Louisiana-Pacific Corporation (NYSE:LPX) Q1 2023 Results Conference Call May 3, 2023 11:00 AM ET
Company Participants
Aaron Howald - Vice President, Investor Relations
Brad Southern - Chief Executive Officer
Alan Haughie - Chief Financial Officer
Conference Call Participants
Mark Weintraub - Seaport
Ketan Mamtora - BMO
Paul Quinn - RBC
Susan Maklari - Goldman Sachs
George Staphos - Bank of America
Mike Roxland - Truist
Sean Steuart - TD Securities
Mark Weintraub - Seaport
Operator
Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the First Quarter 2023 Louisiana-Pacific Corporation Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]. Please be advised that, today's conference is being recorded.
I would now like to turn the conference over to your speaker today, Aaron Howald.
Aaron Howald
Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone and thank you for joining us to discuss LP's results for the first quarter of 2023 and outlook for the second quarter. As the operator said, my name is Aaron Howald, and I am LP's Vice President of Investor Relations and Business Development. I am joined this morning by Brad Southern, LP's Chief Executive Officer and Alan Haughie, LP's Chief Financial Officer.
During this morning's conference call and webcast, we will refer to an accompanying presentation that is available on LP's IR webpage, which is investor.lpcorp.com. Our 8-K filing is also available there, along with our earnings press release and other materials. Today's discussion will contain forward-looking statements and non-GAAP financial metrics, as described on Slide 2 and Slide 3 of the earnings presentation. Rather than reading these statements, I incorporate them herein by reference. The appendix of the presentation also contains reconciliations that are further supplemented by this morning's 8-K filing.
And with that, I will turn the call over to Brad.
Brad Southern
Thanks, Aaron. Thank you all for joining us for LP's results for the first quarter of 2023. Q1 demonstrated the value of our strategy in a challenging operating environment and an uncertain housing market. Compared in the first quarter of last year, Single-Family housing starts fell by almost 30% and commodity OSB prices fell by more than 75%.
Despite this decline, we maintained flat, siding sales and generated positive EBITDA in our OSB segment outperforming the underlying markets. We are currently seeing encouraging signs of strength in housing, including improving commodity prices, and I am confident that LP's businesses will continue to outperform the market.
Page 5 of the presentation shows highlights for the quarter. In sum, a much softer healthy market drove OSB prices far below last year's levels. With the obvious impact on sales EBITDA and cash flow. Inflation appears to be easing somewhat. The cost for resins laws and freight remained elevated pressuring margins. LPs businesses responded by outperforming the market, and we continue to invest in our growth. $584 million in sales was about half of the amount from Q1 of last year with a vast majority of this difference, the result of lower OSB prices, EBITDA of $66 million, and earnings per share of $0.34 were much lower than last year, again due to the difficult comp from last year's very high OSB prices.