Eagle Materials Inc. (NYSE:EXP) Q1 2023 Earnings Conference Call July 28, 2022 8:30 AM ET

Company Participants

Michael Haack - President and CEO

Craig Kesler - CFO

Bob Stewart - EVP, Strategy, Corporate Development and Communications

Conference Call Participants

Trey Grooms - Stevens

Brent Thielman - D.A. Davidson

Jerry Revich - Goldman Sachs

Operator

Good day, everyone, and welcome to Eagle Materials Q1 2023 Earnings Conference Call.

Please note, this even is being recorded.

I would like to turn the conference call over to Eagle's President and Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Michael Haack. Mr. Haack, please go ahead, sir.

Michael Haack

Thank you. Good morning. Welcome to Eagle Materials conference call for our first quarter for fiscal 2023. This is Michael Haack. Joining me today are Craig Kesler, our Chief Financial Officer; and Bob Stewart, Executive Vice President of Strategy, Corporate Development and Communications. We are glad you could be with us today.

There will be a slide presentation made in connection with this call. To access it, please go to eaglematerials.com and click on the link to the webcast. While you're accessing the slides, please note the first slide covers our cautionary disclosure regarding forward-looking statements made during this call.

These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause results to differ from those discussed during the call. For further information, please refer to this disclosure, which is also included at the end of our press release.

First, I want to start off by saying we had a very good quarter. Business conditions remain favorable for Eagle. I am pleased to report we enjoyed record adjusted net earnings per share up 25% on record revenues. We're able to capitalize on very favorable market conditions for our product in our U.S.-operating geographies.

We expanded gross margins by 30 basis points, bringing our gross margins to nearly 27% as we overcame inflationary cost headwinds to achieve this result. This illustrates once again that being a low-cost producer and a commodity industry has benefits in good times, not just in tough times.

We realized 24% price increases in wallboard for the quarter, reflecting the strong prevailing market demand and we realize 10% higher cement -- prices for cement. We are implementing a second round of price increases in cement starting this month as we remain in the virtually sold out position. We have some headroom left and wallboard capacity and our wallboard volumes were up 5% for the quarter.