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Text: As the operator indicated, please limit your Q&A participation to one question plus a follow-up.
This will help maximize participation during our time together.
We appreciate your interest in Vulcan Materials Company.
We hope you and your families are well and will continue to be safe and healthy.
Despite the difficulties caused by the pandemic, our company continues to thrive as a direct result of their efforts.
Turning now to the third quarter.
Our financial results can be summed up very simply.
Our teams delivered another quarter of aggregate unit margin expansion through improved pricing, disciplined operating performances and solid execution.
Our aggregate cash gross profit per ton increased by 5% despite an 8% volume decline.
Volume was obviously impacted by the pandemic, but also by severe wet weather across the Atlantic Coast, the Southeast and Texas and wildfires on the West Coast.
We expanded our unit margins by remaining focused on what we could control and by making sure that we were well positioned to respond to a rapidly changing environment.
We've talked about our four strategic disciplines for a number of quarters now, and we believe that they have been a critical part of our success this year.
Our commercial excellence and our operational disciplines have been particularly helpful.
On the commercial side, our aggregate mix adjusted sales price increased by approximately 3% in the quarter.
On a year-to-date basis, mix adjusted pricing increased by 3.5% despite a 4% decline in volume.
Operationally, year-over-year, our cash unit cost of sales was flat, both for the quarter and year-to-date.
Cost control, operating efficiencies and a tailwind from diesel mitigated the impact of lower aggregate volume.
Our four strategic disciplines continue to drive improvement in our unit margins.
This is evidenced by our 7% year-to-date improvement in cash gross profit per ton.
Suzanne will review the quarter and year-to-date results in more detail shortly, but first, I want to address the demand trends that we're seeing.
Certain leading indicators are showing signs of improvement, both sequentially and year-over-year.
However, the pace of recovery and the timing of shipments is not certain.
Residential construction continues to be the most resilient of our market segments.
Starts and permits have rebounded, particularly in our footprint.
Single-family housing is leading the way, and we are especially well positioned in our markets to take advantage of this trend.
Private nonresidential construction continues to be the most variable in use.
Following the drop in the spring, construction starts have remained weak as compared to last year.
However, we are encouraged by improvement in certain leading indicators, which could point to future growth.
Dodge Data states that warehouses and distribution centers, now the largest nonresidential starts category continue to see growth.
As a leading supplier in the majority of our markets, we are well positioned to serve all types of nonresidential business regardless of the category.
According to Dodge, Vulcan-served states are expected to account for approximately 90% of the growth in warehouses and distribution centers over the next two years.
In addition, nonresidential demand for commercial buildings, like gas stations and grocery stores has historically followed the build-out of new housing subdivisions.
We could expect this type of traditional nonresidential construction to follow the growth we're experiencing in residential demand.
As we think about these current trends, it's important to keep in mind that unlike the great recession of 2008, nonresidential construction going into the pandemic was not overbuilt.
The uncertainty surrounding the pandemic has weighed more heavily on this segment.
With respect to public highway construction, most Vulcan-served states have flat to increasing DOT budgets for their fiscal year 2021 versus 2020.
This, coupled with a one-year extension of the FAST Act bodes well for highway demand.
Now that state DOTs have greater clarity around highway revenues, lettings are returning to higher pre-COVID levels and are projected to continue to be consistent with state DOT budgets in 2021.
Timing of shipments to highway projects may start a little slow early in 2021 due to states conservative approaches to lettings earlier this year, but will pick up as the year progresses.
As a more recent data point, aggregate shipments in the month of October were down 5% due to one less shipping day.
While one month doesn't constitute a trend, we were still pleased with the outcome and attribute this performance to better weather and pent-up demand from the third quarter.
As we consider the remainder of 2020, we now believe we have sufficient near-term visibility to provide guidance for the full year.
We expect that our 2020 adjusted EBITDA will range between $1.285 billion to $1.315 billion.
This guidance range is predicated on no major changes in COVID-19 shelter-in-place restrictions, it also assumes our normal weather pattern.
With respect to 2021, we are in the midst of our budget season and still have work to do.
Visibility continues to improve.
Therefore, we expect to be able to provide 2021 guidance in February.
The key point to remember here is, while the pandemic has created uncertainty, our view of the underlying fundamentals of our business remains unchanged.
Our aggregates-focused business is sound, resilient and adaptable to changing market conditions.
We have a history of good operational execution, and this increases our confidence in our ability to compound unit margins.
We're in the right geographies.
Our balance sheet and liquidity position are a great source of strength and flexibility and will support our operational initiatives and our growth plans.
Going forward, we will remain focused on the things that we can control, keeping our employees safe and healthy, taking good care of our customers and ensuring strong execution on our operating disciplines.
We have confidence in our future success.
And now I'll hand the call over to Suzanne for additional comments.
I'll cover a few financial highlights and then comment briefly on our balance sheet and liquidity position.
Our adjusted EBITDA for the third quarter was $403 million.
Adjusted EBITDA margins increased by 210 basis points as compared to the prior year despite an 8% decline in total revenues.
Significant contributors to our quarterly EBITDA margin improvement were: first, the aggregates unit margin expansion that Tom discussed earlier; and second, a 6% or $5 million year-over-year reduction in SAG expense.
These metrics have improved on a year-to-date basis as well.
Our aggregates cash gross profit per ton increased by 7% to $7.15, while aggregates volume decreased by 4%.
SAG expense for the nine months declined by 5% or $14 million due to the execution of cost reduction initiatives and general cost control.
Now I'd like to provide a little color on our quarterly segment performance.
Starting with aggregates, volumes declined in most of our markets, reflecting weaker demand resulting from the pandemic.
In addition, the key markets that Tom called out were particularly affected by severe weather as we experienced a record-setting number of named storms.
California shipments were impacted by wildfires and resulting power outages, which interrupted the supply of cement or ready-mix concrete production.
This limited construction activity.
Aggregate sales price growth in the quarter of nearly 3% on a mix adjusted basis was widespread across our footprint, reflecting a positive pricing environment.
The combination of sales price growth and good cost control more than offset reduced volume.
And as a result, virtually all of our markets improved their respective unit profitability.
Moving to our nonaggregates segments.
Asphalt gross profit improved by $3 million as compared to last year's quarter.
A 13% volume decline was more than offset by improved pricing and lower liquid asphalt costs.
The concrete segment's gross profit was $12 million, a reduction of $3 million versus the prior year.
Shipments decreased by 11% due to wet weather, particularly in Virginia, our largest concrete market.
California's volume was also less than last year's third quarter due to the factors previously mentioned.
On a year-over-year basis, we were particularly pleased with our improving return on investment profile.
For the trailing 12 months ended September 30, ROI was 14.2%.
And consistent with past practice, this was calculated on an adjusted EBITDA basis.
Turning now to the balance sheet and liquidity.
We took further steps this quarter to enhance our position.
We renewed our revolving credit facility for another five years and took the opportunity to increase its size from $750 million to $1 billion.
All other terms were substantially similar to those contained in the previous facility.
At the end of the quarter, our leverage ratio was 1.7 times on a net debt-to-EBITDA basis, reflecting $1.1 billion of cash on hand.
Approximately $500 million of this cash on hand will be used to repay a debt maturity coming due in March 2021.
And at September 30, our available liquidity was a very healthy $2 billion.
We also generated a robust $1.1 billion of operating cash flow in the trailing 12-month period.
That represents a 23% increase as compared to the previous period.
We have been and will continue to be disciplined about how we invest our cash and therefore, our capital allocation priorities are unchanged.
Capital expenditures for the nine months totaled $229 million.
And we now expect to spend between $300 million and $350 million this year, a modest increase from our prior guidance of $275 million to $325 million.
For making marked progress toward our longer-term goal of $9 cash gross profit per ton and for driving our improved results through our four strategic disciplines.

user
qtrly total revenues $1,309.9 million versus $ 1,418.8 million.
expect full-year 2020 adjusted ebitda of $1.285 billion to $1.315 billion.

assistant