Time to Buy Owens Corning Stock?

Buying a stock at an all-time high naturally invokes a kind of fear, but how about adopting Oscar Wilde's advice: believing that the cynics know the price of everything but the value of nothing? Despite its stock being at an all-time high, roofing and insulation materials company Owens Corning looks like a good value, and a great stock to play the housing recovery.

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Beacon Roofing Supply Will Have a Better Year in 2014

It's been a volatile year for the roofing industry, and over the last three months, investors have seen more downside. Roofing materials distributor Beacon Roofing Supply (NASDAQ: BECN  ) is down 11.5% in the last three months, and building products manufacturer Owens Corning (NYSE: OC  ) fell 5.5% in the same period -- all in a year when many commentators thought this sector would outperform. 

It's complicatedA resurgent housing market should lead to a marginal increase in new residential roofing demand, while the underlying reroofing demand should provide its usual support. Indeed, these conditions looked like they were in place for 2013, and analysts built a fair amount of optimism into their expectations. So what went wrong?

First, the US has had some unusual weather patterns in recent years. In previous years, hurricane Irene (and to a lesser extent Sandy) helped to generate reroofing demand, while this year's weather has been far more clement. Worse yet, according to Owens Corning, those storms pulled forward reroofing work that homeowners might otherwise have planned to do this year. And this spring's bout of wet weather further hurt roofing activity, because contractors simply couldn't work.

Second, rising mortgage rates have slowed new home sales' growth. For example, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, new home sales were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 390,000 and 421,000  in July and August respectively, where the average for the first six months of the year was 445k.

For a number of reasons, you shouldn't give up on housing just yet, but the roofing market remains weakened in the short term.

Problems leaking into Carlisle Companies and Owens Corning
A combination of these developments has dampened market conditions, and ultimately the operational performance of companies in the industry. It's difficult to be a supplier to roofing contractors when end demand is weaker than expected, because it can leave suppliers with too much inventory on their hands. 

For example, Owens Corning had previously expected that the full-year market shipments would be flat.  But in its third-quarter results from Oct. 23  , the company now forecasts that "... we came into the year thinking the overall roofing market should be about flat for the full year, it's down mid-single-digits year-to-date, and we think it'll be probably down mid-single-digits for the full year."

Moreover, Owens Corning has been affected by unusual variations in regional demand caused by the factors discussed above. It argued that US industry volume growth was stronger in Western and Atlantic markets, with weakness in Central regions. Unfortunately, Owens Corning has stronger market share in the Central regions, and weaker in the Western and Atlantic. In response, it appears to have decided to keep margins up at the expense of volume growth. Its roofing sales were flat in the third quarter, while its EBIT margins improved to 20% as EBIT rose 15.6% to $96 million.

Carlisle Companies (NYSE: CSL  ) also has a major construction materials division that supplies roofing products to Beacon. It appears to have taken the opposite approach to Owens Corning, and gone for volume growth instead of  keeping pricing and margins up. In discussing its third quarter results on Oct.22, Carlisle disclosed:

Pricing was negative 3% while volume was up 14%. We also experienced very healthy growth in Europe, where sales were up 11%. Both new construction and reroofing drove sales growth in the quarter.

Carlisle also argued that the pricing difficulties were due to excess capacity in the industry, but that underlying demand remains "very strong." It may well be, but it's also likely that the industry was geared for even stronger growth.

Which stock is the best pure-play on US roofing demand?For a play on a bounce back in North American roofing activity, Beacon may be your best bet. Carlisle is not really a pure-play roofing company, and Owens Corning has struggled to generate significant cash flows over the last few years. Moreover, Owens Corning doesn't have the kind of long-term structural opportunity that Beacon has to consolidate its industry.

Beacon will give its next set of results toward the end of November, and you shouldn't expect too much from them. Having chosen to buy inventory from its suppliers ahead of price increases, Beacon then suffered margin decreases as its growth lagged its previous quarter's forecasts. On the evidence of what Carlisle and Owens Corning just reported, Beacon may be in the middle of a tough quarter right now.

I don't want to be too negative on the stock. On the contrary, I'm looking for a potential buying opportunity. In the longer term, Beacon has many attractive qualities, and the roofing industry looks set for a better year in 2014. But for now, it's a good time to be a little cautious.

Is Beacon Roofing Supply a Buy?

With the housing market recovery ongoing, it’s natural for investors to look for construction-related plays. As its name suggests, Beacon Roofing Supply (NASDAQ: BECN) distributes roofing materials. The stock has had a great run over the last year with a 43% rise, but its latest results were disappointing. Is this dip a good buying opportunity? Let's take a closer look.

Is Beacon a defensive or a cyclical stock?

The answer to this question is “a bit of both.”

Beacon has plenty of recession-proof qualities that make it a genuine defensive-stock candidate for your portfolio. The company’s traditional exposure to new housing build is only around 20% (although it fell to around 10% to 15% after the last housing boom), because its main activity is roofing replacement and repair work. The latter obviously has relatively stable underlying demand (economic boom or bust, leaky roofs aren’t fun), but it’s affected by weather conditions.

Moreover, Beacon can generate long-term growth by consolidating a highly fragmented roofing supply industry. In other words, a lot of its end demand comes from factors outside the overall economy.

However, Beacon does have a cyclical kicker in the form of demand from new residential builds. First, its residential supplies tend to be more profitable, boosting Beacon's margins. Second, an increase in residential new build has historically led to new commercial construction. In other words, as new residential communities appear, the infrastructure around them will also get built. Finally, if residential demand improves, it should lead into increased demand in the industry, and overall pricing should improve as roofing contractors buy more materials.

In other words, Beacon is a stock with good long-term prospects, but also some good cyclical growth kickers in 2013. It’s not hard to see why the market has bid up the stock over the last year. So what went wrong last quarter?

Beacon disappoints with its third-quarter results

In short, Beacon’s luck with weather ran out. The company has had a couple of years of "favorable" weather (tornadoes, hailstorms, Hurricanes Irene and Sandy) to generate strong demand for re-roofing activity. However, weather conditions this year are shaping up to be less extreme than in previous years, at least according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association.

Moreover, hailstorms and wet weather in the quarter significantly held back roofing activity, so contractor demand for materials was a lot weaker than Beacon had expected. A look at the industry confirms that conditions were tough. For example, building supply company, Carlisle (NYSE: CSL), disclosed on its conference call on July 23 that "the quarter did not grow as anticipated, as wet weather continued to impact the number of roofing days."

This was tough for Beacon for two reasons. First, early in the year, Beacon had made significant purchases of inventory in order to get ahead of price rises from its suppliers. It was looking forward to benefitting from increasing volumes and prices. Unfortunately, the 1.2% organic growth recorded in the quarter fell below its expectations, and it proved difficult to pass on any material price increases. In its conference call, Beacon disclosed that it managed to take 1% of pricing in the quarter, when it had expected to take more than 5%.

Second, as expected, its suppliers did raise prices, and consequently, Beacon suffered some input cost increases in the quarter.

Ultimately, a combination of weaker-than-expected demand and cost increases saw Beacon’s gross margins fall to 23.5% from 25.1% last year. Due to the difficulties in the quarter, Beacon lowered its full-year EPS guidance to a range of $1.50 to $1.60, from a previous range of $1.75 to $1.85.

A beacon of hope

While its lowered guidance is disappointing, the company does have some positive signs ahead.

First, according to Carlisle, the weakness in its roofing sales wasn’t because of weak underlying demand: “Our contractors continue to have heavy backlog comprised of both new construction and reroofing projects. Reroofing appears to have been impacted more than new construction.”

If Carlisle is right, then Beacon can look forward to better conditions in future quarters. Indeed, Beacon argued that its July sales were relatively strong.

In addition, one company that supplies roofing products, Owens Corning (NYSE: OC), gave a relatively bullish outlook for its second half roofing sales. It expects:

“... improved full-year margins versus 2012. We continue to expect the full year market shipment to be flat versus last year. Based on first half shipments, we expect higher volumes in the second half ...The U.S. housing market outlook continues to support improvements in new residential construction and modest growth in re-roof."

According to Owens Corning, roofing distributors are going to take higher volumes in the second half and, at the higher prices too. This is a good indication that Beacon will be able to pass on pricing more easily.

The bottom line

In conclusion, there is a good chance that Beacon will see better conditions going forward. Furthermore, investors should not fret too much over the difficulties in the current quarter, because it looks like a weather-related issue. On the other hand, the valuation does not look generous.

The best way to look at a business like Beacon is to accept that its return on assets will be variable (it can’t control the weather), and to try and buy it when its price/book valuation looks historically favorable.

BECN Return on Assets data by YCharts

The chart above indicates that Beacon is not a good value on a book value basis, at least compared to where it has traded at over the last few years. Despite its good long-term prospects, and the chance of some better trading conditions in the near term, investors should hold out for a better entry price.