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Text: We appreciate your interest in Vulcan Materials Company.
We hope you and your families are and will continue to be safe and healthy.
2020 represented another year of strong earnings growth for Vulcan, despite the many challenges associated with the pandemic.
Our results demonstrated the strength, flexibility and resilient nature of our aggregates business, but most of all 2020 demonstrated the commitment of Vulcan employees as they faced uncertainty and had to make adjustments, both in the professional and their personal lives.
Our team stayed focus on operating safely, servicing our customers and making progress on our four strategic disciplines.
Congratulations on a job well done.
In a few minutes, Suzanne will share some fourth quarter highlights with you.
But first, I'd like to summarize our full-year 2020 accomplishments, and discuss broad themes and where we are headed.
Our full-year financial results were strong.
Total company adjusted EBITDA increased 4% to $1.324 billion and EBITDA margin expanded by 150 basis points.
Cash generation continued to be strong with operating cash flows increasing by 9% to $1.1 billion.
And finally, one of our principal measures, return on invested capital improved by 40 basis points to 14.3%.
These results were particularly noteworthy considering our annual aggregates volume declined by 3% as compared to 2019.
Higher average selling prices and effective cost control were key drivers of this performance.
Aggregates pricing improved by just over 3% on both a reported and mix-adjusted basis.
Importantly, these pricing gains were widespread across our footprint.
Our total cost of sales per ton increased by 2%, while our unit cash cost of sales, which is more controllable, only grew by 1%.
This led to a 5.5% gain in our aggregates cash gross profit per ton.
At $7.11, we are making good progress toward our longer term goal of $9 per ton.
This improvement in unit profitability was supported by our four strategic disciplines, commercial excellence, operations excellence, logistics innovation and strategic sourcing.
We also experienced improvements in each of our non-aggregates business segments.
Collectively, gross profit improved 12% across these three segments.
Unit profitability increased in both asphalt and country.
Asphalt gross profit increased $12 million or 19% over the prior year, even though volumes declined 7%.
This improvement in profitability resulted from stable sales prices and lower liquid asphalt cost.
Our ready-mix concrete unit profitability increased 8%.
Average selling prices increased by 2% and volume declined by 5%, primarily as a result of the cement shortages in California.
The higher profitability in each of our business segments and our improving overall EBITDA margin set us up well for 2021.
We are well positioned to take advantage of market opportunities in our geographic footprint.
The demand environment is also improving, particularly in residential construction and highway construction.
Let's take each market segment in turn.
Residential continues to show strength, especially in single family.
The market fundamentals of low interest rates, and reduced supply suggests that the growth will continue.
This represents a clear opportunity for us as both permits and starts are growing faster in Vulcan-served markets.
Highway lettings and awards returned to growth in the fourth quarter.
State DOT budgets have stabilized, with most of our states showing budgets flat to up from 2020.
The caution in this market segment is that it will require time to turn awards into shipments given the mid-year 2020 loan awards due to the pandemic.
While timing of shipments is a variable, we will see improvement in highway shipments throughout 2021.
As we said in the third quarter, the near-term outlook for the nonresidential construction sector provides the lease forward visibility.
Dodge construction starts are still down year-over-year, but certainly, indicators are beginning to improve, perhaps signaling that potential improvement is just around the corner.
Weakness lingers in the office space and hospitality related sectors, but there is growth in the heavier nonresidential categories like distribution facilities and data centers.
In fact, warehouses are now the largest nonresidential category as measured by square feet and represent approximately one-third of construction awards.
These projects are typically more aggregate intensive, and 90% of the near-term growth in this sector will occur in Vulcan-served states according to Dodge.
The Administration and Congress are committed to an infrastructure-led economic recovery, and have indicated that they will focus on an infrastructure bill next, after the COVID-19 relief package.
Clearly, our leading market positions will mean broad participation in infrastructure-related spending.
We believe demand for aggregates will continue to improve as we progress through 2021.
That being said, the timing of shipments to highway projects and nonresidential construction projects remains a variable.
We consider these factors as we thought about our 2021 prospects and guidance.
That said, we expect our adjusted EBITDA to be between $1.34 billion and $1.44 billion.
We anticipate 2021 aggregates shipments could follow a range of a 2% decline to a 2% increase as compared to 2020.
Regardless of volume swings, we will improve our full-year unit profitability in Aggregates.
We expect aggregates freight-adjusted average selling prices to increase by 2% to 4% in 2021.
And gross profit in our non-aggregates segments is forecast to improve by mid-single to mid-high single digits.
To sum it up, 2021 will turn out to be a year of solid earnings growth.
Before I discuss fourth quarter 2020 highlights, I'll fill in some additional details on our 2021 guidance.
We made significant reductions in our selling, general and administrative expenses in 2020.
We expect to further leverage our overhead costs in 2021 and anticipate our SG&A expenses to be between $365 million and $375 million.
We anticipate interest expense to approximate $130 million for the full year.
Barring any changes to federal tax law, our effective tax rate will be about 21%.
The category of depreciation, depletion, accretion and amortization expenses will be around $400 million.
Now with respect to capital expenditures, we invested $361 million in 2020.
We expect to spend between $450 million and $475 million 2021.
This includes fully restarting and advancing growth projects that were delayed last spring, such as the opening of a new quarry in California, capacity expansion at other quarries, and improvements to our logistics and distribution network.
It also reflects a catch-up of operating capex that was postponed at the start of the pandemic.
As always, we'll carefully monitor the economic environment and adjust our capital spending as necessary.
As you model, you'll note that the combination of our assumptions for 2021 leads to another healthy year of cash generation.
I'll now give a little color on the fourth quarter of 2020.
Adjusted EBITDA was $311 million, up 4% from last year's fourth quarter.
Aggregates volume declined by 1%, while reported pricing increased by 3% and mix adjusted pricing by 2%.
Costs were slightly higher in the quarter due to additional stripping costs in advance of future shipping growth and the timing of repairs.
There were two items that affected the comparability of our fully diluted earnings per share in both the fourth quarter and full-year 2020 as compared to those same periods in 2019.
First, we recorded a one-time non-cash pension settlement charge of $23 million or $0.13 per diluted share in connection with the voluntary lump sum distribution of benefits to certain fully vested plan participants.
This liability management action will benefit future pension expense and funding requirements.
And second, the tax rate for fourth quarter and full-year 2020 was higher than in the comparable periods in 2019.
Last year, the tax benefits associated with share-based compensation and R&D credits were greater than the same benefits in 2020.
The resulting earnings per share effect was $0.04 per diluted share in the fourth quarter and $0.18 per diluted share for the full year.
Moving on to the balance sheet, our financial position remains very strong with a weighted average debt maturity of 13 years and a weighted average interest rate of 4%.
Our net debt to EBITDA leverage ratio was 1.6 times as of December 31, reflecting $1.2 billion of cash on hand.
Approximately $500 million of this cash will be used to repay a debt maturity coming due next month.
As Tom mentioned, our cash flow was robust in 2020 and contributed to year-over-year leverage reduction.
Due to the uncertainty surrounding the pandemic and the resulting slowdown in economic activity, M&A was lighter than usual in 2020.
We returned $206 million to shareholders through increased dividends and share repurchases.
Our capital allocation priorities, which have helped to drive an improvement of 220 basis points and our return on invested capital over the last three years, remain unchanged.
We will continue to operate Vulcan for the long term, and our focus on building an even stronger and more profitable business.
We know that our leading market positions and our aggregates-focused business are strengths, along with our strong balance sheet.
When combined with the execution capabilities that we demonstrated in 2020, as well as solid long-term fundamentals, we are excited about our future.
While there may be challenges in 2021, we have confidence in its potential.

user
qtrly total revenue $ 1,175.1 million versus $ 1,186.2 million.
in 2021, expects to spend between $450 million and $475 million on capital expenditures.
sees 2021 aggregates shipments down 2 percent to up 2 percent versus 2020.
sees year-over-year aggregates freight-adjusted price increase of 2 to 4 percent in 2021.

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