Categories Earnings Call Transcripts, Industrials

Apogee Enterprises, Inc. (APOG) Q2 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

APOG Earnings Call - Final Transcript

Apogee Enterprises, Inc. (NASDAQ: APOG) Q2 2022 earnings call dated Sep. 21, 2021

Corporate Participants:

Jeff Huebschen — Vice President, Investor Relations and Communications

Ty R. Silberhorn — Chief Executive Officer

Nisheet Gupta — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Analysts:

Christopher Moore — CJS Securities — Analyst

Julio Romero — Sidoti & Company — Analyst

Eric Stine — Craig-Hallum Capital Group — Analyst

Brent Thielman — D.A. Davidson & Co. — Analyst

John Bratz — Kansas City Capital — Analyst

Presentation:

Operator

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Second Quarter 2022 Apogee Enterprises, Inc. Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised today’s conference may be recorded. [Operator Instructions]

I would now like to hand the conference over to your host today, Jeff Huebschen. Please.

Jeff Huebschen — Vice President, Investor Relations and Communications

Thank you, Michelle. Good morning, and welcome to Apogee Enterprises fiscal 2022 second Quarter earnings call. With me today are Ty Silberhorn, Apogee’s Chief Executive Officer; and Nisheet Gupta, Chief Financial Officer. I’d like to remind everyone that there are slides to accompany today’s remarks. These are available on the Investor Relations section of Apogee’s website.

During this call, we will reference certain non-GAAP financial measures. Definitions of these measures and a reconciliation to the nearest GAAP measures are provided in the earnings release we issued this morning. I’d like to remind everyone that our call will contain certain forward-looking statements. These reflect management’s expectations based on currently available information. Actual results may differ materially. More information about factors that could affect Apogee’s business and financial results can be found in our SEC filings.

And with that, I’ll turn the call over to Ty.

Ty R. Silberhorn — Chief Executive Officer

Thanks, Jeff, and thank you everyone for joining us today. This morning, I’ll discuss our second quarter results and the trends we’re seeing in our business, share some insights about the rest of the fiscal year and provide an update on our strategy work, then Nisheet will give more details on the quarter and our outlook, after that, we’ll take your questions.

So let’s start with the quarter results highlighted on Page 4 of our slide deck. I am very proud of our team’s efforts this quarter. We are managing a lot of moving pieces, but our team has executed well and we maintain positive momentum in our business even in a very difficult operating environment. Adjusted margins and earnings improved sequentially compared to the first quarter. This was led by Large-Scale Optical and Architectural Services. LSO continued its strong recovery, bouncing back from the COVID-related disruptions that impacted it last year. And Architectural Services delivered double-digit growth in both revenue and operating income. Architectural Services also increased its backlog this quarter, an encouraging sign, as this is the first backlog growth in that segment in the past year.

Cash flow continues to be very strong. We had $48 million of cash from operations in the quarter, improving our already healthy financial position and we returned cash to shareholders. We did face several headwinds that impacted our results this quarter. As with many companies, cost inflation is a significant issue. Input costs are increasing faster than we can mitigate their impact given the speed of raw material price increases and the cycle time of some of our businesses. For example, the price of aluminum which is Apogee’s largest material cost category has increased 65% in the past year. In fact, aluminum prices are up nearly 20% just since our last earnings call.

We are also seeing meaningful cost increases for glass, coatings, freight and other direct and indirect materials used in our [Technical Issues] We do work to mitigate some of these to hedging and contracts, but the breadth and depth of the increases have outstripped much of that. Additionally, we are experiencing some challenges in our supply chain. The market for many materials is very tight with lead times pushing out and some suppliers are reluctant to take on new business as we seek conditional sources.

I would like to acknowledge the efforts of our procurement team in helping the company navigate through this situation. Over the past few years, we’ve added new talent to build a stronger procurement organization aligned to our business segment priorities. This team is offsetting some of the inflation impact from sourcing alternatives, supplier negotiations, and driving cost savings and other categories. Even with these efforts, we were not able to fully offset increased cost of materials and freight. We are also achieving meaningful progress in procurement as well as driving cost out in our operations, but this is not clearly visible in our results as inflation has outstripped these efforts at a faster rate.

In addition to our procurement and cost efforts, we are taking price actions to mitigate the impact of both labor and material cost inflation. As a reminder, many of our projects have long lead times, so there is a lag from when we take pricing actions until that impact shows up in our financial results. The impact of cost inflation is hitting us now, while the full benefits from pricing will not start to show up until the fourth quarter and into next fiscal year.

I’d also like to comment on our end markets. We thought this was going to be a tough year for volumes, especially in Framing Systems and Architectural Glass, and that is how things are playing out. Non-residential construction remains in a downturn. The most recent data from the Census Bureau shows that non-residential construction spending continues to trend lower. Total non-residential spending is down 11% from the pre-pandemic high. There are reasons to be optimistic about the longer-term outlook in our markets. Forward indicators like the ABI and construction starts have been positive for the past several months. These forward metrics are indicators of the direction of our business 12 months to 18 months out into the future. So it’s likely a few more quarters before we begin to see these improvements show up in our business results.

Looking ahead to the rest of the year, we do not expect the challenges we faced this quarter to dissipate. We will continue to take actions to protect our margins in the near term. This includes a continued focus on execution, closely managing our controllable costs, price actions as appropriate and working to realize the benefits from our restructuring actions as soon as possible, pulling more of these savings into our fourth quarter than originally planned. As the year plays out, we expect that these actions will offset a large portion of the headwinds we are facing. So we remain confident in our guidance for the full year.

While we work to deliver results this fiscal year. We are also positioning the company for the long term. Our priorities for the year have not changed as shown on Page 5 of our presentation. Let me highlight a few of these. First, we will continue to focus on improving operational execution. We certainly have more work to do in this area, but I am encouraged by signs of improvement across our company. For example, our execution of the restructuring and business realignment is ahead of schedule and restructuring costs are coming in lower than originally planned. We are also seeing a solid path for productivity savings in our Owatonna glass plant. This allows us to absorb the stead flow [Phonetic] operations and still leave meaningful capacity to grow our Glass business.

Even as we work to manage costs, we continue to move forward with our enterprise transformation efforts. These are important investments that will help build a stronger foundation for profitable growth and make us a more efficient acquirer in the future. The projects we have underway will strengthen core processes and systems and provide new digital and back office capabilities across several areas, including finance, human resources and supply chain. Finally, we continue to make substantial progress on our strategy work. Much of this work is now complete, setting a clear direction for the enterprise. As I’ve discussed previously, this was a rigorous process that analyzed all aspects of Apogee’s business and the markets we serve. We took a systematic outside in approach. This included extensive input from key customers and detailed competitive benchmarking. We analyzed our portfolio and mix of products, services and capabilities to identify the best avenues for future growth, and we evaluated how we compete to ensure we have the right operating models to deliver consistent profitable growth. From this work, we are building a detailed strategic roadmap to move Apogee forward.

We still have work to do in building out detailed specifics of our plans, but I’d like to share a few of the key elements that are guiding the strategy. These are outlined on Page 6 in our presentation. We are positioning to become the economic leader in the markets we serve. This means, clearly understanding our target markets and where we see the most opportunity to drive value for customers through differentiated products and services. We are aligning our businesses to have clear go-to-market strategies, managing similar products and services together in a way that best meets the needs of our customers, and we will have a relentless focus on operational execution, driving productivity improvements to bring more value to customers and to improve our own profitability. Going forward, we will emphasize return on invested capital as the key metric to guide our investment decisions. This focus on ROIC when formed how we direct our capital allocation and how we manage our overall portfolio of products and services.

To enable future profitable growth, we are building centers of excellence for core processes and capabilities. This will allow us to better leverage scale and will provide a strong backbone to support our businesses. The enterprise transformation in this we have underway are important parts of this effort. Finally, we are adding key talent processes and tools to support our transformation efforts. The actions we announced in August are initial steps in executing our strategy. We are refocusing Architectural Glass to emphasize segments of the market where we see the most opportunity to provide differentiation and drive value. The steps we are taking will also accelerate improvements in the Glass segment’s cost structure and productivity.

We are realigning Framing Systems to bring more clarity in a go-to-market approach and increased focus on our target markets. The changes in Framing Systems will also improve execution and importantly, reduce overall costs to raise our margin levels. Finally, we are moving the Sotawall business into Architectural Services to create a unified market offering for larger custom facade projects. These actions begin our journey to accelerate profitable growth through focus, simplification and improved execution. We plan to share more details of our strategy in our upcoming Investor Day. Invitations for the Investor Day are expected to go out in the next couple of weeks.

With that, let me turn it over to Nisheet to provide more details on the quarter and our outlook.

Nisheet Gupta — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Thank you, Ty, and good morning, everyone. As Ty mentioned, we are proud of our team’s efforts this quarter, maintaining the positive momentum in our business despite the significant challenges we faced.

Let me start with consolidated results on Page 7 of our earnings presentation. Total revenue grew by 2%. This was led by double-digit growth in both Architectural Services and LSO segment. As expected, volumes were lower in Architectural Glass and Framing Systems. This was due to continued market softness and some supply chain challenges. The quarter included $20.8 million of pre-tax restructuring costs. These are related to various actions we announced on August 11. $18.5 million of the restructuring costs were included in the cost of sales line on our income statement. This reduced our reported gross margin in the quarter by 565 basis points. $2.3 million of the restructuring costs were included in SG&A.

When we announced the restructuring, we estimated total cost between $30 million and $35 million. As expected, most of this was incurred in the second quarter. We continue to expect that restructuring will be largely complete by the first quarter of fiscal ’23. Based on our progress to date, we now expect total restructuring cost will be lower than initially estimated. We expect remaining free tax restructuring cost of approximately $5 million to be incurred over the next two quarters. Excluding the restructuring cost, adjusted operating income was $17.7 million. This was down from $25.5 million in the last year’s second quarter. The year-over-year decline was primarily driven by input cost inflation, which was a $20 million headwind in the quarter and higher labor costs mainly resulting from the reversal of temporary cost actions we had in place last year.

Additionally, we had approximately $3.5 million of operating costs related to enterprise transformation initiatives. And finally, we had increased cost of healthcare insurance. These cost increases were partially offset by improved pricing, productivity and cost structure improvements, and benefits from our procurement savings initiatives. While our adjusted operating margin of 5.4% was down year-over-year, margins did improve sequentially by 50 basis points compared to 4.9% in the first quarter. This was primarily driven by stronger performance in Architectural Services.

Our result this quarter also benefited from reduced net interest expense driven by lower debt balances and a lower share count resulting from stock buybacks in the first half of the year. We reported a net loss of $0.08 per share, this included the restructuring cost of $20.8 million. Without this restructuring impact, adjusted earnings came in at $0.53 per diluted share. Similar to our margins, adjusted EPS improved sequentially, increasing by 26% compared to the first quarter.

Let’s turn to segment results, which are on Slide 8. Starting with Architectural Framing Systems. Revenue of $150 million was slightly lower than the prior year. This was primarily driven by lower volumes and supply chain challenges, partially offset by improved pricing. Framing Systems results this quarter included $2 million of restructuring costs. Excluding the restructuring, adjusted operating margin was 6.9%, that was lower than the prior year, driven by cost inflation and lower volume, partially offset by improved pricing and productivity gains resulting from prior restructuring actions. Sequentially, margins improved from 5.3% to 6.9%.

Moving to Architectural Glass segment. Revenue was down 8%. As expected, this was driven by lower volumes. The Glass segment results included $17.4 million of restructuring costs. This was primarily for asset impairment related to closure of Velocity business, along with employee severance costs. Excluding the restructuring costs, adjusted operating margins were slightly above breakeven. Margins were impacted by higher cost of glass, lumber and other materials, along with higher freight and labor costs. The higher costs were primarily offset by improved sales mix and increased productivity in our Owatonna, Minnesota, Glass facility. The Glass segment along with Framing Systems is where we see the most opportunity for long-term margin improvement. Most of the restructuring actions announced in August are focused on Framing and Glass segments. We now expect to see profitability improvements from these actions starting in the fourth quarter. Refocusing the business on differentiated high value [Indecipherable] product should be also contributing to long-term margin improvements. We are renewing our focus on lean and continuous improvement to drive productivity gains.

In Architectural Services, revenue grew 13% to $83 million, as we continue to execute projects in backlog. Operating income grew 10% to $7.2 million and operating margins came in at 8.7%. The Services segment continues to have strong project execution. While margins were down slightly compared to the prior year, this quarter was a nice improvement compared to the first quarter. We remain confident in Services overall execution and outlook for the full year. We are also encouraged by the improving order trends in Architectural Services. Net order flow has increased each of the past three quarters. And as Ty mentioned, backlog grew this quarter to $572 million.

Turning to Large-Scale Optical. LSO continue to recover from last year’s COVID-related shutdowns. Revenue of $24 million grew 40% compared to last year’s second quarter. Demand has returned to normal and our sales mix included more premium products. LSO has also returned to a more normal level of profitability. Operating income was $5.5 million with operating margin of 23.3%.

And finally, our corporate cost increased this quarter to $7.1 billion. This was primarily driven by operating expenses related to transformation projects and increased healthcare costs that I mentioned earlier. The corporate line has also included $1.4 million of restructuring costs. We expect corporate expenses will remain above last year’s levels throughout the rest of the fiscal year.

Turning to Page 9. Our cash flow and balance sheet remain strong. Cash flow from operations in the quarter was $48 million. This brings year-to-date cash flow to $55 million. These are strong results and cash flow is above where it typically has been through the first half of the fiscal year. Cash flow is lower than the last year, which was unusually strong. As you remember, last year we benefited from reduced working capital and temporary cost actions related to COVID.

Year-to-date, capex is $10.1 million below last year’s level. We expect capital spending ramp up in the second half of the fiscal year as we see more investment related to transformation initiatives. Based on year-to-date spending, we now expect full year capex of approximately $35 million, down from our previous estimate of $45 million.

We continue to return cash to shareholders. Year-to-date, we have returned over $32 million from share buyback and dividends, that is more than double the level in last year’s first half. Our balance sheet remains very strong. Net debt is down to $102 million. We have no significant debt maturities until June of 2024, and we have no borrowings in our $235 million revolving credit facility. This strong position provides significant flexibility as we start to execute on a new enterprise strategy.

Now turning to our outlook for the rest of fiscal ’22 which is on Page 10 of our presentation. As Ty mentioned, we are reiterating our full year guidance based on an adjusted EPS basis in a range of $2.2 to $2.4 per share. As a reminder, this guidance excludes the expected restructuring costs [Technical Issues] we believe the headwinds we faced this quarter will persist. Input cost inflation and supply chain challenges will likely remain significant issues, especially in Framing and Glass segment. We expect continued topline softness and lower volumes in Framing Systems and Glass, particularly in the short lead time parts of our business.

We also face the continued year-over-year headwind from the reversal of temporary cost actions that were in place last year. We are taking near term actions to offset these headwinds, including a continued focus on execution, closely managing controllable costs, adjusting pricing to offset inflation, and working to achieve benefits from our restructuring. We expect these actions will offset much of the headwinds we are facing, which gives us confidence in our full year outlook.

Our third quarter results will likely be similar to the second quarter. We expect earnings will make a larger improvement as we move into the fourth quarter when we expect to realize more of the benefits from a pricing and restructuring actions.

Also as a reminder, last year’s third quarter included $7.4 million benefit in Architectural Glass related to new market tax credit. This benefit will not repeat in this year’s third quarter. So while our outlook remains challenging in the near term, we are confident that our team can continue to execute to substantially offset the headwinds as we close out the fiscal year. This will put us in strong footings as we move into fiscal 2023.

With that, I’ll turn it back over to Ty for some concluding remarks.

Ty R. Silberhorn — Chief Executive Officer

Thanks, Nisheet. As I said earlier, I am very proud of our team’s efforts this quarter. There were a lot of moving pieces, but our team was able to drive progress and sustain positive momentum in our business. We are particularly encouraged by our continued strong cash flow, which provides significant financial strength as we move forward. We expect our operating environment will remain challenging, especially through the third quarter. Our team is taking the right actions to offset these headwinds and we see a path to improved results in the fourth quarter and as we move into next fiscal year.

Most importantly, we are beginning to execute elements of our strategy to better position the company for the long term. This remains an exciting time for Apogee. We knew this year will be challenging and those challenges have increased given the broader economic environment. We also realized that making a major shift in strategy and implementing it would take time with fiscal ’23 being the year we would really start to see the larger impacts of this work. But as we’ve highlighted today, we are making progress on several fronts and we expect that to accelerate as we close out this fiscal year. We look forward to sharing more details with you on our upcoming Investor Day.

And with that, we are ready to take your questions.

Questions and Answers:

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Chris Moore with CJS Securities. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Christopher Moore — CJS Securities — Analyst

Hey, good morning, guys. Thanks for taking a few questions.

Ty R. Silberhorn — Chief Executive Officer

Good morning.

Christopher Moore — CJS Securities — Analyst

Good morning. Maybe just start with input inflation. So you talked about a $20 million headwind, it sounds like most of that is coming from Framing and Glass. I was wondering if you could provide a little bit more detail there on the split and really trying to understand where it’s easier to raise pricing? Is it easier within the Framing segment in Glass or maybe just talk to that a bit?

Nisheet Gupta — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Sure. Good morning, Chris. This is Nisheet. So gross inflation for the quarter is $20 million is noted. We have a lot of actions in place today on offsetting, that’s a procurement savings as well as pricing has offset about $10 million of the $20 million. So net impact on inflation for the quarter is $10 million and on a year-to-date basis this number is $14 million. When you think about the split of this, I would say about 50:50 would be a fair split between the Glass and Framing segment on the inflation. There are lots of moving pieces within the quarter, but on a directional basis I would say it’s a 50:50 split.

As we look at the lead times of our businesses, it takes some time for us to start recovering some of the price changes we do as we are committed to a certain number of projects. So we expect our quarter three to remain under a negative trend on inflation, but we start to see positive net inflation impacts coming through in quarter four.

Ty R. Silberhorn — Chief Executive Officer

And maybe, Chris, I’ll just add to that. If you think about that split, in Framing, with respect to pricing. I mean, obviously, we’re trying to offset costs ourselves. Customers never like to see price increases even though a lot of them have become used to it at least the first several months of this year as it was going across not just our industry but the broader economy. Framing has some shorter cycle time, so they have been taking more pricing. So they’ve probably offset a larger chunk of that inflation. However, it’s still been a net negative for them just given the speed of the price increases and Glass giving a little bit longer cycle time and how projects are quoted, there has been a bigger lag in their ability to see that pricing flow through on jobs and sales as we go forward. Got you there, very helpful. I guess longer term, the expectation is that you can achieve $20 million to $30 million of annualized savings by the end of fiscal ’23. Just from a big picture perspective, can you talk about the drivers? What would be the delta between $20 million and $30 million? Where are those savings going to come from that are less certain at this point.

Nisheet Gupta — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Sure. So the focus on all of our restructuring program is on Glass and Framing segment, right. So if you think about the structural improvements we are doing, there is an SG&A piece to it, but more importantly there is a piece on our cost of goods sold that is going to improve in both Glass and Framing segments. I would say — think about the split or areas where we get a restructuring, it’s bringing to people. So as we shut down some of our facilities, we have let people go, that would be one piece of our restructuring benefits. The second would be facility shutdown and related optimization of cost and SG&A. Those are the two important pieces on optimizing our cost from restructuring that I can think of. Ty?

Ty R. Silberhorn — Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, and I think that hits it well and obviously the simplification that we’re doing in the business realignment that really impacts Framing, but also moving Sotawall as we go into next fiscal year over to our Architectural Services. There are some high level savings from an SG&A perspective that will benefit from that consolidation in the larger Framing segment.

Christopher Moore — CJS Securities — Analyst

Got it. Last one for me, just maybe a question for your Investor Day. Maybe expectations for Glass operating margin range once restructuring is complete and non-res market is a little bit stronger?

Ty R. Silberhorn — Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, I would say at this point we’re not ready to give any long-term guidance with respect to margins for Apogee overall or any of the business segments. I will tell you that through the strategy work we identified significant opportunities to improve our margins for Glass and that’s really the focus and emphasis for that business right now and probably well into fiscal ’23, that we want to refocus in parts of the market where we can differentiate ourselves more strongly, delivering more value to the customers, which in turn shows up as more value for Apogee and our shareholders with respect to margins. So that is the focus for Glass. We do see some significant upside on on margin improvement for them over the next year or so.

Christopher Moore — CJS Securities — Analyst

Got it. I’ll leave it there. Thanks, guys.

Ty R. Silberhorn — Chief Executive Officer

Thank you.

Nisheet Gupta — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Thanks, Chris.

Operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Julio Romero with Sidoti and Company. Your line is open, please go ahead.

Julio Romero — Sidoti & Company — Analyst

Hey, good morning, Ty and Nisheet. Thanks for taking the questions.

Ty R. Silberhorn — Chief Executive Officer

Good morning.

Nisheet Gupta — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Good morning.

Julio Romero — Sidoti & Company — Analyst

So I wanted to maybe talk a bit on the string a little bit more on the Glass segment, maybe without speaking about margins, maybe more broadly if you could speak to the product focus going forward in Glass, maybe some examples of the premium high performance products that I think you called out in your August press release?

Ty R. Silberhorn — Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, let me give you some high level and this is an area that we will go deeper into on the Investor Day. But as we looked at our position in that market, we wanted to look at where we have opportunities to leverage some of the unique capabilities we have on coatings as well as certain parts of the market, certain types of projects that we saw an opportunity where we can differentiate ourselves versus competition, especially some of the foreign competition. It’s areas that the business is selling into now and it is part of their portfolio. What we’re doing is putting a stronger emphasis on that as we go forward.

We also see an opportunity to bring more value into what we take to market. Some of that would be organic product innovation that we would invest in ourselves. Some of that would be through third-party partnerships where we can leverage other technologies that are out in the market and combine it with our Glass offerings to in essence raise the value of what we’re selling and thereby also generate higher margins for that business.

Julio Romero — Sidoti & Company — Analyst

Great. Appreciate the color there. And you spoke about adequate capacity at Owatonna to support the additional activity. Can you maybe give us a sense of what utilization rates are looking like? And what you’ll be running at post restructuring in the Glass segment?

Nisheet Gupta — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

So we don’t really comment into that level of detail on capacity utilization. All I can say is that there is a lot of productivity work that is happening in Owatonna right now and we are continuing to expand our capacity just based on that productivity work. With all the kind of couple of shutdowns that we have mentioned as part of a restructuring, we still believe we have adequate capacity for the next several years to take on the market growth that’s coming up.

Julio Romero — Sidoti & Company — Analyst

Okay, fair enough. And then just last one for me and I’ll pass it on. On the Services side I think you did see some sequential backlog improvement there. Can you speak to how you see backlog for Services trending for the remainder of the fiscal year?

Ty R. Silberhorn — Chief Executive Officer

I think as we look out for the year was a positive sign that we saw this quarter. There is still unevenness that we expect to see in that business just as coating activity is moving around with the broader economic challenges. So we’ve seen that improvement in orders and the backlog going up is a very positive thing. We’re not ready to call victory that we will see that consistently as we move ahead, but we’ve got some very good positive signals with respect to that business moving forward.

Julio Romero — Sidoti & Company — Analyst

Great. Thanks very much and I’ll pass it on.

Operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Eric Stine with Craig-Hallum. Your line is open, please go ahead.

Eric Stine — Craig-Hallum Capital Group — Analyst

Good morning, everyone.

Ty R. Silberhorn — Chief Executive Officer

Good morning.

Nisheet Gupta — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Good morning.

Eric Stine — Craig-Hallum Capital Group — Analyst

Hey, so I’ll just follow-up on that last question a little bit, and I know you said too early to call a little bit on Services. But, I mean, if you look at the trends in that business, obviously Services is the one that you’re doing well now, but you’re going to start to feel the impact of the downturn later than the other businesses as you get the fiscal ’23 and clearly more optimistic about Glass and Framing. I mean, do you feel — I mean, where does your confidence stand in terms of that Services backlog which is still very sizable kind of making up for some of that softness, so maybe you’re able to keep that business flat in ’23 rather than some compression there?

Ty R. Silberhorn — Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, I appreciate the question and we’re not really ready to give guidance on fiscal ’23. What I will tell you is that given that we’re just midway through this fiscal year, it’s too soon to call anyway how we would see that business performing. I’ve commented on previous calls that team while they did see that downside hitting them later has been actively working to fill that gap. So that work continues and I think we have to give them time to continue to see that as we progress forward. We’ll have a little bit more insight as we get to the end of the calendar year and then certainly in our fourth quarter we’ll start to have some better visibility to fiscal ’23 for that business.

Eric Stine — Craig-Hallum Capital Group — Analyst

Yeah, no, I can appreciate that, but it does sound like you are pleased with how Services has been executing and so just looking at it in that context it sounds like you’re optimistic that that they will continue on the path that they’ve been on.

Ty R. Silberhorn — Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, we’ve been very pleased with how that business has been performing and also how they have been working to not only deliver this year from a margin perspective after having a really great margin year last year, but then as they build out fiscal ’23. And that strength is frankly where we saw the opportunity to move Sotawall under that business because we see opportunities to leverage some of that strength within that business and raise its performance as well.

Eric Stine — Craig-Hallum Capital Group — Analyst

Yeah, got it. Well, maybe last one from me just on Velocity and the decision that you had talked about back in August. Maybe just anything you learned in that business? Clearly, that’s not a part of the market you now want to focus on, but whether it’s operationally or market facing what you learned in that business that maybe you can take to the rest of the Glass segment?

Ty R. Silberhorn — Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, as we looked at that business through this the strategy work, we looked at current market as well as how we saw the future market playing out. And with respect to that into the market, we saw significant pressure on margins and so that we were not seeing the price points that was originally anticipated and therefore not seeing the margin that we expected for that business. So we took a forward-looking view and didn’t see that materially improving over the next few years. That said as well, what we were doing in that space while it was taking a different approach from a technology and automation perspective, it really wasn’t a strong differentiation from the end product itself and we saw it as being dilutive to our margins and our ROIC goals as we move forward, and that led us the difficult decision to exit that business. We are working diligently with the team to effectively offset some of that investment through the sale of equipment as we shut down those operations and we’re seeing some positive indications with respect to that as well.

Eric Stine — Craig-Hallum Capital Group — Analyst

Okay, thank you.

Ty R. Silberhorn — Chief Executive Officer

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Brent Thielman with D.A. Davidson. Your line is open, please go ahead.

Brent Thielman — D.A. Davidson & Co. — Analyst

Thank you. Good morning.

Ty R. Silberhorn — Chief Executive Officer

Good morning.

Brent Thielman — D.A. Davidson & Co. — Analyst

Ty or Nisheet, when did the move of the Sotawall business in the Services become effective? Just remember 14%.

Nisheet Gupta — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Sure. So as you’ve see in the August 11 announcement, we are already working on transitioning some of the, the parts of the businesses. But the real transfer of business will happen from 1st March next fiscal year. We are looking at a lot of moving pieces within the Sotawall business, Harmon [Phonetic] or Services segment is trying to understand the key opportunities that can drive, and this year we’ll be focused on understanding the business and transitioning it. So we are looking to let’s say restate or recast some of our numbers and segments coming from — starting from 1st March next year.

Brent Thielman — D.A. Davidson & Co. — Analyst

Okay, perfect. And then on Services, I mean you had good revenue growth, but the margins were a little lower. You talked about some of the change in the mix. Is that is that your expectation for margins in the guidance through the rest of the year for the Services business? Just a function of different mix versus last year.

Nisheet Gupta — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, so I would say Services business is performing really well and there is always an element of project mix that comes along in this business, so over quarters we can see the margins going down quarter-over-quarter, but sequentially they are continuing to improve their margins exceptionally strong margins in fiscal ’21, the second highest ever. It will be hard to repeat that in ’22, but we still see strong opportunities in this business as the backlog is strong and the team is doing a very good job in the project selection and how to select their projects. So we continue to see good positive momentum and margin should be improving over time.

Brent Thielman — D.A. Davidson & Co. — Analyst

Okay. The transformation initiatives and some of the facility consolidation that it’s going to come with that, are there — I guess could there be significant real estate assets that we could consider coming out of all this that might also contribute to the balance sheet here?

Nisheet Gupta — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

What we have announced on August. 11, one of the key assets that we are looking at. Beyond that, we do not see any significant opportunities on our assets for now. Of course, the strategy is continue to evolve and we are understanding our different part of execution of that strategy and some of the decisions on assets may be made in due course of time. But for now, whatever was announced on August 11 in terms of our Glass segment assets, those are the key assets that we are reducing.

Brent Thielman — D.A. Davidson & Co. — Analyst

Okay. And then we saw the revised capex guidance, I mean fiscal year-to-date you’re running sort of well below that. Are there some projects earmarked that step ups that capex in the second half because just from the run rate we’ve seen year-to-date?

Nisheet Gupta — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, so if you think about the enterprise strategy work that we’ve done so far, we have understood where do we want to invest more and which are the areas where we want to reduce our investments. So that’s one of the key reasons we are looking at investing differently versus what we thought originally in our plan for this year. And secondly the enterprise strategy work that we’re doing, we have invested some of it already. A lot of systems and backbone work that’s happening, that will continue to ramp up in the second half of the year.

Ty R. Silberhorn — Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, so we’ll manage that — this is timing from a strategic perspective as Nisheet said. We actually were having the team slow walk some of those planned investments until we got a better sense from the strategy work and that de-prioritized some of the things that were in queue. And we do expect a step-up in the second half the caveat just as we are seeing with raw materials, that’s dependent on supply. So we know some of the — some of the work that we want to execute will have to rely on the ability to bring that equipment in, etc. So that is something that we’re watching as we go through the second half, but our plan is to spend at that level now as we move ahead.

Brent Thielman — D.A. Davidson & Co. — Analyst

Okay, great. Thank you. Look forward to talking more tomorrow.

Ty R. Silberhorn — Chief Executive Officer

Thank you.

Nisheet Gupta — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Thanks.

Operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of John Bratz with Kansas City Capital. Your line is open, please go ahead.

John Bratz — Kansas City Capital — Analyst

Good morning, everyone. Ty, the ABI Index has been positive for the last six months and hopefully that bodes well down the road, but with the cost pressures that the industry has seen, aluminum, glass and so on, do you see any evidence that some of these projects that may be people, architects are discussing and so on might be — might they be tabled for a while to see where these costs go? Are you seeing any anything such as that?

Ty R. Silberhorn — Chief Executive Officer

We’re watching that really closely as you might imagine. It’s too soon to tell if it’s going to have a material impact on the non-resi recovery. I would say we’ve seen some projects pause that we’re ready to come out for quotes and bids and at the same time we saw other projects pull forward or push their schedules ahead with respect to that. So it’s been mixed signals at this point as far as what we’re seeing. Obviously, what’s happening with COVID, return to workplace, with the Delta variant, any other variants that come out, that could have an impact as well in what people are deciding to do with project. So we continue to watch that. I would say it’s uneven. But we haven’t seen anything that’s pointing to an acceleration of the recovery or at this point something that’s pointing to a deceleration of the recovery.

John Bratz — Kansas City Capital — Analyst

Okay, okay, and I may have missed it when you announced the restructuring a couple of months ago, I think you said $30 million to $35 million in cost and now it’s what $20 million to $25 million or something like that. What’s what’s the delta there, what’s the difference?

Nisheet Gupta — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

So you got the numbers right. So we had announced a $30 million to $35 million as initial estimates and we are looking to spend about $20 million to $25 million now. There is a big change is the interest that was anticipated from potential buyers for some of the assets that we are selling, that we have seen a good interest and therefore we see that we don’t need to write down some of the assets and property, plant and equipment.

John Bratz — Kansas City Capital — Analyst

Okay.

Nisheet Gupta — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

We will continuously monitor this and provide more details in quarter three, by which time we will have details on some of these transactions on selling this property, plant and equipment.

Ty R. Silberhorn — Chief Executive Officer

John, the other piece I would say is the teams have really executed well against this plan. We put together a very detailed plan on how we would move this ahead coming out of the strategy work and the team is executing against that extremely well to the point that we’re confident we will see some of those benefits actually flow into our fourth quarter, which is a very good thing. And for us, this was an area where we looked at a future going forward if we want to get back into M&A, we’re approaching some of this as integration work across the business units as mergers, our EFCO and Wausau Window & Wall business combining and that’s our instruction to the teams and we’re building out a playbook and how they’re managing that so they can start to exercise that muscle because we do [Technical Issues]

Operator

[Technical Issues] Ty Silberhorn for any further remarks.

Ty R. Silberhorn — Chief Executive Officer

Well, thank you, Michelle. Thanks everyone for joining us today and learning how we are driving progress even in a very challenging environment. As I said earlier, we’ve navigated through a difficult second quarter, offsetting some of the significant cost headwinds we faced and we’re taking near term actions to protect margins, but we see significant opportunity for long-term margin and ROIC gains. Finally, we’ve made progress on our strategy work and have begun that execution. We look forward to seeing you virtually or in person at our upcoming Investor Day, where we will share more on our long-term outlook and strategy. With that, thank you. Have a great rest of your day and a great week.

Operator

[Operator Closing Remarks]

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