think about the, usually it’s in a rising demand situation, I mean, that is unique. I think that’s one of the concerns from the Fed is that we’re in a, again, this stagflation thing, right? Certainly the inflation is going to be there. I think the dynamic for us is going to be, I’d say relatively, I don’t want to say muted, but look, we’re going to just control the things we can control. We want to continue to drive innovation. We want to continue to drive efficiency. We want to continue to take labor off the roof.

We want to continue to provide that value proposition on new products and these kind of things to our key contractors and our specifiers at that. I think as we go through it, that’s what we were trying to get across in the message is that, look, we can’t control what’s going to happen on that geopolitical front, but what we can do is continue to provide the best service. We can continue to provide innovation. We can continue to provide help in making sure that we’re giving our contractors and distributors the best service they can. Hopefully that results in us either gaining a little bit of share or maintaining it as we roll through this difficult time. I think we also have the feeling that in this case, there’s probably resolution sooner than later.

That it’s a little bit different than the resi housing crisis that we’re going through. This will have an end a little bit sooner than that, or resolution, I should say. Okay. Great. Thanks for all that. I guess, Kevin, you went through the expectations on margins for CWT. Any chance you could do that on CCM for us? Sure. CCM, as we get into the second quarter, we think we’ll be approaching that 31% of EBITDA for Q2, and then think we can slightly exceed that 31% in Q3. For Q4, right around 28%. A full year, about 50 basis points of improvement for CCM. Okay. Great. I’ll hop back in queue. Thanks, guys. Appreciate this. Thanks, Tim.

Colby, Conference Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, we please ask that you limit yourself to one question to give everyone the opportunity to participate in the question and answer session. Your next question comes from the line of Bryan Blair from Oppenheimer. The line is open.

Bryan Blair, Analyst, Oppenheimer: Thank you. Afternoon, guys.

Chris Koch, Board Chair, President, and CEO, Carlisle Companies: Afternoon, Bryan.

Bryan Blair, Analyst, Oppenheimer: Somewhat of a follow-up to Tim’s first question. We know that you’re still expecting low single-digit revenue growth for 2026, but you’ve announced a fair amount of pricing since last quarter. In the revised, or reaffirmed, excuse me, guide, what are you now baking in for volume versus price for CCM and CWT for the year?

Chris Koch, Board Chair, President, and CEO, Carlisle Companies: Yeah, it’s really the same for both CCM and CWT. As we went into the year or in our year-end call, we had said low single digits, and we talked at the bottom of that range, so probably 1%. Now we’re talking at the top end of that low single-digit range, so 3%. All of that improvement is price. As Chris talked about price, we’ll see some price in the second quarter as we go through it, and then much more so as we get into Q3. The second half of the year is where we see more of the price increases. No doubt, we will see some in Q2 as well. For the full year, it’s hard to put the full number on it. For now, what we put in there is just increase that to 3% for the year.

Now, that can change as we’re going through the year, and we’ll update again at the end of next quarter. I think, Bryan, just one thing just to add that might be sitting out there as a question is the old price raws, right? You think about what we’ve tried to do is just balance this out, and make sure that we’re covering those raw material increases with price offsets. I think we started the year, we thought there might be a little bit of a favorable from raws as we went through the year, and now it’s just, in our forecast, is probably a little bit neutral.

Colby, Conference Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Tomo Sato with J.P. Morgan. Your line is open.

Bryan Blair, Analyst, Oppenheimer3: Hello, everyone.

Chris Koch, Board Chair, President, and CEO, Carlisle Companies: Hello.

Bryan Blair, Analyst, Oppenheimer3: Thank you for taking my questions. I’d like to double-click on distribution channel inventories. There has been industry-wide discussion about the consolidations, lean inventory, de-stocking, and order volatility among distributors, including QXO and other key channel partners. Are you seeing signs of the distributor inventory levels and ordering patterns are returning to more normalized levels? How would you characterize the current activities in your distribution channels? If you could talk about some dynamics of the consolidations and the channel, the partners for the short-term and medium-term plays. Thank you.

Chris Koch, Board Chair, President, and CEO, Carlisle Companies: Sure. Yeah, you’re welcome. I think if you look at inventory, I would say that we’re moving into what we would think would be a more normal inventory situation as we move into the construction season, and that’s normal. There needs to be more out there so that the increase in activity can be sustained, and distributors can provide that service level that they need to. I would say, though, we went into the fourth quarter, I think as we discussed, that people were de-stocking and carrying less inventory, obviously with higher interest rates and an economic outlook that wasn’t as fantastic.

I think in the first quarter, we saw a continuation of inventory levels of maybe the fourth quarter, and that’s part of the momentum when we get to April and we get close to the construction season. I think then we see a pickup in distributors’ willingness to carry inventory if they see that economic activity and building activity is good. Now, we just saw ABI, and you did too. We’re 49.8, getting close to that 50 level where it is expansion. That might be supportive of carrying a little bit more inventory for people. We might also see a little more inventory being picked up because of the price increases. There might be that effect as we get into the second quarter. That’s kind of the situation there. Then you asked about the broader dynamic with distribution.

I would say that the QXO situation that we’ve talked about many times, they continue to improve, and we continue to have great conversations with them as we move through the year. Like we said back in September, that acquisitions are tough to go through and integrations, and the team continues to work well with our teams and continues to make progress. That’s a good one. We also have excellent relationships with the other distributors that we sell to. Good programs, good progress. Broader, the QXO acquisition recently of TopBuild and some of the other things that have taken place in the industry are not as impactful to Carlisle. If we take the TopBuild acquisition, for example, that business, a lot of insulation that Carlisle doesn’t play in that market, the resin insulation, the fiberglass insulation, and that.

When you pair them with Beacon, with Beacon’s significant presence in shingles, we’re not in shingles either. Coming together there, I think, doesn’t have as big an effect on Carlisle as you might think. What we need to do with QXO, obviously, is focus on those initiatives that we started the year with and that we worked so hard with their team on to get back to the levels that we’ve been used to with QXO and Beacon. That’s our report on the distribution activity.

Colby, Conference Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Ryan Merkel with William Blair. Your line is open.

Bryan Blair, Analyst, Oppenheimer0: Hey, everyone. Thanks, Seth, for the question. I wanted to ask about 2Q revenue. Can we assume normal seasonality? That would put you at up 2% year-over-year for 2Q. Then Chris, you mentioned that March exited better. Did you see trends improve once the weather got better?

Chris Koch, Board Chair, President, and CEO, Carlisle Companies: Yeah, I’ll take that one first, then Kev can take the other one. Yeah, definitely the weather. Obviously, we thought weather in the first quarter was probably. This is always a ballpark number, but we thought it was about 3 days in which we probably put around $30-$35 million of impact on the top line. As we got into March and the weather got a little bit better, yeah, things picked up. I think that had something to do with the momentum. I do think ABI was right. I think things were a little bit better. If we looked at the sectors out there that we typically look at in warehousing and things like that, they did show better trend, I would say, than we had seen last year.

If you think about warehouses, our outlook is more around 2% compared to last year, which was down 5%. Educational buildings last year, I think we thought the industry was down about 13%, and it’s seen some positive growth. I think in general, the ABI is reflecting accurately what we’re seeing. That contributed. Then obviously, once the price increase hit, there’s some activity there too, if you have anything out there to get ahead of it. That all contributed to that momentum we saw exiting March and into April.

Kevin Zimmel, Chief Financial Officer, Carlisle Companies: your quarterly question on the revenue. As we look at it, we really look at it in buckets. It’s very seasonal business. For us, Q1, Q4 are the lighter quarters. As you look at CWT, typically 23% of their revenue’s in Q1, 23% in Q4, and then Q2 and Q3 are about equal at 27% a piece. CCM’s a little bit different than that. They get about 20% of their revenue in Q1, Q2 is about 30% of their revenue, and then Q3 is a little bit lighter than Q2, and then Q4 is the balance of that.

Colby, Conference Operator: Your next question comes from the line of David MacGregor with Longbow Research. Your line is open.

David MacGregor, Analyst, Longbow Research: Yeah, thank you, and good afternoon, everyone.

Chris Koch, Board Chair, President, and CEO, Carlisle Companies: Hey, David.

David MacGregor, Analyst, Longbow Research: Hey, Chris. I wanted to just go back to the idea of elasticity of demand here and just talk about that a little bit, get your thoughts on the extent to which the rapid onset of higher project costs could give rise to project deferrals or maybe even just a limiting effect on the scope of jobs. I guess, given that we’re focused on volume here, let me just ask you if warranty expiration is still a business driver at this point or whether you’re seeing people maybe approach this a little bit differently than they might have in the past. Thanks.

Chris Koch, Board Chair, President, and CEO, Carlisle Companies: Yeah. That’s a good question around the idea that project delays. We have seen some project delays, but frankly, we were seeing them really when we got into the August-September timeframe of last year is really when it started. We thought there was going to be interest rate cuts from the Fed. We had things coming into the year, and it didn’t work out that way. Now this year, definitely this Middle Eastern crisis is causing issues that are probably causing some people to have some project delays and look at them. It hasn’t been as impactful as we might have thought. Again, I reference the AIA or ABI and what we’ve seen happening out there, even in our Carlisle Market Survey. I think it might be one that people are waiting.

Obviously, if it continues and it’s a longer crisis, I think, at least our feedback from the petrochemical industry is recovery could be short now. The longer it keeps going, the more destruction, obviously, the longer it takes to recover, right? Which has a bigger impact on prices. You start to get into something, David, around, and it’s almost like labor, you get into this idea that there isn’t enough supply. If there’s not enough supply, are you really going to delay your project? Because if you delay your project and you can’t get materials, then you might be in a bad situation. I think labor constraints are one that keeps people thinking about, do I want to delay?

Because if I delay my project and that labor gets reallocated and I’ve got to get back in the queue, I might be looking at next year before I can get it done. Then that ties into the warranty. I think warranty is still a driver, because I think on the bigger projects, maybe not on smaller projects, like a house, you can do it, but I don’t know if there’d be a warranty on a house, but let’s just use that example. On a bigger project, I don’t think building management teams, I think they prize the warranty. They want the warranty in place at corporations. They don’t want to be exposed. Again, I think you get back in the queue as quickly as you can to make sure that that warranty, when it expires, it’s replaced with a re-roof and a new warranty.

I just don’t think people want that risk or that exposure for a roof. It’s an important part of the building, but they actually probably want to do what they’re doing inside the building, which is move product around like a FedEx or an Amazon, or to manufacture things like others. They don’t want to be thinking about the roof and whether they’ve got an issue there. I think the bigger one for me, I’ve said to Kevin, is we want to look at the availability of supply and make sure that, as things extend, that could be the factor we’re really worried about, not so much the inflation right now. Don’t know if that answer makes sense, but hopefully it does.

Colby, Conference Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Garik Shmois with Loop Capital. Your line is open.

Garik Shmois, Analyst, Loop Capital: Oh, hi. Thanks. Just wanted to clarify just on the revenue guidance in CCM. Just wanted to square the slightly higher guide, kind of moving towards the higher end of low single digits. It seems like it’s driven by pricing, but I want to be clear if there’s any change to your volume expectations, especially as you’re starting to see momentum here in March and April. If there could be some conservatism there, just given the magnitude of the price increases you’re putting through.

Chris Koch, Board Chair, President, and CEO, Carlisle Companies: Yeah, it’s really with the uncertainty with the geopolitical situation. We don’t know how much that could impact demand or not. Yeah, as we enter Q2, that’s where we’re going with that guide of just low single digits at 3%. Maybe it does get better in the second half of the year, but for now, that is, yeah, a bit of a conservative guide.

Colby, Conference Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Adam Baumgarten with Vertical Research Partners. Your line is open.

Adam Baumgarten, Analyst, Vertical Research Partners: Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my question. Just on the price increases, I think the ones you announced in March for April were about 5%-7% on membranes and polyiso. Just curious what the magnitude of the incremental price increases you announced today is, and then just given all that and the change in guidance to the higher end of the low single-digit range, kind of implies that the realization’s relatively low. Maybe that’s conservative, just curious on that. Just what you’re thinking about for price cost in 2Q.

Chris Koch, Board Chair, President, and CEO, Carlisle Companies: Yeah. On price cost for Q2, we’re looking at offsetting any of the cost increases with price. That’s the same actual assumption for Q3 and Q4. We’re looking at a full year of being neutral on the price cost that Chris talked about. On the pricing, as the quarters go, it is obviously really hard to predict right now how much pricing we’ll see, how much raw material inflation we’ll see. We are seeing it today on the raw material increases, and that’s why that second announcement came out. Yeah, I would expect that to stick in the marketplace for what we have out there for the price increases.

Obviously, if that all goes through, you’re going to see a higher revenue number for us for the year, but the EBITDA dollars number will be not incremental for that pricing because it’s just offsetting raw material inflation. For the second price increase, it was the same as the first, approximately 5%-8%. Very similar to what you saw in the March announcement.

Colby, Conference Operator: Your next question comes from the line of McLaren Hayes with Zelman & Associates. Your line is open.

McLaren Hayes, Analyst, Zelman & Associates: Thanks, guys. Yeah, just on the raw material piece, wondering if you could give us a sense of the magnitude of the input cost inflation that you’re baking into your guidance?

Mehul Patel, Vice President of Investor Relations, Carlisle Companies: I’ll take that one. Overall, as Kevin mentioned, our pricing, moving from low single digit range to the higher range is basically a couple of points of price. Our price cost assumption is neutral, so that basically implies a similar level of raw material inflation. If you do the math on that implies it’s about high single digit raw material inflation as a percentage of raws for the full year.

Colby, Conference Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Keith Hughes with Truist. Your line is open. Keith, your line is open.

Keith Hughes, Analyst, Truist: Hello? Can you hear me now?

Chris Koch, Board Chair, President, and CEO, Carlisle Companies: Hello, Keith, you there?

Keith Hughes, Analyst, Truist: Hello? Okay. Sorry, I don’t know what happened there. Let me start again. On the last answer, the high single-digit raw material inflation. I assume you probably have some that are up more, some up less than that. Can you give us sort of a feel, what’s the range of the inputs that are coming in year-to-date?

Mehul Patel, Vice President of Investor Relations, Carlisle Companies: Yeah, Keith. As you know, MDI, that’s our biggest raw material purchase. I kind of just walked down from the top two or three to give you a sense. That one’s up double digits. That’s impacted by both supply-demand dynamics as well as benzene, which is up pretty significantly. It’s linked to petrochemicals.

Keith Hughes, Analyst, Truist: Right.

Mehul Patel, Vice President of Investor Relations, Carlisle Companies: Our TPO resins, which is closely linked to propylene, that’s up double digits for us. That ties very closely to the propylene index. That’s why we have available. Then polyols, that’s also tied to some supply-demand dynamics as well as diethylene glycol. That’s up in the high single-digit range.

Keith Hughes, Analyst, Truist: Okay. I think on polyol, there’s been some shortages with the plant outage. Is that causing any problems?

Mehul Patel, Vice President of Investor Relations, Carlisle Companies: For us, both we use polyol for polyiso insulation in CCM as well as on our spray foam in CWT. It has a bigger impact on our CWT, just with the type of polyols we use. We’re in a pretty good position with options that we have to get volume.

Keith Hughes, Analyst, Truist: Perfect. Thank you.

Chris Koch, Board Chair, President, and CEO, Carlisle Companies: Thanks, Steve.

Colby, Conference Operator: Our last question comes from David MacGregor with Longbow Research. Your line is open.

David MacGregor, Analyst, Longbow Research: Yeah. Thanks for taking my follow-up question. Chris, I was hoping you could talk about acquisitions made over the past couple of years and the synergy capture versus your initial plans, and the possibility that you could squeeze a little more out of that this year if needed to offset some of the dynamics we’ve been talking about in price and cost.

Chris Koch, Board Chair, President, and CEO, Carlisle Companies: Right. Well, as you can imagine, with all the acquisitions, there’s varied results. I would say if we look at the top end of it, the MTL acquisition has been exceptional in every way. We continue to expand there. The management team at MTL has done a really good, nice job of managing through this raw material situation as well as taking share and coming up with new products and things like that. So the MTL acquisition’s great. When I look at Plasti-Fab, another great acquisition. I think Mehul can touch on some of the effects of the vertical integration there around EPS bead and that the team has done. They continue to, and we love to just ask for capital to invest in automation and strengthen their manufacturing things in Canada. That’s been another great acquisition.

The ones that have filled in on EPS were geographies we needed to fill in. They’re doing a good job, again, of creating that global, or not global, excuse me, U.S.-wide or North American-wide EPS network. I think they’re performing. I think the bigger impact to all of them, they’re meeting their deal models. They’re doing what they basically said we thought they were going to do. The bigger issue is just volume. Outside of really the MTL, which is more on the commercial roofing side of it, the others are in CWT, and you can see what’s happened with the CWT business. I go back to what I was saying again about what the team has done to improve margin expansion, and they’ll continue to have footprint consolidation. They’ll continue to source where they can. They’ll continue to put automation in place, technology, introduce new products.

Can we squeeze any more out of them? We can, but that’s really the push to 20. If we want to get back to the mid-20s, some volume increase would help. Obviously we like this ABI increasing, and we’d love to see some recovery in housing and help on that side. That’d be the bigger driver.

David MacGregor, Analyst, Longbow Research: Got it. Thanks for that detailed answer. Good luck.

Chris Koch, Board Chair, President, and CEO, Carlisle Companies: Yeah. Of course.

Colby, Conference Operator: There are no further questions at this time. I’ll hand the call over to Chris Koch for closing remarks. Please go ahead.

Chris Koch, Board Chair, President, and CEO, Carlisle Companies: Thanks, everybody. A very challenging time that we’re facing, working through all these issues. This does conclude our first quarter call. We look forward to talking with you again on our second quarter call, and we’ll have a lot more information about how things have played out on pricing and all of that for you then. Thanks very much.

Colby, Conference Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today’s conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.