2024-01-25 16:35:04 ET
The Sherwin-Williams Company (SHW)
Q4 2023 Earnings Conference Call
January 25, 2024 11:00 AM ET
Company Participants
Heidi Petz - President and Chief Executive Officer
Allen Mistysyn - Senior Vice President of Finance and Chief Financial Officer
Jane Cronin - Senior Vice President of Enterprise Finance
James Jaye - Senior Vice President of Investor Relations & Corporate Communications
Conference Call Participants
Vincent Andrews - Morgan Stanley
John McNulty - BMO Capital Markets
Jeffrey Zekauskas - JPMorgan
Michael Sison - Wells Fargo
Ghansham Panjabi - Baird
Aleksey Yefremov - KeyBanc Capital Markets
Michael Leithead - Barclays Capital Markets
David Begleiter - Deutsche Bank
Michael Harrison - Seaport Research Partners
Charles Cerankosky - Northcoast Research
Greg Melich - Evercore ISI
Steve Byrne - BofA/ Merrill Lynch
Josh Spector - UBS
John Roberts - Mizuho
Arun Viswanathan - RBC Capital Markets
Duffy Fischer - Goldman Sachs
Kevin McCarthy - Vertical Research Partners
Garik Shmois - Loop Capital
Adam Baumgarten - Zelman & Associates
Eric Bosshard - Cleveland Research Company
Eric Zhang - Citi
Presentation
Operator
Good morning. Thank you for joining The Sherwin-Williams Company's review of Fourth Quarter 2023 Results and our outlook for the first quarter and full-year of 2024. With us on today's call are Heidi Petz, President and CEO; Al Mistysyn, Chief Financial Officer; Jane Cronin, Senior Vice President, Enterprise Finance; and Jim Jaye, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations and Communications.
This call is being webcast simultaneously in listen-only mode by Issuer Direct via the Internet at www.sherwin.com. An archived replay of this webcast will be available at www.sherwin.com, beginning approximately two hours after this conference call concludes. This conference call will include certain forward-looking statements as defined under U.S. federal securities laws with respect to sales, earnings and other matters. Any forward-looking statement speaks only as of the date on which such statement is made, and the company undertakes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.
A full declaration regarding forward-looking statements is provided in the company's earnings release transmitted earlier this morning. After the company's prepared remarks, we will open up the session to questions.
I will now turn the call over to Jim Jaye.
James Jaye
Thank you and good morning to everyone. Sherwin-Williams delivered solid fourth quarter results that concluded a record year for the company, where sales grew 4.1% to $23.1 billion and adjusted earnings per share grew 18.6% to $10.35 a share. Sales in the fourth quarter increased by a low-single digit percentage against a tough comparison, and we generated significant year-over-year gross margin improvement.
As we previously described, we also continue our deliberate and accelerated investments in the business as reflected by the low-double-digit year-over-year increase in SG&A in the quarter. These investments are being made to take advantage of current market uncertainty and are aimed at driving the success of our customers and above-market growth across all businesses. Adjusted earnings per share in the quarter decreased by a mid-single-digit percentage related to higher non-operating costs. We maintained our disciplined capital allocation approach and returned $641 million to our shareholders through dividends and share repurchases during the quarter....
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The Sherwin-Williams Company (SHW) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript