Commercial Metals reports Q3 EPS $1.02, consensus $1.02

Reports Q3 revenue $2.08B, consensus $2.02B. Peter Matt, President and CEO, said, “Our business continued to generate strong financial results during the third quarter, with core EBITDA, core EBITDA margin, cash flows, and net earnings all at levels well above long-term averages. Each of these metrics also improved sequentially as we benefited from a healthy start to the 2024 construction season and solid operational performance across our footprint. Fundamentals remain good within our North American markets, supporting stable to modestly improving steel product margins, healthy shipment levels, and steady downstream backlog volumes. Encouragingly, we are realizing the impact of infrastructure activity on the demand for CMC‘s early phase construction solutions, and expect the magnitude of this impact to grow over the next several years. Performance in our Europe Steel Group approached breakeven on an adjusted EBITDA basis during the third quarter. Market conditions were largely stable compared to the prior quarter, though we achieved slight increases in finished steel pricing and product margins. Our focus is on continuing to improve the profitability of this business, which we believe should see benefits from an emerging inflection in the Polish macroeconomic environment, evidenced by meaningfully lower inflation, faster GDP growth, improved residential construction activity, and increased government sponsored investment. Adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA margin in our Emerging Businesses Group returned to expected levels during the quarter, benefiting from seasonal improvement in construction activity and strong demand for our proprietary geogrid and performance reinforcing steel solutions. We continued to advance the ramp up of our state-of-the-art Arizona 2 plant, which is the first micro mill in the world capable of producing both rebar and merchant bar quality product. A combination of supply discipline and improved seasonal demand has moved rebar markets in the Western U.S. into much better balance. Moreover, we have continued to progress our MBQ commissioning. At full production capability, AZ2 is designed to produce nearly 200 individual merchant bar SKUs, in addition to a wide range of rebar sizes. In West Virginia, foundations are nearly complete at the site of our fourth micro mill, and we continue to anticipate an operational start-up in late calendar 2025. We believe these projects, together with our recent acquisitions, position us to take advantage of favorable long-term structural trends in construction activity, and are expected to drive strong future growth in earnings, cash flow, and shareholder value.”