Ferguson plc (FERG) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

For the period ending January 31, 2023

March 7, 2023 8:30 a.m. ET

Prepared Remarks

Questions and Answers

Call Participants

Prepared Remarks:

Operator

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Lauren, and I'll be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome you to Ferguson's Second Quarter Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Thank you.

I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Brian Lantz, Ferguson's VP of Investor Relations and Communications. You may begin your conference.

Brian Lantz

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Ferguson's second quarter earnings conference call and webcast. Hopefully, you've had a chance to review the earnings announcement we issued this morning. The announcement is available in the Investors section of our corporate website and on our SEC filings web page. A recording of this call will be made available later today.

I want to remind everyone that some of our statements today may be forward-looking. Such forward-looking statements are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected. Additional information is also included in our earnings announcement and in the section entitled Risk Factors in our Form 10-K available on our SEC website. Also, any forward-looking statements represent the company's expectations only as of today, and we specifically disclaim any obligation to update these statements.

In addition, on today's call, we will discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures. Please refer to our earnings presentation and announcement on our website for additional information regarding those non-GAAP measures, including reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures.

With me on the call today are Kevin Murphy, our CEO; and Bill Brundage, our CFO.

I will now turn the call over to Kevin.

Kevin Murphy

Thank you, Brian. And welcome everyone to Ferguson's second quarter results conference call.

On today's call, I'll cover highlights of our second quarter performance and also provide a more detailed view of our performance by end markets and customer groups, before I turn the call over to Bill for the financials and for our outlook for fiscal year '23. I'll then come back at the end to share some thoughts on how we're executing our strategy and on the fundamental drivers of our residential and non-residential end markets before Bill and I take your questions.

We'd like to express our sincere thanks to our associates, as they continue to go above and beyond to serve our customers and to help make their projects simple, successful, and sustainable. Our second quarter results were in line with our expectations following the significant step up in performance we delivered in fiscal year 2022. We continued to leverage our consultative approach, our scale, our global supply chain and our strong balance sheet to help improve our customer's projects. The result was 5% revenue growth on top of a 32% comparable. We've demonstrated cost discipline to deliver solid profit with the two-year stack for adjusted operating profit increasing 67% and adjusted earnings per share, nearly 75%.