Q2 2024 Simpson Manufacturing Co Inc Earnings Call

Participants

Kimberly Orlando; Investor Relations; ADDO Investor Relations

Michael Olosky; President, Chief Executive Officer; Simpson Manufacturing Co Inc

Brian Magstadt; Chief Financial Officer; Simpson Manufacturing Co Inc

Daniel Moore; Analyst; CJS Securities Inc

Tim Wojs; Analyst; Robert W. Baird & Co

Kurt Yinger; Analyst; D. A. Davidson & Co

Presentation

Operator

Greetings, and welcome to the Simpson Manufacturing Company second-quarter 2024 earnings conference call. (Operator Instructions) And as a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Kim Orlando with ADDO Investor Relations. Thank you, Ken, you may begin.

Kimberly Orlando

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Simpson Manufacturing Company's second-quarter 2024 earnings conference call. Any statements made on this call that are not statements of historical fact are forward-looking statements. Such statements are based on certain estimates and expectations and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties. Actual future results may vary materially from those expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements.
We encourage you to read the risks described in the company's public filings and reports which are available on the SEC's or the company's corporate website. Except to the extent required by applicable securities laws, we undertake no obligation to update or publicly revise any of the forward-looking statements that we make here today, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. On this call, we will also refer to non-GAAP measures, such as adjusted EBITDA, which is reconciled to the most comparable GAAP measure of net income in the company's earnings press release.
Please note that the earnings press release was issued today at approximately 4:15 PM Eastern time. The earnings press release is available on the Investor Relations page of the company's website at ir.simpsonmfg.com. Today's call is being webcast and a replay will also be available on the Investor Relations page of the company's website.
Now, I would like to turn the conference over to Michael Lasky, Simpson's President and Chief Executive Officer.

Michael Olosky

Thanks, Kim. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining today's call. With me today is Brian McDade, our Chief Financial Officer. My remarks today will provide an overview of our second-quarter performance and updates on our end markets and capital allocation priorities. Brian will then talk you through our second-quarter financials and fiscal 2024 outlook in greater detail.
Our second quarter net sales totaled $597 million, which was in line with the prior year quarter in housing markets that continued to be challenging in both the US and Europe. Nevertheless, execution against our growth strategy to drive new customer wins has enabled us to continue outperforming a declining US housing market by mid-single digits on a year-to-date basis. While we remain optimistic in longer-term growth prospects of the US housing market, our expectations for modest growth this year have been extended into 2025.
I'll discuss our outlook in greater detail shortly.
Turning to trends in our end use markets. North American volumes for Q2 were relatively flat compared to last year, producing net sales of $463 million versus $465.5 million in the prior year. To further break down our North American volume performance, we achieved mid-single digit growth year over year in both our OEM and component manufacturing markets. We have continued to identify new use cases and deepen our relationships with OEMs, though it remains a relatively small contributor to our revenues.
Simpson is continually improving our software offerings to component manufacturers and leveraging growth from prior new business wins. We also modestly improved our volumes in the commercial market, while the residential market remain relatively flat as improvements in single-family were offset by double-digit declines in multi-family housing compared to the prior year quarter.
The National Retail Markets saw low single-digit declines due to a combination of weather timing and a challenging comp versus the second quarter of last year, which benefited from significant customer conversions.
Turning to Europe, while the market in Europe remains under pressure due to weak economic growth and higher interest rates, reducing overall construction activity, our second quarter net sales of $129.9 million increased by 1.6%, or 2.5% on a local currency basis year over year. As anticipated, our business in Europe has also continued to outperform the local markets, given our solutions-based selling approach that drives new customer wins and product applications.
2024 continues to represent a big year for defensive synergies stemming from the Taco acquisition, as well as other moves we are making in Europe to optimize our footprint, which has resulted in further margin compression versus last year as we incurred additional costs to support the synergies. These restructuring costs primarily impact 2024 and are necessary to attain our 15% operating income margin target in Europe. As a reminder, this target is also based on the eventual realization of offense of synergies and broader secular trends, including the growing use of wood construction and increasingly stringent environmental regulations that drive new applications.
On a consolidated basis, our second quarter gross margin declined to 46.7% from 48.1% in the second quarter of last year, due primarily to changes in product mix, increases in path to market costs to better support our customers, and higher factory overhead costs, all of which were partially offset by productivity improvements.
Our strong gross margins have enabled us to make significant investments in our people, engineering, equipment, and other capabilities to provide even better support to our customers and drive organic growth in the business over the last couple of years. As it pertains to future SG&A investments, we will continue to monitor the market and control costs accordingly. While our resultant operating margin declined by approximately 200 basis points to 22.1%, versus last year, it remained approximately 400 basis points above the pre-COVID run rate.
Consolidated adjusted EBITDA totaled $152.6 million for the quarter, a decline of 7.8% year over year. Our core company ambitions continue to be the guiding principles that drive all of our initiatives forward, such as strengthening our values-based culture, being the business partner of choice, striving to be an innovation leader in the markets we operate, continuing above market growth relative to US housing starts, returning to the top quartile of our proxy peer groups for operating income margin, and longer term, returning to the top quartile of our proxy peers for return on invested capital.
The primary element underscoring our ambitions is centered on providing exceptional customer service. This level of service is predicated on our high product availability and delivery standards to provide innovative and complete solutions for the markets we serve as well as empowering our customers to become more efficient.
As proof points to our endeavors, I'd like to now spend some time highlighting some of the new business wins within our five end-use markets during the quarter, which stem from growth above the market. Beginning with the residential market, we continue to benefit from large share gains resulting from partnership agreements and large lumberyard conversions from last year, which helped mitigate some of the challenging market conditions. Our focused efforts to expand our fastener, anchor, and outdoor accent lines with our existing lumber dealer partners resulted in multiple customer conversions throughout the quarter with our pro-supply business being up double digits.
We've displaced competition and added displays, end caps, and additional shelf space in many locations across North America. Further, our longstanding relationship with National Lumberyards and relentless customer focus enabled us to spread awareness for innovative fastening solutions to several key builder divisions via job site demos and trainings.
In the commercial market, we continue to educate and partner with industry players to provide innovative solutions, including the use of our fasteners, anchors, and cold-formed steel on a charter school in Southern California, a hospital in the US Southeast, and a tilt hub warehouse project also in the southeast. By leveraging our manufacturing facility in Gallatin, Tennessee, we were also able to supply fasteners for a large export container shed project on a terminal in Canada.
In the OEM market, our dedicated sales team and innovative, high-quality products led to a faster conversion of a prominent post-frame manufacturer, resulting in noteworthy success for future post-frame connection efforts. We also continued growth in mass timber, providing connector solutions on a large museum project in the southeast. We continue to believe there are opportunities to further develop this market segment.
Within the national retail space, our team has been highly focused on home center merchandising efforts, including securing additional displays in many stores, generate incremental sales, and facilitate expanded product rollouts during the busier building season. These efforts have led to solid traction with our outdoor accidents line, fastener products, and e-commerce sales in particular.
And finally, in the component manufacturer market, our teams made progress on our long-term digital solutions roadmap to appeal to larger key component manufacturer customers. We continue to see this market as a significant opportunity and a good fit for our business model.
Next, I'll turn to our discussion on capital allocation strategy, which continues to prioritize and stockholder returns. In the second quarter, we generated cash from operations of $119 million, which helped finance $79.6 million in capital expenditures, $16.8 million for an acquisition, $50 million in share repurchases, and $22.9 million of dividends.
The M&A pipeline remains active as we continue to evaluate tuck-in opportunities within our growth initiative. In June we completed the acquisition of calculated structured designs, or CSD, for short. CSD is a software development company, providing solutions for the engineered wood, engineering, design and building industries in North America, Australia, and the UK. Opportunities such as CSD help us drive our digital solutions platform forward by increasing hardware sales and maximizing overall efficiencies for our customers.
In addition to the aforementioned investments we are making in our people, engineering, equipment, and other capabilities, work has continued on the expansion of our Columbus, Ohio facility and the new construction of our fastener facility in Gallatin, Tennessee. These investments are on track to become fully operational in 2025, and help ensure Simpson remains well positioned to service our valued customers given the expected housing market recovery.
For 2024, we expect US housing starts be flat to slightly down and European housing starts to be below prior year. Whereas in 2025, we continue to expect mid single-digit growth in US housing starts. While the market in Europe appears to have bottomed, we believe meaningful market growth there will be pushed out further into 2026 and beyond.
Before I conclude, I'd like to highlight a few important corporate developments that transpired during the quarter. First, we announced the retirement of Roger Dankel as our Executive Vice President, North American Sales of Simpson Strong-Tie Company after three decades of service to the company. Roger will continue in his role through year on 2024, after which he will remain employed as an Executive Advisor until his official retirement on June 30, 2025. We wish Roger all of the best in his retirement.
Second, we are excited to announce the hiring of Udit Mehta as our new Chief Technology Officer who will be reporting directly to me and overseeing our technology infrastructure and customer-facing digital offerings as we seek to drive innovation, efficiency, and further software development at Simpson.
Next, as part of our dedication to be the partner of choice for our suppliers, employees, and customers, as well as our commitment to give back and support the communities in which we live and work, we have been developing workforce development programs to help address field trades labor gap in the construction industry in partnership with many of our industry partners.
Additionally, based on the results of our annual customer satisfaction survey in April, we received overall positive feedback in the areas of customer service, field support, online ordering, product availability, delivery, and more. These survey results are a direct reflection of our dedicated employees, unique business model, and our continued investments provide superior customer service.
And lastly, in mid-June, we published our Fiscal 2023 Corporate Social Responsibility Report, highlighting our commitment to social responsibility and environmentally sustainable business practices to our employees and stakeholders at Simpson. For those that wish to view it, the report can be accessed on our website under the ESG tab. In summary, we remain optimistic in our ability to continue our outperformance versus a broader market despite persistent macroeconomic challenges.
Execution against a growth strategy has resulted in various new customer wins and significant improvements to our overall offering as we strive to remain supplier of choice. The strategic investments we are making in the business will help us accelerate our historical average performance for compounded annual growth in North American sales volumes of approximately 250 basis points above the market over the mid to longer term, while also returning to the top quartile profitability.
With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Brian, who will discuss our second quarter financial results in greater detail.

Brian Magstadt

Thanks, Mike, and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us on our second-quarter earnings call today.
Before I begin, I'd like to mention that, unless otherwise stated, all financial measures discussed in my prepared remarks, refer to the second quarter of 2024, and all comparisons will be year-over-year comparisons versus the second quarter of 2023.
Now, turning to our second-quarter results. Our consolidated net sales remained relatively consistent at $597 million. Within the North America segment, net sales modestly declined by 0.5% to $463 million on relatively flat sales volume and pricing.
In North America, wood construction product sales were down 1.6% and concrete construction product sales were up 6.3%. In Europe, net sales increased 1.6% to $129.9 million, primarily due to modestly higher sales volumes, particularly offset by the negative effect of $0.7 million in foreign currency translation.
Consolidated gross profit decreased 3.1% to $278.5 million, resulting in a gross margin of 46.7% compared to 48.1%. This gross margin is approximately 70 basis points above our historical average Q2 gross margin since 2018.
On a segment basis, our gross margin in North America decreased to 50% compared to 51.2%, primarily due to changes in product mix in addition to higher warehouse and freight costs as a percentage in net sales, which were partially offset by productivity improvements. Our gross margin in Europe decreased to 35.4% from 37.4%, also primarily due to higher labor, factory, overhead, warehouse and freight costs as a percentage of net sales.
From a product perspective, our second-quarter gross margin on wood products was 46.5% compared to 48.4%, and was 47.5% for concrete products compared to 45.9%.
Now, turning to our second quarter costs and operating expenses. Total operating expenses were $145 million, an increase of $4.3 million or 3%, primarily due to increased personnel costs, including added headcount to drive our growth and higher professional fees. As a percentage of net sales, total operating expenses were 24.3% compared to 23.6%.
To further detail our SG&A investments, our second-quarter research and development and engineering expenses increased 5.4% to $22.7 million, primarily due to the higher personnel costs noted above. Selling expenses increased 10.9% to $55.9 million, primarily due also to the higher personnel costs. On a segment basis, selling expenses in North America were up 12.2%; and in Europe, they were up 6.7%.
General and administrative expenses decreased 3.5% to $66.4 million, primarily due to lower variable compensation costs, partially offset by higher personnel costs. As a result, our consolidated income from operations totaled $132.2 million, a decline of 8.9% from $145 million. Our consolidated operating income margin was 22.1% down from 24.3%.
In North America, income from operations decreased 7.9% to $132.1 million, primarily due to increased personal costs and professional fees, coupled with lower gross profit. In Europe, income from operations was $11.2 million compared to $14 million due to lower gross profit and higher personnel costs.
Our effective tax rate was 26.3%, approximately 40 basis points higher than the prior year period. Accordingly, net income totaled $97.8 million, or $2.31 per fully diluted share, compared to $107.2 million, or $2.50 per fully diluted share.
For the second quarter, adjusted EBITDA of $152.6 million, declined 7.8%.
Now, turning to our balance sheet and cash flow. Our balance sheet remained healthy with cash and cash equivalents, totaling $354.9 million at June 30, 2024, down $14.3 million from our balance at March 31, 2024. Due primarily to share repurchases of $50 million, capital expenditures, acquisitions, as well as changes in working capital. Our debt balance was approximately $470.7 million, net of capitalized finance costs. And our net debt position was $115.8 million. We have $381 million remaining available for borrowing on our primary line of credit.
Our inventory position as of June 30, 2024, was $533.6 million, which was down $22.1 million, compared to our balance at March 31, 2024, on slightly lower pounds. Effective inventory management remains a core element of our strategy and competitive advantage to ensure on-time delivery and exceptional service to our customers.
During the second quarter, we generated cash flow from operations of approximately $119 million compared to $7.9 million. We invested $79.6 million for capital expenditures, including our facility investments made in acquisition, and paid $22.9 million in dividends to our stockholders.
As noted previously, we also repurchased $50 million in our common stock with 283,273 shares in the open market at an average price of $176.51 per share. As of June 30, approximately $50 million remained available on our $100 million share repurchase authorization.
Next, turning to our 2024 financial outlook. Based on business trends and conditions as of today, July 22, our guidance for the full year ending December 31, 2024 is as follows. We now expect our operating margin to be in the range of 20% to 21%. Key assumptions continue to include expected moderate volume growth on relatively flat US housing starts and stable pricing, a slightly lower overall gross margin based on the addition of new warehouses and modest increase in labor and factory and tooling as a percentage in net sales, $4 million to $5 million in expected total costs to pursue defensive synergies in Europe as well as other acquisition opportunities, and an operating expenses at a level we believe are necessary to position the company to make continued meaningful share gains in our markets and growth initiatives.
In the current challenging housing market, we are appropriately balancing our ability to control costs in the business with our growth-focused investments to ensure we can deliver a strong operating income margin within the top quartile of our proxy peers in line with our core company ambition.
Next, annual interest expense on the outstanding revolving credit facility in term loans, which had borrowings of $75 million and $410.6 million as of December 31, 2023, respectively, is expected to be approximately $8 million, including the benefit from interest rate and cross currency swaps, mitigating substantially all of the volatility from changes in interest rates. Interest on our cash and money markets is expected to offset this expense.
Our effective tax rate is estimated to continue to be in the range of 24.5% to 25.5%, including both federal and state income tax rates based on current tax laws.
And finally, our capital expenditures are estimated to be in the range of $180 million to $190 million, which includes $90 million to $100 million for the Columbus facility expansion and the new Gallatin facility construction with the remaining spend carrying over into 2025.
In summary, we have made tremendous strides in recent years to grow our share and enhance our performance throughout market cycles, with our core company ambitions as our guide stones. Our overall financial position remains strong with a solid balance sheet that supports ongoing investments in our growth that position us to capitalize on the eventual resurgence in residential housing. I'd like to thank the entire Simpson team for their hard work and execution.
With that, I will now turn the call over to the operator to begin the Q&A session.

Question and Answer Session

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Daniel Moore, CJS Securities.

Daniel Moore

Thank you, Mike, Brian. Thanks for the color and taking the questions. I'll start with, I missed the commentary around national retail accounts. Can you just repeat that? And how much of an impact, if at all, was inventory management or de-stocking that channel? Is that a headwind, either in the quarter or on a go-forward basis for the next quarter or two for you?

Michael Olosky

Yeah. So, good question, Dan. So we continue to be really pleased with the work that our national retail team is doing. Quarter to date, volume was down 3.3%. Really, the biggest driver in that was comps.
Last quarter, we had picked up a whole bunch of business with some of our customers, and we were loading in the shelves last year. So that made the comp a little bit more challenging. Year-to-date volume for national retail is up about 3%. We continue to be quite pleased with our outdoor accents growth there.
So that's the black hardware that's used on ducks and pergolas. We're also quite pleased with our growth of our passenger business in that segment as well.

Daniel Moore

Very helpful. Appreciate that. And then you talked about you -- obviously appreciate the color, updated view around new US housing starts, where you see them coming in for the year. Not you continue to outpace by close to mid-single digits above that to 250 basis point target. Is it your expectation to continue to outpace by at least low- to mid-single digits as we look to the balance of the year? I think you said moderate volume growth and this is your expectation. Just want to make sure that I heard that correctly.

Michael Olosky

Yes. So, as you know, Dan, the last eight years we've outgrown the market by about 250 basis points. Clearly, the market has not helped us a whole lot recently. So if you look at US housing starts, it's down six out of the last eight quarters. We had a really big swing from Q1 to Q2 of this year.
Q1 was up a couple percent, Q2 down 7%. And if that kind of holds true, that forecasted level, Dan, the market will be down now, basically down to flattish for three out of the last four years. And we'll finish the year with housing starts kind of somewhat similar to what we had in 2020.
And then just to put that a little bit into context, if we finished this year with housing starts similar to what we had in 2020, back in 2020, we had a $1.25 billion business with about a $250 million operating profit. With that same market size, $1.4 million-ish housing starts, we will have added a billion onto it. So that $2.25 billion range. And we will add an additional $200 million in operating profit basically with the same size market.
So we're pleased in how we've developed things over the last four years, but clearly that's been a headwind and we want to continue to outgrow the market. And our target is to do that at least 250 basis points going forward.

Daniel Moore

Really helpful. And then from the outset of this year, you've sort of described 24 as being an investment year in terms of personnel, service capacity, so that you can sustain that outperformance to go forward basis. Looking to '25, if housing does reaccelerate toward the mid-single-digit growth as you expect and you continue to outpace, how do we think about SG&A growth from an elevated base in '24? In other words, how do we think about kind of potential operating income margin uplift in that type of environment?

Michael Olosky

So, Dan, we've been -- over the last couple of years, because we've had strong growth margins, we've really been reinvesting back into the business. So warehouse to provide better service and be closer to our customers, SG&A in terms of software, engineers, salespeople; a lot of investment into the digital tool.
So, we believe we've got a lot of that foundation set going forward. We do think there are a lot of additional growth opportunities to invest in the future, but as long as we see the short-term housing market be in this flattish range, we think we can dial back costs a little bit and be even more cost-conscious than we have been in the past.

Brian Magstadt

Yeah. So Dan, it's Brian. So as we think about going into next year and as we are evaluating those opportunities, as Mike noted to, continue our above-market growth, outpace housing, we're looking at what it's going to take to develop those products, those solutions, have people in the field supporting our customers whether it's field salespeople, engineers. And of course, there are many things that go along with bringing those products out.
We do -- as Mike noted, we're very closely monitoring our end markets and making decisions on what we're spending hiring for on a go forward basis. So although we're not yet prepared to come out with what our 2025 operating margin guidance would be, we do have a company ambition to be in that top quartile of operating margin. And we're not quite there, but that's part of what is guiding how we make decisions on the programs and other items that we're funding and making those investments in.

Daniel Moore

That's really helpful. Last one then I'll jump out. But you mentioned, in terms of capital allocation, you mentioned M&A opportunities. Are you looking mostly at tuck-ins, similar in that $10 million, $20 million-plus range, just kind of in terms of size of deals, that's one.
And then two, you bought back $50 million worth of stock in the quarter, shares looking to open a little bit below the $176 average buyback price. Are you likely to continue to be an opportunistic at a similar or even perhaps higher rate in terms of buybacks as we look forward? Thanks, again, for all the color and answering the questions.

Michael Olosky

You're welcome, Dan. So from a capital allocation perspective, as we noted we've got some big investments we're making in our business to support our manufacturing and distribution footprint.
Now, that being said, we did complete a transaction in the quarter. We're evaluating other opportunities that would be considered with the tuck-in type acquisitions that you mentioned. We won't comment on size of those, but it would definitely help us accelerate our strategic ambitions in going after some of those key markets. From a share repurchase perspective, we'll continue to look to be opportunistic. But with the capital allocation plans that we've got laid out, we're balancing all of those various uses of capital.

Daniel Moore

Very helpful. Back with many follow-ups. Thank you.

Michael Olosky

Thanks, Dan.

Operator

Tim Wojs, Baird.

Tim Wojs

Good afternoon, gentlemen. Maybe just to start so if your guidance before was low single-digit starts growth this year and now you're kind of guiding flat to down, I guess what's changed in the market for Simpson's business? Is that just -- or in the market in general. Is it weaker multifamily? Or is the single-family market also maybe not as strong as you thought?

Michael Olosky

Yeah. So Tim, when we came into 2024, we thought the market was going to be flattish from all of the indications we'd had from our customers and the market analysts. When we got into first quarter, we saw 2% market growth. And housing starts for the first quarter. We'd heard from our customers things are going to be a little bit more optimistic.
And then April was a pretty slow. Then the second quarter came in, we started to see things really slow down. April had an initial indication of being pretty good, and then it really slowed down. And so based off of that and everything we're hearing from our market and the fact that the housing starts were down 7%, that's why we think best guess, flattish, which we still think is above what we're hearing from some of the market forecasters. But we do think things are going to pick up a little bit in the second half, and that's what's driving our guidance.

Tim Wojs

Okay. Okay. That's helpful. And then mix was -- there's a bunch of mixed issues that kind of created some headwinds last quarter to sales, especially in North America. But it doesn't seem like much of that has impacted this quarter. Does that suggest some of the things that happened in the first quarter went away, or is that still a lingering concern or issue?

Brian Magstadt

Yeah. Tim. It's Brian. No issue there in the second quarter. We were looking at volumes that were flattish as we called out. And as you see, the net sales are similar. So those first quarter items that you noted did not repeat.

Tim Wojs

Okay. Okay. And then and then just another question, just on the investments. I mean, it sounds like you guys are pretty active and kind of how you're thinking about kind of making incremental investments relative to sales. I guess what are the biggest levers you could pull if the top line did come in below your expectations over the last over the next, say, 18 to 24 months?

Michael Olosky

Yes. Yes. So Tim, and let's say, we're assuming that the housing market is going to pick up because of the shortage of we all know. So if that's the case, we would really be focusing on things like T&E travel on making sure any hires are critical to the current role and directly impacts directly impact revenue in the short term. And we've had a hard time finding people, both in our manufacturing facilities and our sales teams and engineering teams.
We want to make sure we keep the teams in place. And so when the market picks up, we're ready to take advantage of it. So that means anything in the short term of revenue comes in a little bit lower than we were hoping it would be expense control, consulting, marketing, travel, that type of stuff.

Tim Wojs

Okay. Okay, got you. And then I'm going to sneak one more in. So Brian, you said gross margins, I think, as a percentage of sales, are supposed to be down a little bit this year. Does that bake in any benefit in the back half of the year from potentially lower raw materials?

Brian Magstadt

Not necessarily. It's pretty -- and maybe a little bit of help there offset by some of the higher costs that we're seeing in the factory -- or I'm sorry, in the warehouse. We're seeing freight increase costs. So there are different puts and takes on the gross margin line, feeling good about our inventory position and material that carries through to meet our forecasted production and demand expectations. But I guess some of the headwinds would be in -- so mostly on the freight and logistics categories within gross margin or within customer sales.

Tim Wojs

Yes. No, I understand. Okay, good. Thanks for the time guys. Talk to you soon.

Brian Magstadt

Thank you, Tim.

Operator

Kurt Yinger, D.A. Davidson.

Kurt Yinger

Great. Thanks and good afternoon, everyone. But in terms of, I guess, the gross margin on a year-over-year basis, I mean, how significant of a headwind would you consider the new warehouses as part of the path to market initiative?
And I guess as we look into '25 and think about the Columbus expansion going live and Gallatin at some point as well, how would you have us, I guess, at this stage, think about the cost implications of that, whether it be on the COGS line or operating expenses? And just some initial thoughts on how that might impact margins?

Michael Olosky

And so as we're thinking about the new satellite warehouses that we've put in place, and Kurt, I think as you know, we've we've done select regional satellite warehouses throughout our operations. We really feel that is a competitive advantage for us. It gets us closer to our customers, really helps us deliver on that value proposition of have a very high customer service from a getting product to the customer's location or to a job site.
As we look at the warehousing costs and the freight costs relative to prior year from a dollar perspective, they are up a little bit. As we look at going forward, we feel we've pretty much fully absorbed those, although we would expect to continue to drive additional revenues through those locations, because we feel that customer service really does help us differentiate.
Part two on your question would be on the additional expansion in Ohio. I'll got to Gallatin in a moment. But with that one, we feel that for us to continue our above market growth, that facility needs to be bigger because a lot of the growth that we have seen has been east of the Mississippi.
And for us to be really effective in producing and then distributing out of that hub operation there for the Midwest and Northeast, we believe that will help us continue to grow. We'll come online but mid to late next year. So I wouldn't expect a huge dollar impact in that regard.
From a Gallatin, the new fashion and production that's more late '25, early '26. Yeah, there will be additional depreciation associated with those of those facilities, especially as we're ramping up, getting Gallatin fully converted over from from our current site and then adding in the additional activities that we'll do at that location as we vertically integrate some of our processes there.
So potentially a little bit of a headwind for a year or so. But I wouldn't I wouldn't expect it to be a significant driver of reduced gross margins. If anything, it's going to take us a little bit of time to fully absorb all the operations. But we still really feel really comfortable, and we'll see the additional opportunities -- both of those facility's frame.

Kurt Yinger

Got it. Okay. Thanks for that, Brian. And then can you just talk a little bit more about the calculated structure design acquisition? I mean, how might that integrate with some of the existing kind of software offerings? And is that something that you'll kind of go to market with on a standalone basis, or wrap into what you're already offering? Any color there?

Brian Magstadt

Yes. So Kurt, for us to offer a comprehensive solution for the component manufacturing industry. We have software the designs, trusses, wall panels, and engineered wood products. So basically the truss, the wall, and floor, and the largest truss manufacturers -- component manufacturers typically make all three of those products. So if we don't offer -- have that complete solution, we're not able to go after those customers.
So the CSD component, which is something we've been licensing and using anyways, now we kind of vertically integrate that they are the EWP solution. And so now that we own them, we'll be able to fully integrate that into one seamless way to design trusses, walls, and floors to be able to go after some of the bigger component manufacturers out there.

Kurt Yinger

Got it. Okay. And that kind of dovetails in my last question, which is, I guess, just from a software offering perspective, I mean, do you feel like you're at that complete state to where you can service the largest of players and everything they're doing? Or is there still some work to go in that regard, but still some work to go in that regard?

Michael Olosky

There's still some work to go. So we need to have the truss, the wall panels, and the floor panels all fully integrated into one seamless solution. And we are working on that, but we are not there yet. And then we also need production management capabilities to be able to run their manufacturing facilities. We have some solutions in that space, but we have a little bit more development to go there as well.
So we believe we're making good progress with the people that are good fit for our software. We continue to emphasize the whole business model and surface aspect with those customers, so that's helping us quite a bit. But we still have a little bit of work to do to be able to go after the very largest component manufacturers.

Kurt Yinger

Got it. Makes sense. Thanks for that, Mike. And good luck here in Q3, guys

Michael Olosky

Thanks, Kurt.

Brian Magstadt

You know, if I could, real quick, Mike, Tim was asking earlier about our flat-to-down guide on single-family, all-day family housing. One thing I did want to add is our July, what we're seeing from the billings in July month to date versus last year we are up mid-single digits company-wide in North America, up low double digits from a revenue perspective in July.
So like Q2, the Q3 quarter is starting off relatively strong compared to July last year. So Tim, if you're still listening, I wanted to make sure I covered that as well.

Operator

Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. This does conclude our Q&A session and our call. If you would -- you may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.