Insteel Industries Inc. (IIIN) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us, and welcome to the Insteel Industries Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Call. After today's prepared remarks, we will host a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions]. I will now hand the conference over to H. Woltz, President and Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning. Thank you for your interest in Insteel and welcome to our third quarter 2026 conference call, which will be conducted by Scott Goffredi, our Vice President, CFO and Treasurer; and me. Before we begin, let me remind you that some of the comments made in our presentation are considered to be forward-looking statements that are subject to various risks and uncertainties, which could cause actual materially from those projected. These risk factors are described in our periodic filings with the SEC. By falling short of our expected financial performance in Q3, we believe the upturn in business activity we reported previously is still intact I'll turn the call over to Scott to comment on our financial results. And following his comments, I'll take the call back up to discuss our business outlook.

Thank you, H, and good morning to everyone joining us on the call. As reported in our earnings release this morning, third quarter results benefited from higher average selling prices and improved shipment activity. However, those benefits were more than offset by higher costs resulting in net earnings of $9 million or $0.46 per share compared with $15.2 million or $0.78 per share in the prior year quarter. Despite the decline in earnings, underlying demand trends remain generally favorable. Third quarter shipments increased 1.7% from the prior year quarter, supported by healthy infrastructure activity, although conditions across much of the broader private nonresidential construction market remains soft. Wet weather in certain regions, together were scheduling and delivery delays on several customer projects, including data center-related projects, moderated pace of shipments during the quarter. We continue to view these project delays as timing related rather than indications of weakening underlying demand. Overall, customer sentiment remains positive and activity across our key markets continue to support our outlook.