Encore Wire Corporation (NASDAQ:WIRE) Q4 2023 Earnings Conference Call February 14, 2024 11:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Bret Eckert - Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Daniel Jones - Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer

Conference Call Participants

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. I would like to welcome everyone to the Fourth Quarter Full-Year 2023 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions]

Thank you. I will now hand the call over to Mr. Bret Eckert, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. You may begin your conference.

Bret Eckert

Thanks, Bhavesh. Good morning and welcome to the Encore Wire Corporation Quarterly Conference Call. I'm Bret Eckert, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Encore Wire. With me this morning is Daniel Jones, President, CEO and Chairman of the Board.

Before we begin our comments, we'd like to remind everyone that today's earnings release and certain of our comments on the call include forward-looking statements and actual results may differ materially from such forward-looking statements. I'd like to refer everyone to the cautionary language included in our earnings release and to the risk factors described in our SEC filings.

I'll now turn the call over to Daniel for some opening remarks. Daniel?

Daniel Jones

Thank you, Bret. Thank you, Bhavesh. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us on the call and for your interest in Encore Wire. We appreciate your continued investment, confidence and support. Over the past several years, we have invested and continued to invest in improving our service model and efficiency levels to reduce cost, increase capacity, and deepen our vertical integration. We believe these investments have strengthened our ability to compete today and should contribute to higher gross margin levels when compared to pre-COVID baselines.

We experienced increased copper wire and cable demand from mid-2023, which continued through the fourth quarter. This resulted in us shipping a record number of copper pounds in the fourth quarter, representing the strongest volume quarter over the course of the full-year. Specifically, copper pounds shipped in the fourth quarter grew by 5.9% over the third quarter of 2023 and grew by 18.8% over the fourth quarter of 2022. These results represent a positive shift in volume shift when compared to a pre-COVID baseline.