Monday, October 22, 2018

A current AIM Program Small Cap Equity Holding: Beacon Roofing Supply, Inc. (BECN) by: Alec Jensen. "Repairing Performance... And Roofs"


Beacon Roofing Supply, Inc. (BECN, $33.34): “Repairing Performance…And Roofs”
By: Alec Jensen, AIM student at Marquette University


Disclosure: The AIM Equity Fund currently holds this position. This article was written by myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it and I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.

 Summary:

Beacon Roofing Supply, Inc. (NASDAQ: BECN) engages in the distribution of residential and non-residential roofing materials. Beacon Roofing Supply has three business segments: Residential Roofing (54% of revenue), Non-residential Roofing (29% of revenue), and Complementary Building (17% of revenue).

• Market leader with hundreds of branches across the United States and Canada.

• Strategic acquisition of Allied Building Products is key for current and future success.

• Improving gross margin and trends in Repair and Replacement spending.

• The company has seen a large sell-off in their stock over the past year, with a potential overreaction by investors.

Key points:

Beacon Roofing Supply is positioned as the largest publicly traded distributor of roofing materials in the United States and Canada. Despite having a challenging 2018, the company is still set to capitalize on its network of over 589 branches in 50 states throughout the U.S. Beacon generates most of its revenue from the repair and replacement services they provide. Looking at the trends within this space, according to the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard, remodeling spending should exceed 6% growth versus its usual growth of around 3-5%. While very unfortunate, Hurricane Florence could also be a catalyst in 2018-2019 for Beacon Roofing just like Hurricane Harvey was in 2017, due to the fact that part of their main business is repairs.

A large part of Beacon’s growth besides same-branch improvements and new branch openings is through acquisitions. Most notably, the company acquired Allied Building Products Corp. in 2017 for over $2.5 billion. Such a move by Beacon is significant because their footprint in the roofing distribution market is now at about a 20% share. As of the last quarter, the acquisition of Allied is creating synergies, $25 million year-to-date. Furthermore, on an operational basis, Beacon’s gross margin has increased about 1% from the previous year along with record Q3 EBITDA of $187.7 million. The company is benefiting from positive price-cost realization across its different categories of products. Another more interesting development for Beacon from a competitive standpoint is their new e-commerce platform. While only a small part of their revenue generation, the company takes pride in having the best platform out of its main competitors, helping its customers and Beacon moving forward.

Looking at some of Beacon’s risks, one of them is the inability to effectively integrate an acquisition onto their operating platform. A result of such a failure would mean lost cost savings and profitability. Although, this has not proven to be a significant problem for the company. At this point, a question may arise as to what is actually harming the performance of the stock. A possible reason for the stock’s underperformance is that a portion of the products they sell are for residential and non-residential construction. Homebuilder and construction stocks have entered into a bear market, which might have effected Beacon. Also, residential roofing shingles are seeing price increases, meaning Beacon’s margins could take a hit if they can’t properly pass on the expenses to their customers. It is important to note, though, that only 25% of the company’s revenue comes from roofing shingles.

What has the stock done lately?

After a great amount of depreciation in stock price earlier this year, the last few months haven’t been much better as the stock has fallen about 20% in the last 3 months. 13% of this drop happened over one month’s time.

Past Year Performance:

Beacon Roofing Supply’s stock has had a tough last year. The stock is down 36.62% over this time period, with a range of $32.66-66.47. There was a large sell off from the beginning of the year to June, with concerns over BECN’s margins and the industry in general. Even after this large sell-off, the stock has continued to decline over the second half of the year with continued qualms about the building products space.



Source: FactSet

My Takeaway:

While Beacon Roofing Supply has not been a great investment over the last year, the company is still a leading player in the roofing distribution space and should continue as one. There are apparent risks with the company, but the stock has taken a huge haircut over the past year. The macroeconomic trends for the company’s core business seem stable and the acquisition of Allied Building Products will help the company’s long-term profitability and create growth opportunities. I recommend that Beacon Roofing Supply continue to be held in the AIM portfolio, but monitored closely to see if company or market conditions change.