Watsco Q2 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

  • Negative Sentiment: Despite a late start to the summer season, sales declined 4% in Q2, driven by lower volumes in residential new construction and international markets.
  • Positive Sentiment: Watsco delivered record gross profit margins and expanded EBIT margins despite lower sales, benefiting from OEM pricing actions and its PriceFX platform.
  • Neutral Sentiment: The transition to next-generation A2L refrigerant equipment—affecting 55% of historical product sales—has increased inventory and supply-chain strain but is expected to simplify operations by 2026.
  • Positive Sentiment: Digital channels showed strong growth, with e-commerce sales hitting $2.5 billion (34% of total revenues), OnCallAir up 19% to $1.6 billion, and mobile app users growing 17%.
  • Positive Sentiment: Watsco is investing in innovation—building the Watsco One platform for national contractors, expanding parts & supplies, accelerating pricing optimization, and launching AI initiatives to drive future growth.
AI Generated. May Contain Errors.
Earnings Conference Call
Watsco Q2 2025
00:00 / 00:00

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Operator

Day, and welcome to the Watsco Second Quarter of twenty twenty five Earnings Conference Call. All participants will be in a listen only mode for the duration of the call. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Please also note that this event is being recorded today. I would now like to turn the conference over to Albert Naumann, CEO and Chairman. Please go ahead.

Albert Nahmad
Albert Nahmad
Chairman & CEO at Watsco

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to our second quarter earnings call. This is Al Naumet, Chairman and CEO. And with me is A. J.

Albert Nahmad
Albert Nahmad
Chairman & CEO at Watsco

Naumet, President Paul Johnston Barry Logan and Rick Gomez. Before we start, our normal cautionary statement. This conference call has forward looking statements as defined by SEC laws and regulations and are made pursuant to the Safe Harbor provisions of these various laws. Ultimate results may differ materially from the forward looking statements. Watsco delivered healthy second quarter results in a soft market conditions.

Albert Nahmad
Albert Nahmad
Chairman & CEO at Watsco

I should say, in soft market condition. 2025 marks a year of significant product transition to next generation equipment containing a two l refrigerants. The transition affects roughly 55% of our historical product sales. The trip this transition affects our inventories, our supply chain, staffing levels in our branches, and other aspects of our business. Regulatory changes have historically been good for our business and good for our customers.

Albert Nahmad
Albert Nahmad
Chairman & CEO at Watsco

We expect that transition to be no different than has happened in the past. The changes are substantial and complete and we'll look forward to operations as simpler business in 2026. Let me turn to second quarter highlights. Sales declined 4%, like the double digit pricing gains for the new equipment, offset by lower volumes. We had a late start to the summer season.

Albert Nahmad
Albert Nahmad
Chairman & CEO at Watsco

Sales for residential new construction and international markets remain subdued. On the plus side, Watsco achieved record gross profit margins. Our performance yielded an increase in EBIT and expanded EBIT margins despite lower sales. Our results benefited from OEM pricing actions. Our pricing technology platform called PriceFX also contributed.

Albert Nahmad
Albert Nahmad
Chairman & CEO at Watsco

Gross margins remain a focus. There is much potential to improve over time. SG and A increased 6% as we incurred extra cost during the transition. We also added 10 new locations from recent acquisitions. Our balance sheet remains solid.

Albert Nahmad
Albert Nahmad
Chairman & CEO at Watsco

We have a strong cash position and no debt. We continue to invest in innovation and technology to separate us from our competitors. Watsco's technology journey began fifteen years ago, and we have made terrific progress. Example, ecommerce continues to grow and is now a $2,500,000,000 business or 34% of our sales. Mobile apps have now 70,000 users and grew 17% versus last year.

Albert Nahmad
Albert Nahmad
Chairman & CEO at Watsco

The annual volume of products sold through OnCallAir, which is our digital selling platform for customer contractors, increased 19% to $1,600,000,000. It's a great assist to our customers. But we're not standing still in terms of ideas and making further investments. We are building on or adding new initiatives to drive growth and to delight our customers. Examples include, a new technology driven sales platform being developed to capture larger national customers.

Albert Nahmad
Albert Nahmad
Chairman & CEO at Watsco

We're talking about national customers here. This would be incremental to Watsco's core replacement vehicles and is expected to be launched in 2026. We have accelerated adoption of our pricing platform, price, FX is the name of it. Our goal is to reach 30% gross profit margin. We have launched an initiative to grow the parts and supply segment of our business, which today is roughly 30% of sales and can be a much larger can be much larger over time.

Albert Nahmad
Albert Nahmad
Chairman & CEO at Watsco

And we launched two AI platforms, one internal and one external to harness our data. Artificial intelligence offers the potential to further transform our customer experience, improve operating efficiency, and create new data driven growth strategies. This is an exciting time, and these are just a few of the many initiatives underway. Now we will expand on these themes at an investor event in Miami, which will occur after temperatures have dropped a bit. Stay tuned for additional details.

Albert Nahmad
Albert Nahmad
Chairman & CEO at Watsco

Finally, we believe our culture of innovation along with our scale entrepreneurial culture and capacity to invest are unmatched in our industry. With that, let's turn to q and a.

Operator

We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your touch tone phone. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. And if at any time your question has been addressed and you would like to withdraw it, And our first question here will come from Ryan Merkel with William Blair. Please go ahead with your question.

Albert Nahmad
Albert Nahmad
Chairman & CEO at Watsco

Good morning, Ryan.

Ryan Merkel
Co-Group Head–Industrials at William Blair & Company, L.L.C

Hey, good morning, everyone. Good morning.

Barry Logan
Barry Logan
EVP, Secretary & Director at Watsco

Hi, Ryan.

Ryan Merkel
Co-Group Head–Industrials at William Blair & Company, L.L.C

So my first question is just on volumes in the quarter were a little bit worse than I was expecting. I know you mentioned weather, A2L, new construction. Would just love to hear from you what happened there? And then more importantly, are you seeing trends improve in July?

Albert Nahmad
Albert Nahmad
Chairman & CEO at Watsco

I'm going to ask both Paul and Barry to respond to that.

Paul Johnston
Paul Johnston
Executive Vice President at Watsco

Yeah, revenues were not as strong as we anticipated going into Q2. What we saw was kind of a lumpy picture in the marketplace where April came in strong, May ended up being very weak, mainly because of the weather patterns in the North. And then in June, they came back again. And it was pretty much RNC is probably our residential new construction is probably down 15% to 20%. Replacement is still holding fairly strong.

Paul Johnston
Paul Johnston
Executive Vice President at Watsco

We didn't really see a lot of repair in the beginning of the quarter, which we saw towards the end of the quarter and continues into July, but not enough to offset the unit sales that were certainly down.

Albert Nahmad
Albert Nahmad
Chairman & CEO at Watsco

Comment on international sales.

Barry Logan
Barry Logan
EVP, Secretary & Director at Watsco

Yeah, I'll comment on that. Also on one of the exposures we talked about in the first quarter that repeated itself in the second quarter was our international, which is Mexico. Mexico is probably the most volatile market. It's a small part of our business, but a big contributor from a margin point of view. Mexico was down, well, let's put it this way, it cost us about $0.10 a share in the quarter, $0.02 0 a share year to date.

Barry Logan
Barry Logan
EVP, Secretary & Director at Watsco

In June it grew and July it's grown since then. So I'll take kind of one market that's been irritating, which seems to be a lot better in the last couple of months. As far as July goes, Ryan, I would say it's better. August is bigger than July in our forward looking commentary. So if I say that July is better than what we saw in June, that's okay, but it needs to extend itself and extrapolate itself as the year goes on.

Barry Logan
Barry Logan
EVP, Secretary & Director at Watsco

The good news is that in general, what we can control is margin, pricing and the wherewithal of our business to support all these new products in the market with our customers. I'm glad we have our balance sheet to do that with because it's been a pretty extraordinary product change this year. You can see the building of inventories, that's a customer focused effort to help our customers get going in this market. The margin speaks to capturing new pricing on, as we say, over half the products we sold we sell. We had to capture price inflation since that price and and get off on the right track in margins and needless to say that's been accomplished.

Barry Logan
Barry Logan
EVP, Secretary & Director at Watsco

So we like what we can control. We'll be patient about what we can't control. And and I think also maybe this is more of a 2026 discussion. But, you know, the the entire industry, every OEM we sell products for have been through an extreme product cycle probably for the last two or three years. And at what point does that serenity, you know, play itself out in terms of growth and market share development and product expansion, the blocking and tackling that I think particularly good for us and that we're good at.

Barry Logan
Barry Logan
EVP, Secretary & Director at Watsco

So maybe that's more of a a next year event, but we're kinda looking forward to it quite honestly.

Ryan Merkel
Co-Group Head–Industrials at William Blair & Company, L.L.C

Yeah. That's fair. Okay. Since you mentioned gross margin, was the other, you know, metric that was really strong this quarter. My sense is it's both price cost and initiatives.

Ryan Merkel
Co-Group Head–Industrials at William Blair & Company, L.L.C

But my question is, I don't want us to extrapolate that 29% into the back half. So just how sustainable is that? Was 2Q kind of temporary due to price cost timing?

Albert Nahmad
Albert Nahmad
Chairman & CEO at Watsco

Go ahead, Barry.

Barry Logan
Barry Logan
EVP, Secretary & Director at Watsco

Yeah. Yeah. Think there is obviously an algebraic benefit to margin when OEMs raise prices. In in April and May, we talked last quarter that OEMs had faced some inflationary realities going on with tariffs and raw materials and so on. On top of the like for like price increase on the new product, they introduced inflationary pricing early in the quarter.

Barry Logan
Barry Logan
EVP, Secretary & Director at Watsco

That clearly helped build a bigger margin this quarter and the benefit of that kind of slides off into the third and fourth quarter. But I'm the one that probably three years ago talked about 27% as a floor, as a benchmark. And I stand by that obviously. And if I say now 27% plus, would expect that for the last half of the year, but we won't have the benefit of those pricing actions that you see in the first half of this year. So somewhere in between would be my conjecture and the market will play out and determine what it is, but so I think I think we have a chance to beat our benchmark and but not have the benefit that we saw as extraordinarily this quarter in in terms of pricing.

Ryan Merkel
Co-Group Head–Industrials at William Blair & Company, L.L.C

Well, that's great.

Aaron Nahmad
Aaron Nahmad
Co-Vice Chairman & President at Watsco

We'll get better

Ryan Merkel
Co-Group Head–Industrials at William Blair & Company, L.L.C

than I expected. Thanks.

Aaron Nahmad
Aaron Nahmad
Co-Vice Chairman & President at Watsco

Just want to add. I mean, this is AJ. Just real quickly. I mean, there are there is the benefit from the OEM price increases, but also the efforts we're making on our price optimization and the leadership of those teams and the pricing teams, that's also working.

Aaron Nahmad
Aaron Nahmad
Co-Vice Chairman & President at Watsco

So it's a combination of both. But we continue to put points on the board in terms of the pricing efforts that we're taking internally.

Albert Nahmad
Albert Nahmad
Chairman & CEO at Watsco

Yeah. I'll add that as we move our product mix, which I mentioned in the opening statements, towards parts and supplies, and that's what we're focused on with our technology, That, by its nature, carries a higher margin than equipment sales. So our product mix, hopefully, sometime later this year or into next year, will improve margins too because parts and supplies carry higher margin.

Ryan Merkel
Co-Group Head–Industrials at William Blair & Company, L.L.C

Thank you very much. I'll pass it on.

Operator

And our next question will come from Brett Linzey with Mizuho. Please go ahead.

Brett Linzey
Brett Linzey
Executive Director at Mizuho Financial Group, Inc.

Hey, good morning. Yes, maybe just a follow-up on that last point there. So if you could maybe just unpack the year over year gross margin contribution, is there any way to delineate that between the pricing optimization tools versus the parts mix versus some of that raw pricing just in the marketplace in the quarter?

Albert Nahmad
Albert Nahmad
Chairman & CEO at Watsco

That's an interesting question. Who wants to deal with that?

Rick Gomez
Rick Gomez
VP - Corporate Development at Watsco

Yeah, Brett, I'll take a stab at that. This is Rick. This is a directional because there's, you know, a lot of art and a lot of science to this as well. And but it's not all science. So when we look at the quarter, there was and when we look at the year as well, consistent.

Rick Gomez
Rick Gomez
VP - Corporate Development at Watsco

There's about 50 to 60 basis points of gross margin enhancement that we can attribute to that raw selling margin, which is basically the day to day job of a distributor in the market is what are you buying for and what are you selling for. And so gross margins would have been in the high 27s absent any of that inflation and the inflation helps, but it's not something that you can underwrite perpetually obviously. So that's what it's amounted to. By the way that's been pretty consistent. If I look back maybe two or three years in the data, We've been at that, we can aggregate and say that there's been about 200 basis points of gross margin expansion attributable to this pricing optimization and bringing more technology to how we price.

Rick Gomez
Rick Gomez
VP - Corporate Development at Watsco

Keep in mind that complexity of price in the industry is something that generally benefits a distributor. What I mean by that is that virtually every SKU has a different price to every customer. And so to imagine that we are optimized, well, it's the opposite. We're far from optimized. And that's why we think there's so much room still to go.

Rick Gomez
Rick Gomez
VP - Corporate Development at Watsco

And oh, by the way, just to finish the thought is that during that period of time, we've also gained market share. We have about 200 to two fifty basis points of incremental market share over that three year period, if I measure it. So that's mainly attributable to all the technology. And my point there is that, everything that we're doing on the technology side with margin, has not borrowed from customer acquisition and market growth at the end.

Brett Linzey
Brett Linzey
Executive Director at Mizuho Financial Group, Inc.

That's very helpful. I appreciate that. And then just a follow-up on the cylinder shortage. It sounds like you guys think it abates by the second half. I know some of the peers think it does persist into the second half.

Brett Linzey
Brett Linzey
Executive Director at Mizuho Financial Group, Inc.

Maybe what was the impact you think in the quarter from shortage situation? And then are you assuming that some of that does carry into H2?

Paul Johnston
Paul Johnston
Executive Vice President at Watsco

I think, as Paul, what we had was we had an allocation situation where we were being allocated refrigerant. What the OEMs did was they came through and did an overcharge in the unit so that they didn't require as much field installation type refrigerant. So it's become less and less of a concern as time goes on, as our allocations continue to increase. We feel good that sometime in August we should be off of allocation. And I think it was very irritating.

Paul Johnston
Paul Johnston
Executive Vice President at Watsco

It was very disturbing that we had to go through that. But I don't think that really is the total cause of why the market was slower than what it was.

Brett Linzey
Brett Linzey
Executive Director at Mizuho Financial Group, Inc.

Thanks for the color.

Barry Logan
Barry Logan
EVP, Secretary & Director at Watsco

Yeah. Just an editorial on that. I you know, the like for like skews that we're selling now, a two l versus the prior is is is the 10% difference in price. And a speed bump on the canisters or refrigerant is that a speed bump. And so the transition itself, if we look forward again to that word serenity I used earlier, we're looking forward to it.

Brett Linzey
Brett Linzey
Executive Director at Mizuho Financial Group, Inc.

Thanks, Barry.

Operator

And our next question will come from Tommy Malt with Stephens. Please go ahead with your question.

Albert Nahmad
Albert Nahmad
Chairman & CEO at Watsco

Morning, Tom.

Tommy Moll
Managing Director at Stephens Inc

Good morning, Alan. Thanks for taking my questions.

Albert Nahmad
Albert Nahmad
Chairman & CEO at Watsco

Of course.

Tommy Moll
Managing Director at Stephens Inc

I wanted to start on inventory. Maybe you could characterize for us the investment there versus what you would have expected to need for the transition? Just in dollar terms, is it about what you would have soft circled or maybe a little elevated? Anything you can do to frame that for us and then also how you think it might trend over the next couple quarters?

Albert Nahmad
Albert Nahmad
Chairman & CEO at Watsco

Well, the honest answer is that it's more than we had hoped for and some of that is because we expected not to have the unusual demand, industry demand, the lower industry demand, we peaked at about $2,000,000,000. But we are now very focused on what to do about it and we've lost, in terms of inventory investment, dollars 200,000,000 so far in the third quarter. We're down to 1,800,000,000.0 And plus this transition of product, you have to have the old and you have to have the new on the equipment side. And we'll transition out of the old before the end of the year and that will help reduce the inventory investment. That's a very good question.

Albert Nahmad
Albert Nahmad
Chairman & CEO at Watsco

I'm very dedicated to increasing our inventory turn, and it's been a rough time to do that, but I think that.

Tommy Moll
Managing Director at Stephens Inc

Pretty stoked. Go ahead.

Paul Johnston
Paul Johnston
Executive Vice President at Watsco

Yeah, on a raw number basis, we had double inventory. We had about 5% of the total inventory was $410 and then we had the more expensive A2L product in there. So we probably had a 15% rise just between what we had and $410 left over and what we experienced when we had price increase. The balance of it is exactly what Al said. The demand just wasn't there to be able to take the inventory back down.

Paul Johnston
Paul Johnston
Executive Vice President at Watsco

That you're going to see come down at the end of the third quarter.

Tommy Moll
Managing Director at Stephens Inc

Thank you both. As a follow-up, wanted to ask about the M and A environment and pipeline. It hasn't gotten a ton of airtime lately, but how can you characterize that for us?

Albert Nahmad
Albert Nahmad
Chairman & CEO at Watsco

That's a very good question. We are eager, eager to see what owners of distribution businesses in HVAC are going to do with this existing very soft market. They may do nothing. They may continue or they may say, well now it's time to do something in terms of an M and A. And of course, we have a great reputation with independent distributors because the way we treat sellers, we're careful about relationship built continuing post acquisition with the existing leadership of the business acquired.

Albert Nahmad
Albert Nahmad
Chairman & CEO at Watsco

So I can't say it's gonna happen but I'm sure hoping we have a very, very strong balance sheet and we could take advantage of opportunities as they come. And I cannot, I can only tell you that, well, I can't disclose it, but there is one that I think without disclosing much more than that, that is of size and we'll see how that turns out. It's still under study.

Aaron Nahmad
Aaron Nahmad
Co-Vice Chairman & President at Watsco

Yeah, would say rest assured we're having as many of those conversations as we can. We're super ambitious and we have the balance sheet to support anything we want if we can manage to muster up. Hopefully it can be an exciting period in M and A.

Tommy Moll
Managing Director at Stephens Inc

Thank you both. I'll turn it back.

Operator

And our next question will come from David Manthey with Baird. Please go ahead.

Albert Nahmad
Albert Nahmad
Chairman & CEO at Watsco

Good morning, David.

David Manthey
Senior Research Analyst at Robert W. Baird & Co

Hey, good morning. I was wondering if you had any thoughts on consumer preference during this product transition. Like, are you continuing to see a premium on the R410 systems? And then as people are buying the a two l, are they gravitating to one end or the other of the good, better, best tier?

Albert Nahmad
Albert Nahmad
Chairman & CEO at Watsco

That's an interesting question. I wonder who our team can respond to that. Paul, are you the one, Paul? You always are.

Paul Johnston
Paul Johnston
Executive Vice President at Watsco

Yeah, the industry really hasn't popped as far as high efficiency product. It's still at the entry level. I mean, we're at basically using the old SEER rating. We're at above 15 SEER for minimum efficiency. So it's high efficiency product.

Paul Johnston
Paul Johnston
Executive Vice President at Watsco

So we really haven't seen a change in the direction of the industry. It's still very much sliding along the idea that it's going to be whatever the minimum efficiency is. And that represents probably 85% of the market. That has not changed. And then when you get into the brands that we're selling, the brands have been consistent throughout the year and they continue to hold steady.

Paul Johnston
Paul Johnston
Executive Vice President at Watsco

We're seeing the Carrier brand and the Rheem brand and the Goodman brands all doing their job and holding up their share of the business. We're not seeing a migration to a lower branded product, no.

Barry Logan
Barry Logan
EVP, Secretary & Director at Watsco

Just to add to that for the fun of it, If I look at brands, products, markets, customers, geographies, North and South, East and West, and we're selling close to 20 brands, the first half of the year is very consistent amongst that collection of data points. So nothing stands out Dave and I don't think this has been disruptive to what kind of the baseline products being sold is going on.

Aaron Nahmad
Aaron Nahmad
Co-Vice Chairman & President at Watsco

Yeah. The exciting anomaly though, and I think it's in our press release, is on call error. When our customers are using the tool that we've created for them, which we call a sales engine, they are selling high efficiency systems at a much higher rate, like the inverse amount. Meaning, I think it's like 70 or 75% of the time, a contractor is selling using Encolair. They're selling high efficiency systems.

Aaron Nahmad
Aaron Nahmad
Co-Vice Chairman & President at Watsco

So when we can help influence that through that tool, that's powerful because the consumer gets a better product, the contractor makes a bigger ticket, as do we. So it's a win win win.

David Manthey
Senior Research Analyst at Robert W. Baird & Co

It sounds good. Thanks for all the color there. My follow-up, it's the first time we've seen other do better than the equipment in a long time. And as Paul said, the residential new construction is not helping, I assume all the ductwork and thermostats and things in the other category. So should we not read into this that there's a stronger fix versus replace trend this quarter?

David Manthey
Senior Research Analyst at Robert W. Baird & Co

Or is it, I don't know, commodities or I'm just making this up, any thoughts on that?

Paul Johnston
Paul Johnston
Executive Vice President at Watsco

It's pretty small. You take a look at the entire marketplace, you just take compressors, The normal demand for compressors in The U. S. Is about 1,200,000.0 to $1.3 And the balance of them go warranty because you have a five and a ten year warranty on most of the equipment. You take a look at the equipment side, it's seven to 8,000,000 units.

Paul Johnston
Paul Johnston
Executive Vice President at Watsco

So for the offset of a down market on the unit side through additional parts, yes, it's going to help our gross margin. But no, it's not going to help the top line. It's not going help your revenue line. The ratio is just too great between what parts represent versus equipment. Are we seeing an uptick?

Paul Johnston
Paul Johnston
Executive Vice President at Watsco

Yes, we started seeing an uptick in June, which historically is the month in which you're going to see that up. It's continued into July, but we really haven't seen a radical increase in units. We've seen an increase in dollars more than we have units.

Albert Nahmad
Albert Nahmad
Chairman & CEO at Watsco

Now let's not mislead either. Our sales in the new quarter are not they're pretty flattish, small incremental, low digit increase. They're not it's nothing that does not signify a a major double digit increase yet.

Barry Logan
Barry Logan
EVP, Secretary & Director at Watsco

No.

David Manthey
Senior Research Analyst at Robert W. Baird & Co

Thanks very much, Yeah.

Barry Logan
Barry Logan
EVP, Secretary & Director at Watsco

When we talked about unit growth of compressors and coil, things like that, year to date is single digit. It's not, you know, it was not an avalanche of transition to that. It could be us just selling more compressors in the market. And I think you heard Carrier talk yesterday very directly about that and they're talking to, you know, 150 independent distributors when they're answering your question to that. So it's obviously an opportunity to sell more parts but the wholesale trend is not something that I think is quite in the numbers yet.

David Manthey
Senior Research Analyst at Robert W. Baird & Co

Yeah, thanks Barry.

Albert Nahmad
Albert Nahmad
Chairman & CEO at Watsco

Well, and somebody mentioned earlier the m and a. We're very eager to do more m and a. Sometimes opportunities arise when you have these kind of markets. I'm sure hoping for it. Are we shut down again?

Operator

Our next question will come from Jeff Hammond with KeyBanc Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Albert Nahmad
Albert Nahmad
Chairman & CEO at Watsco

Good morning, Jeff.

Jeffrey Hammond
Jeffrey Hammond
Managing Director at KeyBanc Capital Markets

Hey, good morning, everyone. Is this real Al or or AI Al?

Albert Nahmad
Albert Nahmad
Chairman & CEO at Watsco

It's a combination. You you have to you have to have to figure it out. You see?

Jeffrey Hammond
Jeffrey Hammond
Managing Director at KeyBanc Capital Markets

I know. It's the real hell.

Albert Nahmad
Albert Nahmad
Chairman & CEO at Watsco

Yeah.

Jeffrey Hammond
Jeffrey Hammond
Managing Director at KeyBanc Capital Markets

Just to clarify on the on the flattish sales comment, was that parts for July, or is that overall?

Albert Nahmad
Albert Nahmad
Chairman & CEO at Watsco

Overall.

Jeffrey Hammond
Jeffrey Hammond
Managing Director at KeyBanc Capital Markets

Okay.

Paul Johnston
Paul Johnston
Executive Vice President at Watsco

Overall. Yeah.

Jeffrey Hammond
Jeffrey Hammond
Managing Director at KeyBanc Capital Markets

And then just on back to inventories, can you just, you know, maybe talk about, you know, where you wanna ultimately get your turns to? I know you were kinda running four and a half turns a year, you know, pre COVID and pre all these regulatory changes, and now you're kinda three to three and a half. You know, kinda where you see that happening over and over what time frame?

Albert Nahmad
Albert Nahmad
Chairman & CEO at Watsco

Well, first of all, let me compliment you on the data. You're right about those turns. I'd like I'm not I'm not gonna put a time limit on this, but I'd like to get to five. At some point in time, given all the the technology we're investing in, I'd like to get to five.

Paul Johnston
Paul Johnston
Executive Vice President at Watsco

I'm not going think about it. Yeah, pre COVID we were at 4.5. We didn't have the technology investment in inventory systems and the management systems that we currently have. So as we come out of it, I think Al's goal of five is very attainable.

Albert Nahmad
Albert Nahmad
Chairman & CEO at Watsco

We have what we call a dream plan. We may have mentioned it before. Actually, dream plan two, because dream plan one was achieved after three years of effort, and dream plan two is is a new and it may take three years to do that. Dream plan two is 10,000,000,000 in revenue, 30% in gross profit margin, and five times on the inventory turn. And that's the those are the targets that we're focused on.

Jeffrey Hammond
Jeffrey Hammond
Managing Director at KeyBanc Capital Markets

I remember when it was 10% growth and and 10% margins for $100 a month. You guys blew through that one.

Aaron Nahmad
Aaron Nahmad
Co-Vice Chairman & President at Watsco

Believe it or not, that was twenty years ago.

Paul Johnston
Paul Johnston
Executive Vice President at Watsco

Boy, actually, this is a hell of a history lesson here.

Aaron Nahmad
Aaron Nahmad
Co-Vice Chairman & President at Watsco

That's pretty impressive.

Barry Logan
Barry Logan
EVP, Secretary & Director at Watsco

I'm so impressed. For those 20 year olds listening to us, Jeff is right. Was called ten and ten equals 100. It was called ten and ten equals 100. We got our management team together and rallied around that.

Barry Logan
Barry Logan
EVP, Secretary & Director at Watsco

Many of them thought Al was out of his mind and obviously we've blown past that some time ago. So we reinstituted that cultural, you know, kind of concept about six months ago, actually a year ago and got everyone together and some of the initiatives that you're not asking about today that you will ask about as we develop them is built on that dream plan to concept and if we got had 75 other Watsco core managers on this call you would be able to ask them about it not just ask us. But just know that culturally those kind of things go on and we have fun with it.

Aaron Nahmad
Aaron Nahmad
Co-Vice Chairman & President at Watsco

Yeah and culturally I mean really the takeaway is that we're super ambitious And that's why we're investing in these big goals that we expect to hit in time.

Albert Nahmad
Albert Nahmad
Chairman & CEO at Watsco

And the truth is that we also have an equity culture that really inspires people to achieve and to meet the goals set by senior management, which means what is the equity culture? Many, many employees own WADCO shares, either through a four zero one k or through the different stock plans. And we like that. We like the ownership culture to be spread throughout the organization. It's very unique and it's very extensive.

Albert Nahmad
Albert Nahmad
Chairman & CEO at Watsco

And so that ownership culture drives their desire to meet goals, I think. And I've always used it and it's been working. And I expect it to continue working.

Jeffrey Hammond
Jeffrey Hammond
Managing Director at KeyBanc Capital Markets

Great. Thanks for the time, guys.

Operator

And our next question will come from Patrick Baumann with JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Patrick Baumann
Patrick Baumann
Analyst at JP Morgan

Good morning.

Albert Nahmad
Albert Nahmad
Chairman & CEO at Watsco

Good morning.

Patrick Baumann
Patrick Baumann
Analyst at JP Morgan

Thanks for taking my questions. Maybe I was just curious if you could provide some examples of the large enterprise institutional customers you cite as offering emerging opportunities for growth, like and what exactly are you doing to go after them?

Albert Nahmad
Albert Nahmad
Chairman & CEO at Watsco

Sure. Sorry?

Barry Logan
Barry Logan
EVP, Secretary & Director at Watsco

Go ahead, A. J. Into that.

Albert Nahmad
Albert Nahmad
Chairman & CEO at Watsco

A. J.

Aaron Nahmad
Aaron Nahmad
Co-Vice Chairman & President at Watsco

Yeah. So I'll jump in first. And, you know, we we we tease some of this in our press release and and also tease that we want you guys to come down to Miami and spend time with us and and see it and hear it and feel it more succinctly. But it's there are macro trends going on on our industry, including private equity, trying to buy up and consolidate contractors.

Aaron Nahmad
Aaron Nahmad
Co-Vice Chairman & President at Watsco

And between that and home warranty companies and other institutional type customers, they're emerging and have emerged, I would call it multi location contractors who may have some some business in Florida, some in Texas, some in Tennessee, you name it. And with our size and scale, we should be able to we should be their preferred vendor. We should be the most exciting place for them to buy product, but we don't necessarily have a unified experience for them to take advantage of our whole offering and our whole scale. And that's what that's what we're building. We call it Watsco One, and it will be a it'll be exactly that.

Aaron Nahmad
Aaron Nahmad
Co-Vice Chairman & President at Watsco

It'll be one interface for these large institutional type contractors to buy and secure the products that they need from any of our locations, whenever they need it.

Patrick Baumann
Patrick Baumann
Analyst at JP Morgan

Interesting.

Albert Nahmad
Albert Nahmad
Chairman & CEO at Watsco

Is It doesn't.

Patrick Baumann
Patrick Baumann
Analyst at JP Morgan

Right.

Albert Nahmad
Albert Nahmad
Chairman & CEO at Watsco

It it I mean, this is a huge, huge undertaking. It doesn't sound that way just using words. But we are a very, very decentralized system.

Albert Nahmad
Albert Nahmad
Chairman & CEO at Watsco

And to aggregate to meet to aggregate ours, our inventories, and our pricing systems, and all our support systems to meet the needs of a large national customer, that is it takes a lot of lot of initiative, and we're we're we're investing to prepare all those tools to do that, but it should have a very significant impact once we've accomplished it because no one else has these capabilities.

Patrick Baumann
Patrick Baumann
Analyst at JP Morgan

A follow-up to that, would you see selling to like a larger national account contractor any different than I guess you said it is, but like in terms of like, their buying capacity, is that something that you would see as a headwind for gross margin over time?

Albert Nahmad
Albert Nahmad
Chairman & CEO at Watsco

Of course. That's one of the elements.

Aaron Nahmad
Aaron Nahmad
Co-Vice Chairman & President at Watsco

Yes, but

Aaron Nahmad
Aaron Nahmad
Co-Vice Chairman & President at Watsco

I would say yes, but we can also we also have the opportunity to sell them a lot more parts and supplies, which as we discussed earlier, have a higher gross margin profile.

Rick Gomez
Rick Gomez
VP - Corporate Development at Watsco

Right. That's why I think it's not so the the the answer is not so linear, Pat. It's it's because today when we look at those big institutional type accounts, we're largely selling them equipment, and we're selling them equipment in bulk. And so to broaden that offering means we're taking all else equal, we're taking a customer and broadening the mix of products we sell them and that's generally accretive to margin at the end of the day.

Patrick Baumann
Patrick Baumann
Analyst at JP Morgan

That makes sense. Okay.

Barry Logan
Barry Logan
EVP, Secretary & Director at Watsco

Just just, Pat, I'm just gonna say this again for the more for the front of it. I mean, a great home services business you could invest in the last fifty years as Rollins. If don't know the company, look it up. I mean, technology, you know, deployed at Rollins yielded 10 higher EBIT margins for their business over time, right? So the question is, in our partnership with any customer of any size, do we have a business model, an ecosystem that can help them grow, help them price products, help them operate their business twenty four seven?

Barry Logan
Barry Logan
EVP, Secretary & Director at Watsco

So part of the visibility of what we've done for most smaller contractors, the question is, is that a pliable technology for larger accounts and larger contractors? And it's not about just selling more stuff, it's about helping any kind of size customer operate their business more profitably through us. And our products just happen to be the ones they'll they'll scale with to do that with. So this is as much of a technology play as it is a a product or any other kind of label you might put on it.

Patrick Baumann
Patrick Baumann
Analyst at JP Morgan

Thanks for the color. Sounds interesting and exciting. Maybe just switching gears on my next question on the operating cost side. I think you cite something in the release about targeting cost efficiencies for the rest of the year. Could you provide any color on, I guess, one, the 6% growth rate in the second quarter of SG and A expense?

Patrick Baumann
Patrick Baumann
Analyst at JP Morgan

You mentioned costs of the A2L transition. I don't know how that kind of made its way into SG and A, but if you could give color on that. And then can you bend that growth rate in the second half with some of the cost efficiencies you're targeting?

Rick Gomez
Rick Gomez
VP - Corporate Development at Watsco

Sure, Pat. Can I'll take a stab at the so first, let's take let's start with the 6%. And we said in the release that we made some acquisitions. We've opened some new locations. So about 25% of that 6% is attributable to that.

Rick Gomez
Rick Gomez
VP - Corporate Development at Watsco

So you can think of core SG and A growth, if we call it that, more in the 4.5% range, which is still higher than it should be in a down quarter. But that's kind of our starting point as we think about it. And then when you think about just the day to day life in a branch during a transition, if we have more inventory it means that we've received more inventory. It means you need more people receiving that inventory. It means that you have more trucks coming to your locations.

Rick Gomez
Rick Gomez
VP - Corporate Development at Watsco

It means that you know, you're not optimizing, you know, what you have. It's not business as usual in the day to day a in the day to day life of a branch during such a large scale transition. And to underscore something we said earlier and mentioned in the release, this impacted every domestic location we have in The US, about six fifty of them. So that's where there was some inefficiency as I would say in the labor and the logistics side. Do we think we can bring that down and bring it more into balance in the end of the year?

Rick Gomez
Rick Gomez
VP - Corporate Development at Watsco

The answer is yes. Our leaders are working on that right now. One of the things that should naturally help that is that when we look at our inventory today, about five to 7% of that inventory is for 10A product, which means we've largely received all the new product we're going to get and we've largely worked out of all the old stuff. And that means that the branch can get back to kind of its routine and should be a little bit more efficient in the back half of the year.

Aaron Nahmad
Aaron Nahmad
Co-Vice Chairman & President at Watsco

Yeah. Just just to say it a little my way, you know, as we sell through four ten a product, we need to make sure that we have system matchups that are selling in location. So there's a lot of transferring product within our network to make sure that we have the right systems in place that are sellable in a market where they are selling, if that makes sense. So there's some extra cost that's gone into that as well.

Patrick Baumann
Patrick Baumann
Analyst at JP Morgan

That makes a lot of sense. Thanks a lot. I really appreciate the color.

Operator

And our next question will come from Damian Karas with UBS. Please go ahead.

Damian Karas
Damian Karas
Executive Director at UBS Group

Hi, good morning gentlemen.

Albert Nahmad
Albert Nahmad
Chairman & CEO at Watsco

Good morning.

Paul Johnston
Paul Johnston
Executive Vice President at Watsco

Good morning.

Damian Karas
Damian Karas
Executive Director at UBS Group

I'm curious how you're thinking about pricing through the rest of the year. On the equipment side, our price is pretty much set for the rest of the year and you're just going to continue to get that benefit of the higher value mix flowing through top line? And do you foresee any changes on your parts and commodity supplies with respect to price and just thinking about further metals inflation and tariffs?

Paul Johnston
Paul Johnston
Executive Vice President at Watsco

I don't think on the equipment side, we're going to see a lot of price increases going forward. On the non equipment side, Friday is Copper Day, 50% tariff start on copper. We've already seen about a 10% increase in some of those products that are heavily endowed with copper. So it's just a matter of wait and see on some of the non equipment type product. I think equipment is pretty much in place though.

Damian Karas
Damian Karas
Executive Director at UBS Group

Understood.

Aaron Nahmad
Aaron Nahmad
Co-Vice Chairman & President at Watsco

Would just say, let's just make sure, you know, when we I think what we're talking about is cost. We're getting costing you know, the the cost of our products and our equipment products. I don't think we're expecting much change from our OEM partners. But on price, meaning our price to our customers, that that's a cons that's what the tooling and the technology enables. It's because every different customer has a different price on every product we sell in every region and every market, that that complexity is opportunity.

Aaron Nahmad
Aaron Nahmad
Co-Vice Chairman & President at Watsco

Because we with our tooling, we can study where there are trends and patterns and anomalies and outliers and segments that should be priced appropriately. And so we run different icon plays, where we can measure and track when we make a change in a customer's price or a customer segmentation price or a cohort of customers pricing on different products. We can can take that to market. We can measure and track and we can see the impacts and and either double down or or go on to the next way. So pricing will always be opportunity. Just just to clarify that costing versus pricing.

Damian Karas
Damian Karas
Executive Director at UBS Group

Got it. Got it. That's helpful. And I know this is never an easy task, but if you had to guesstimate, if you will, how much of a headwind to volumes in the second quarter do you think are attributed to are attributable to weather and the canister shortage versus weaker housing and underlying market demand? I'm just trying to get a sense for underlying demand might look like as you move past these more transient issues.

Aaron Nahmad
Aaron Nahmad
Co-Vice Chairman & President at Watsco

I don't know if we can quantify that.

Paul Johnston
Paul Johnston
Executive Vice President at Watsco

I don't think the canisters has anything to do with sales in the second half of the year as far as the refrigerant we receive. I think it's going to be what the consumer feels like, what the weather patterns are going to be like, how we're able to react and meet the inventory demands that the consumer need or that the contractor needs to handle the consumer. I think it's just going be blocking and tackling in the second half.

Aaron Nahmad
Aaron Nahmad
Co-Vice Chairman & President at Watsco

Yeah, I mean, I think it's all been said, but this has got to be the noisiest year in HVAC ever, between the tariffs and the weather and consumer confidence and the cannabis shortages and the home building changes and interest rates and trading homes isn't happening as frequently. I mean, there's just so many things going on at macro levels, most of which are out of our control. So it's a lot of noise in the industry and our job is to win in any environment and emerge bigger and stronger and more profitable and take more share from our our competitors. That's I like where we sit in that equation because of our scale, because of our balance sheet, because of our willingness and ability to invest in technology. I'm very, very pleased to be Watsco given all this noise.

Damian Karas
Damian Karas
Executive Director at UBS Group

Really appreciate your thoughts. Good luck out there.

Aaron Nahmad
Aaron Nahmad
Co-Vice Chairman & President at Watsco

Thank you.

Operator

And our next question will come from Nigel Coe with Wolfe Research. Please go ahead.

Nigel Coe
Managing Director at Wolfe Research, LLC

Good morning guys. Appreciate all the color. Hi Al. So just I think you mentioned '4 10 was 60% or thereabouts for the quarter. I'm just curious how that trended or maybe where that's trending right now real time.

Nigel Coe
Managing Director at Wolfe Research, LLC

And any concerns that you're holding too much 410A inventory just given the demand weakness and, you know, or do you are you confident you'll be done with that transition, you know, this quarter?

Albert Nahmad
Albert Nahmad
Chairman & CEO at Watsco

I'm I'm chuckling because that's very much on my mind. And, we're doing something about it so that we don't have that risk. And Paul, you can answer in some detail if you'd like.

Paul Johnston
Paul Johnston
Executive Vice President at Watsco

Yeah, it's less than 5% of our inventory at the pleasant time. Where we're really working our butts off is to be able to get the right combinations that AJ mentioned before. You've got to have an indoor unit to go with the outdoor unit. As you sell the inventory down, the pond gets lower, you end up with an indoor unit sitting in one city and you end up with the outdoor unit in another. So we're putting those pieces together which is going to be a drag on SG and A with freight for a period of time here.

Paul Johnston
Paul Johnston
Executive Vice President at Watsco

But I think each one of our companies hear about it continuously that we need to reduce it. We need to keep the focus on four ten, get rid of it, and focus then on being able to sell the A2L product that we've got.

Nigel Coe
Managing Director at Wolfe Research, LLC

Does that mean that you you yep.

Albert Nahmad
Albert Nahmad
Chairman & CEO at Watsco

Yep.

Nigel Coe
Managing Director at Wolfe Research, LLC

Yep.

Nigel Coe
Managing Director at Wolfe Research, LLC

Sorry. Does that mean you're incentivizing, you know, that sell through of that? Sorry. Sorry for for cutting off that. But any and does that mean you're incentivizing that process to to to make that happen?

Albert Nahmad
Albert Nahmad
Chairman & CEO at Watsco

That's not how we work. We deal with the markets on a decentralized basis. Those are local decisions made by the local entities that we have.

Nigel Coe
Managing Director at Wolfe Research, LLC

Okay.

Rick Gomez
Rick Gomez
VP - Corporate Development at Watsco

And Nigel, I would just add to that. Just to add very quickly in terms of the progression of A2L, it's progressing very, very well. I mean we exited the quarter in June with more than 80% sell through of the A2L product. And so that's a function of obviously diminishing inventory of four ten A. It's also a function of contractors transitioning and adapting well to the product.

Rick Gomez
Rick Gomez
VP - Corporate Development at Watsco

So, at this point, it's greater than 80% of our sell through, as you'd expect.

Nigel Coe
Managing Director at Wolfe Research, LLC

Okay. That's great color. And then my follow-up is, you know, what we've seen from you and from your suppliers is tremendously strong prices holding, which is good news, but obviously volumes are incredibly weak. What are you hearing from your contractors? Are they asking for some incentives here to try and stimulate some movements?

Nigel Coe
Managing Director at Wolfe Research, LLC

Or are they content to just wait for rates to turn and perhaps demand picks up? Are you starting to get more inbounds on price reductions or discounts or incentives?

Paul Johnston
Paul Johnston
Executive Vice President at Watsco

I don't think we're really getting a lot of feedback on getting lower prices in the market. There's not elasticity to this market. If we drop the price 2% or 3%, it's going to stimulate a 10% or 12% increase in volume. It ain't going to happen. So I think the contractor always wants the lowest price, the best price in the marketplace so that they can compete fairly.

Paul Johnston
Paul Johnston
Executive Vice President at Watsco

But I don't think we're getting a lot of pushback right now from most of the contractors on the price.

Nigel Coe
Managing Director at Wolfe Research, LLC

Okay, makes sense. Thanks guys. Appreciate it.

Operator

And our next question will come from Sam Schneider with Northcoast Research. Please go ahead.

Samuel Snyder
Equity Research Analyst at Northcoast Research

Hey, looking forward to morning. How are you?

Albert Nahmad
Albert Nahmad
Chairman & CEO at Watsco

Good. Thank you.

Samuel Snyder
Equity Research Analyst at Northcoast Research

Looking forward for an excuse to come down to Miami, pay for by my employer. Thank you.

Albert Nahmad
Albert Nahmad
Chairman & CEO at Watsco

So you heard it. You did hear loud and clear. Right?

Samuel Snyder
Equity Research Analyst at Northcoast Research

Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Albert Nahmad
Albert Nahmad
Chairman & CEO at Watsco

Let's wait till it goes off. That was great. We'll we'll we'll welcome you when you're coming.

Samuel Snyder
Equity Research Analyst at Northcoast Research

Oh, yeah. No. Thank you. So, look, just focusing on the mix shift, which seemed to benefit margin on parts. I was wondering if the shift was in part at all due to the canister shortage where you had people do more repairs for the time being?

Paul Johnston
Paul Johnston
Executive Vice President at Watsco

Most of the canister shortage occurred in the first and the second quarter. And it was something that we worked our way through, we made it through it. Now, as I said, we're seeing a lot more inventory coming in. It's going out as quickly as it comes in. I see it stopping sometime in early August.

Paul Johnston
Paul Johnston
Executive Vice President at Watsco

Early August is what, two weeks away? So I don't think it's really playing on demand right now as heavily as it was before. I don't see any bubble cap happening on repair versus replace because of canisters.

Samuel Snyder
Equity Research Analyst at Northcoast Research

Got it. Okay. And then just a real quick follow-up sort of on the same topic, but any sort of sizable shift to R32 based systems and if so, is that a temporary thing or more permanent in your view?

Paul Johnston
Paul Johnston
Executive Vice President at Watsco

There's only one manufacturer. Daikin, which we represent very proudly with our Goodman and Amano lines, R32. The rest of the industry is four fifty four. So what we've seen is we've seen excellent response from Daikin to be able to help us with the 32. There hasn't been a shortage of 32.

Paul Johnston
Paul Johnston
Executive Vice President at Watsco

When you get into the four fifty four, it's been Carrier, Rheem, American Standard, all of them sell four fifty four units. And I would remind everybody that four fifty four is roughly 70 R32. It's blend of 32 plus twelve thirty four y f.

Albert Nahmad
Albert Nahmad
Chairman & CEO at Watsco

I keep tuning out. Did everybody tune out or is that just me?

Aaron Nahmad
Aaron Nahmad
Co-Vice Chairman & President at Watsco

Yeah. Think there's a pause there.

Albert Nahmad
Albert Nahmad
Chairman & CEO at Watsco

Big one.

Aaron Nahmad
Aaron Nahmad
Co-Vice Chairman & President at Watsco

Operator, are you seeing this?

Albert Nahmad
Albert Nahmad
Chairman & CEO at Watsco

That that happened three times, Harry.

Aaron Nahmad
Aaron Nahmad
Co-Vice Chairman & President at Watsco

Yeah. It paused the Operator, are you there?

Barry Logan
Barry Logan
EVP, Secretary & Director at Watsco

Yeah. So I'm here.

Albert Nahmad
Albert Nahmad
Chairman & CEO at Watsco

Not that you bury the operator operator.

Operator

Yes, I'm here.

Albert Nahmad
Albert Nahmad
Chairman & CEO at Watsco

Why are we tuning out?

Operator

Can go to the next Okay. Our next question will come from Chris Dankert with Loop Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Christopher Dankert
SVP - Equity Research at Loop Capital Markets LLC

Hey, good morning, guys. Thanks for taking the question. I guess circling back to Watsco One, you guys sound excited and sounds like it's a pretty big opportunity. Is there any way to get a bigger than a breadbox sense here? I mean, are we talking about serving 500 customer locations, 5,000, or or is it too early to kinda get into that type of upscaling?

Albert Nahmad
Albert Nahmad
Chairman & CEO at Watsco

Well, maybe maybe a better way to approach it, what is our existing sales of parts and supplies? And what do we think we could I don't wanna speculate too much. What kind of margin improvement do we think we can get from that? It's a very big chunk of our business, 30%. 30% of 7 and a half billion dollars.

Albert Nahmad
Albert Nahmad
Chairman & CEO at Watsco

How much of that could we improve our margins on? I'm not gonna speculate, but it there will be an improvement. Right. That You take any any percent of that number, and it's meaningful.

Christopher Dankert
SVP - Equity Research at Loop Capital Markets LLC

Makes sense. Makes sense. Well, thanks for that. And I guess, maybe just to touch on the AI a little bit here. Can you give us maybe some examples for what the use cases are for for AskWatts Go internally?

Christopher Dankert
SVP - Equity Research at Loop Capital Markets LLC

I mean, how is this kind of helping your associates? Is this inventory positioning? Is it warranty data? What's the real use case here?

Aaron Nahmad
Aaron Nahmad
Co-Vice Chairman & President at Watsco

I got to say so many. How much time do we have? It it it is it's helping marketing folks design content and publish content. It's helping our software engineers write code and publish and push more technology faster. It's helping our business unit leaders and their teams sort through data and understand trends and patterns and anomalies.

Aaron Nahmad
Aaron Nahmad
Co-Vice Chairman & President at Watsco

It's helping our customer service folks get to more get through more cases more quickly with more accurate answers and and therefore helping our customers at a greater scale or greater rate and increasing customer satisfaction. I can go on and on and on. And like I said, said in the press release, there's about 2,100 people a week internally who are using these tools or the tool. And the ways that they're using it are more and more creative and fast.

Christopher Dankert
SVP - Equity Research at Loop Capital Markets LLC

So I mean, it really is holistic then. Got it. Well, thank you so much for that, AJ, and thank you all for the time.

Aaron Nahmad
Aaron Nahmad
Co-Vice Chairman & President at Watsco

Thank you.

Operator

And our next question will come from Chris Snyder with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Chris Snyder
Chris Snyder
Executive Director at Morgan Stanley

Thank you. I wanted to follow-up on the for today inventory. I think you guys have less than 5% of your inventory. Do you have any sense for what that number could look like across your distributor competitors?

Paul Johnston
Paul Johnston
Executive Vice President at Watsco

No. I don't think we really have any any good intelligence on that.

Albert Nahmad
Albert Nahmad
Chairman & CEO at Watsco

And and we try not to figure that. That's irrelevant.

Paul Johnston
Paul Johnston
Executive Vice President at Watsco

No.

Albert Nahmad
Albert Nahmad
Chairman & CEO at Watsco

But we Yeah. It's it's being phased out. We don't really care.

Chris Snyder
Chris Snyder
Executive Director at Morgan Stanley

Fair enough.

Rick Gomez
Rick Gomez
VP - Corporate Development at Watsco

Yeah Chris there's a couple of data points. I mean I think one peer of ours that also distributes their product gave a data point on that in terms of what their sell through is and it was pretty high. The other data point, these are all anecdotal. This is not science, it's aggregating anecdotes is when we are talking to M and A targets, what do they tell us about you know, their philosophy and and their positioning and and, know, as a reminder, most of this stuff was built prior to December 31 and shipped in the first quarter. So someone would have to make a pretty big bet on inventory and would have to really leverage their balance sheet do that.

Rick Gomez
Rick Gomez
VP - Corporate Development at Watsco

And so our sense just by having these conversations in the channel with the M and A targets is that they're largely phasing out of four ten at about the same pace we are.

Chris Snyder
Chris Snyder
Executive Director at Morgan Stanley

Thank you. I appreciate that. And if I could maybe follow-up on a different sort of inventory question. I guess it's kind of surprising that volumes remain down materially, it seems like in July, with the weather picking up. Does that change the way you guys think about how much inventory is downstream at your customers? Could they have been holding extra stock and perhaps that's why the sell through has been softer? Thank you.

Paul Johnston
Paul Johnston
Executive Vice President at Watsco

I would say some of the bigger contractors may have some inventory. Inventory at the contractor level is not really material to our industry. It's being held at the distribution point, not at the contractor point. So I don't think it's a big deal with contractor. And I would also remember that in Florida, it's either hot or hotter.

Paul Johnston
Paul Johnston
Executive Vice President at Watsco

Not just hot all the time it's hot. So we've not had a cold summer down here. We've not had a cold summer in Texas. Where the weather really impacts us is up north where you've got a chance out of every third year that you're going have a hotter than normal summer or a normal summer or a lower than normal summer. And so we are definitely seeing a lot of regional differences in the volume based on weather.

Paul Johnston
Paul Johnston
Executive Vice President at Watsco

But in the South, we're not really seeing much movement because it's hot in Florida or hot in Texas. It's always hot.

Chris Snyder
Chris Snyder
Executive Director at Morgan Stanley

Thanks, I appreciate that perspective.

Operator

And this concludes the question and answer session. I'd like to turn the call back over to Albert Nauman for any closing remarks.

Albert Nahmad
Albert Nahmad
Chairman & CEO at Watsco

Well, you for your interest. I love the questions and it shows a lot of interest. I hope we've answered your questions fully and if not, please please contact us on your own and we'll we'll respond to whatever questions you may still have. And other than that, look forward to having you visit us in in the cold months that are coming. And we'll give you more detail. Thank you. Bye bye.

Operator

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect your lines.

Executives
    • Albert Nahmad
      Albert Nahmad
      Chairman & CEO
    • Barry Logan
      Barry Logan
      EVP, Secretary & Director
    • Paul Johnston
      Paul Johnston
      Executive Vice President
    • Aaron Nahmad
      Aaron Nahmad
      Co-Vice Chairman & President
    • Rick Gomez
      Rick Gomez
      VP - Corporate Development
Analysts
    • Ryan Merkel
      Co-Group Head–Industrials at William Blair & Company, L.L.C
    • Brett Linzey
      Executive Director at Mizuho Financial Group, Inc.
    • Tommy Moll
      Managing Director at Stephens Inc
    • David Manthey
      Senior Research Analyst at Robert W. Baird & Co
    • Jeffrey Hammond
      Managing Director at KeyBanc Capital Markets
    • Patrick Baumann
      Analyst at JP Morgan
    • Damian Karas
      Executive Director at UBS Group
    • Nigel Coe
      Managing Director at Wolfe Research, LLC
    • Samuel Snyder
      Equity Research Analyst at Northcoast Research
    • Christopher Dankert
      SVP - Equity Research at Loop Capital Markets LLC
    • Chris Snyder
      Executive Director at Morgan Stanley