American Woodmark loses builder customer, expands dealer business
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WINCHESTER, Va. – In an earnings statement for American Woodmark, Cary Dunston, president and CEO, said that one of its direct builder customers made the decision to shift business to another cabinet company, as reported in a transcript by financial analysts Seeking Alpha.

“The reality is, given our success and significant market share, we recognize that competition will always be aggressively pursuing our business,” Dunston said.

Dunston said the company is not expecting any long term impact or even a fiscal year impact from the loss of that customer.

“Taking a look at our dealer channel, we grew the business a very healthy 20 percent over prior year. Dealers, as a whole, continue to outpace the home center market due to the more affluent consumer and we continue to gain market share and outpace industry growth.

“Regarding our home center business, we unfortunately saw a decline of 3 percent for the quarter. We have been predicting that due to our increase in promotional spend, share levels will return to more normalized levels. The reality is, although we moved up, promotional levels continue to escalate at both the home center and competitive levels.

From a gross margin perspective, we finished the quarter at 21.1 percent. Margin was impacted by higher healthcare, logistics and material costs compared to prior year. Operationally, our team continues to manage our strong growth very efficiently through our entire system.

Dunston also said that although not completely definitive, the anti-dumping suit filed by Chinese plywood manufacturers will impact most within the cabinet industry with material inflation.

He also said that opportunities for potential M&A opportunities within the industry is narrowing, but not yet closed.

“As such, in conjunction with evaluating all potential M&A opportunities, we are very focused on organic growth solutions, particularly in the lower price point area,” he said. “Our operations team is diligently working on Greenfield and Brownfield investment solutions. The question is not if we will expand, it is how we will do it. We look forward to communicating our decision in the near future.

For additional information, see http://www.SeekingAlpha.com.

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Karl Forth

Karl D. Forth is online editor for CCI Media. He also writes news and feature stories in FDMC Magazine, in addition to newsletters and custom publishing projects. He is also involved in event organization, and compiles the annual FDM 300 list of industry leaders. He can be reached at [email protected].