Insteel Industries, Inc. (NYSE:IIIN) Q4 2024 Earnings Conference Call October 17, 2024 10:00 AM ET

Company Participants

H.O. Woltz III - President and Chief Executive Officer
Scot Jafroodi - Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer

Conference Call Participants

Julio Romero - Sidoti & Company
Tyson Bauer - Kansas City Capital Associates

Operator

Good morning, all, and thank you for joining us for the Insteel Industries Fourth Quarter 2024 Earnings Call. My name is Carly and I'll be your call coordinator for today. [Operator Instructions]

I'd now like to hand over to your host, Mr. H. Woltz, CEO of Insteel Industries to begin. The floor is yours.

H.O. Woltz III

Thank you, Carly, and good morning. Thank you for your interest in Insteel, and welcome to our fourth quarter 2024 conference call, which will be conducted by Scot Jafroodi, our Vice President, CFO and Treasurer and me.

Before we begin, let me remind you that some of our comments made on the presentation are considered to be forward-looking statements that are subject to various risks and uncertainties, which could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected. These risk factors are described in our periodic filings with the SEC.

Despite having seen signs of an upturn in market activity during Q3, during Q4, we experienced a continuation of sluggish market conditions, resulting in weak order backlogs that contributed to inefficiencies at our plants.

We continue to believe that patience is our only viable strategy since we're unable to create demand and competitors who believe that reducing prices will stimulate demand or result in market share gains are simply mistaken.

We've noted that market lethargy is not limited to reinforcing markets, following weaker forecast for producers of cement, steel, aggregates and other construction materials. We look forward to attaining higher operating rates, lower cost and improved revenue and margins that we believe will be supported by future market conditions.

I'm going to turn the call over to Scot to comment on our financial results for the quarter and the macro environment, and then I'll pick it up to discuss our business outlook.

Scot Jafroodi

Thank you, H, and good morning to everyone joining us today. As highlighted in our press release earlier, our fourth quarter financial performance for fiscal 2024 reflects the ongoing challenges of tighter spreads between selling prices and raw material costs relative to the prior year quarter.