The Sherwin-Williams Company (SHW) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning. Thank you for joining the Sherwin-Williams conference to discuss the election of the company's next Chief Financial Officer announced yesterday and effective January 1, 2026. With us on today's call are Heidi Petz, President and CEO; Allen Mistysyn, Chief Financial Officer; Ben Meisenzahl, Senior Vice President Finance; and Jim Jaye, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations and Communications. This conference call is being webcast simultaneously in listen-only mode by ACCESS Newswire via the Internet at www.sherwin.com. An archived replay of this webcast will be available at www.sherwin.com, beginning approximately 2 hours after this conference call concludes. This conference call will include certain forward-looking statements as defined under the 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 yesterday afternoon. After the company's prepared remarks, we will open the session to questions. I will now turn the call over to Heidi Petz.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Today is an important and exciting day for Sherwin-Williams. I'm pleased to announce that Ben Meisenzahl has been appointed by our Board of Directors to assume the responsibilities of Chief Financial Officer of our company effective January 1, 2026. I also want to thank Allen Mistysyn, our current Chief Financial Officer, for his 35 years of dedicated service to the company. Al will remain with the company in a transition role until his retirement in March 2026. Ben is a dedicated, highly capable and globally experienced Sherwin-Williams executive, who is extremely well prepared to be the next CFO of Sherwin-Williams. He is well deserving of this promotion. Ben has spent his entire 22-year career with the company, and he brings a deep understanding of our people, culture, businesses, customers and investors to his new role. Ben has worked closely with me, Al, and our entire leadership team over the last several years. Many of you have met Ben over that period as he has helped communicate the Sherwin-Williams value proposition at multiple investor conferences and roadshows in prior Investor Days as well as our sell-side dinner this past summer. I have great confidence and complete trust in Ben, and we are highly aligned in executing our strategy and creating long-term value for all of our stakeholders. In just a minute, I'm going to ask Al to provide his perspective on this transition. But first, I want to thank Al again for his many outstanding contributions to our company. I could not have asked for a better partner these last 2 years since becoming CEO, and I'm extremely grateful for the strong foundation he leaves for us to build upon. As I mentioned in our press release, Al provided steady leadership as CFO during one of the most challenging periods in company history. This included the purchase and integration of Valspar, the company's largest ever acquisition, a global pandemic, an industry-wide supply chain crisis and the construction of our new global headquarters and R&D facilities among many others. Sherwin-Williams market capitalization more than tripled during Al's time as CFO, and he instilled a relentless focus across our entire team on the importance of delivering results. We wish Al a long and healthy retirement with his family. And with that, let me turn it over to Al.

Thank you, Heidi, for those kind words. It is hard to believe 35 years have passed, and I'm extremely proud of what the people at Sherwin Williams have accomplished during that time. Today, however, is about the future, which I am sure will be extremely bright with Ben and the role of CFO. Heidi often talks about talent as one of our key priorities, and over the last 3 years, we've had a very deliberate and detailed process to prepare Ben for his new role. I'm highly confident in Ben, I've worked side-by-side with him throughout numerous challenges and I know he is the right leader to partner with Heidi and continuing to drive Sherwin-Williams success. Ben's had multiple roles of increasing responsibility over his 22-year career with the company. In his current position as Senior Vice President, Finance, Ben leads the company's treasury, tax, finance transformation and global business services functions. He's played a key role in developing our annual operating plans and setting targets while driving accountability and execution within our enterprise priorities. Prior to this, Ben held several global finance and accounting roles across our operations that have given him a deep understanding of what makes our company successful. In Pink Stores Group, he served as Vice President and Controller of the Midwest division. He held similar roles in the Performance Coatings Group and our Protective & Marine and industrial wood divisions. Ben also served as Controller for European operations and our global supply chain organization. I know Ben will do an excellent job as the next CFO of Sherwin-Williams, and I'm very pleased to offer him my congratulations. Let me now turn it over to Ben for a few words.

Thank you, Al and Heidi. I'm excited and humbled by the opportunity to serve as the next CFO of this great company. As Heidi mentioned, Al is leaving us with a strong foundation, and I want to thank him for his confidence in me and all the knowledge and support he has provided leading up to this announcement. As far as what you can expect from me, my goal is to ensure a seamless transition that focuses on continued profitable growth, disciplined capital allocation, financial excellence and transparency. I've enjoyed interacting with many of you over the last 2 years, and I look forward to getting to know all of you better in the quarters ahead. Sherwin-Williams future is extremely bright and I'm excited to continue working alongside Heidi and our entire senior leadership team to continue driving results for our customers, employees and shareholders.

Thank you, Ben, and congratulations again. I'm highly confident in your leadership and I'm looking forward to delivering the next chapter of Sherwin-Williams success together with you. At this time, we would be happy to take a few questions. Since we just had our earnings call a few days ago, I'll respectfully ask that we focus this call on our transition announcement.

[Operator Instructions] Your first question is coming from Vincent Andrews from Morgan Stanley.

I appreciate the comments about how this was worked on and anticipated for the past 3 years. But just if you could put a finer point on why now is the time to make this transition versus we could say, 12 months ago or 12 months from now, but just what makes now the right time for this?

Vincent, I'm going to start, and then I'll hand this over to Al after I take a first run at this. I think after 35 years with Sherwin-Williams, not only has Al earned this, this is obviously his choice. To be honest, it's hard to believe that there's life outside of Sherwin-Williams. But Al tells us that, that's true. 9 years as CFO, this was -- this is his opportunity, and we're very excited to your point. This has been a very deliberate and detailed process personally and for the leadership team, certainly with our Board. And so Ben is ready. He's been working alongside Al every step of the way here. I'm extremely confident not only is he ready, but he's the right person for the role at this time. But respectfully, let me kick this over to Al, so he can give you his thoughts.

Yes, Vincent. As Heidi mentioned, I've had a 35-year run, 9 as CFO. I think that's enough. And I'm confident the company is in a really good place. We have a solid foundation. And I have a lot of confidence in Ben and his wide-ranging experience across stores, across performance coatings in our global supply chain. So I can't be more pleased with turning the reins over to Ben. And again, I know he's going to knock it out of the park, and it's going to be a great run. So...

Thanks, Vincent.

Your next question is coming from Arun Viswanathan from RBC.

Congratulations on the announcement, Al and Ben as well. I guess my question is really related to strategy. Obviously, you said that you'd like to make the transition as smooth as possible. Can you just elaborate that means from a financial standpoint? Will you still be prioritizing capital allocation from a share buyback standpoint? And maybe you could also talk about leverage and M&A as well.

Arun, it's Ben. As you know, Al builds a strong foundation of financial rigor and operational excellence. And as you would expect, I intend to carry that forward. And so what won't change is our disciplined approach to our long-term strategy, our capital allocation philosophy, our strong focus on shareholder value creation and also the strong partnership that I'll continue to have with Heidi as it relates to these. And so I've been very fortunate, as Heidi called out in the beginning to work alongside Al for the last couple of years. And even before his tenure, when Sean Hennessy was here as CFO, I got to see and get some valuable insights from him. And so I look forward to continuing to emulate the financial discipline, as shown by both Al and Sean.

[Operator Instructions] Your next question coming from Chris Parkinson from Wolfe Research.

Congratulations, Ben. Ben, I know you've been behind the scenes for several years, and you've been working on a lot of the advance in technologies ranging from helping your own store reps and also your customers to kind of streamlining a lot of new processes. Does any of that necessarily going to filter into your new role? Is that something that you're leveraging, collaborating with and that was part of the prep? Or is that just part of kind of doing what you needed to do to help the organization in prior years?

Yes. Thanks, Chris. I mean it's a little bit of both. I mean you know that we went through the financial transformation initiative coming out of COVID. And a lot of that caused us to have to take a step back and really just reimagine the whole finance process. And so that includes a lot of process and technology. And so naturally, we had a lot of experience there looking at data, reporting, et cetera. But part of the transition, I mean, Al has had me play a closer role with our technology organization. And so I've been able to sit side-by-side there with those teams. And those, as you know, when we talk about our enterprise priorities, those are enablers of our long-term strategy. And so by design, getting really close to that because that's going to help our above-market growth aspirations.

And one piece I would add to that, Chris, too, and you're dealing with very humble people here in both Al and Ben. I think with Ben, as we're talking about some of these things that we've worked on, it really is the best of both. It's leveraging his time across stores, Performance Coatings Group, local supply chain and being very forward-looking as we think about modernizing systems, technologies, leveraging data so we can make even better data-driven decisions become even more efficient across our business processes. At the end of the day, it's about making sure we have both scale and agility and Ben is the perfect partner alongside me to make sure that we go down that path.

That concludes our Q&A session. I'll now hand the conference back to Jim Jaye for closing remarks. Please go ahead.

Yes. Thank you, Matthew. I just also wanted to thank Al for his tremendous contributions to Sherwin-Williams and all the insights and experiences he shared with me. We've worked together very closely since I joined the company back in 2017, and I wish Al and his family a very happy and healthy retirement. Also very pleased to offer my congratulations to Ben and looking forward to building on our strong relationship that we already have and continuing to drive success for Sherwin. So as always, thank you for joining us today, and thanks for your continued interest in Sherwin-Williams.

Thank you, everyone. This concludes today's event. You may disconnect at this time, and have a wonderful day. Thank you for your participation.