蓝林克斯 (BXC) 2026财年第三季度业绩电话会议：销售增长、利润率提升及第四季度展望

核心要点

• BlueLinx Holdings（NYSE：BXC）公布2026年第三季度净销售额为8.13亿美元，同比增长8.5%；调整后EBITDA增长42%至3170万美元。
• 毛利率从14.4%升至16.1%。扣除220万美元的进口关税收益和290万美元的存货跌价准备后，调整后毛利率为16.2%，而去年同期为14.7%。
• 特种产品业务实现销售额5.50亿美元，增长近5%，毛利率达18.7%。结构性产品业务销售额增长近18%至2.63亿美元，毛利率达到10.7%。
• 于2025年第四季度收购的Disdero贡献了超过2500万美元的销售额和250万美元的调整后EBITDA。
• 期末BlueLinx可即时动用的流动资金为6.89亿美元，其中包括3.50亿美元现金。净负债为2100万美元，净杠杆率为过去四个季度调整后EBITDA的0.2倍。
• 管理层预计，受季节性因素和住房市场持续疲软影响，第四季度两大产品板块的日均销量将略低于2026年第三季度和2025年第四季度。

核心财务数据

业务与运营表现

特种产品业务约占净销售额的70%和毛利润的80%。在Disdero以及几乎所有产品类别价格上涨的支撑下，该板块销售额增长近5%至5.50亿美元，这些有利因素抵消了内生销量的下降。

特种产品毛利润增长18%至1.03亿美元，毛利率从16.6%扩大至18.7%。扣除关税收益和存货跌价准备后，板块毛利率为18.8%，上年同期为17.0%。特种产品各类别的销量均有所下降，其中木制品降幅最大，其他大多数类别下降了低个位数百分比。

由于木材和板材的价格与销量同比改善，结构性产品销售额增长近18%至2.63亿美元。毛利润增长36%至2800万美元，毛利率从9.3%上升至10.7%。管理层表示，多家庭住宅项目、大客户以及建筑商拉动计划推动了结构性产品销量的增长。

BlueLinx继续扩大与战略供应商的合作。其RDI栏杆销售网络扩展至21个网点；Westlake Royal Building Products透明PVC饰边扩展至27个网点；TruExterior墙板与饰边网点从12个增加至17个；LP SmartSide饰边与墙板已在20个网点供应；Fiberon地板和栏杆分别通过34个和15个网点分销；Trex产品已在公司五个大区中的三个大区的11个网点投入运营。

管理层表示，多家庭住宅销量实现了低两位数增长，而大客户销量略有增加。公司还继续投资于定价管理、客户自助服务、数字互动、报价、订购和库存优化。

管理层业绩指引

管理层预计，2026年第四季度特种产品毛利率将在17.5%至18.5%之间。特种产品的日均销量预计将略低于2026年第三季度和2025年第四季度。

第四季度结构性产品的毛利率预计在9%至10%之间。日均销量预计也将略低于2026年第三季度和2025年第四季度。

BlueLinx正赶在预期2027年初销售活跃期到来前建立库存。管理层预计，新增加及扩充的品牌将带来约1500万至2000万美元的额外净库存投资。预计2026年底销售贡献仍将有限，随后在2027年第一和第二季度开始增加。

公司重申维持长期净杠杆率在2倍或以下的意向。截至季度末，其股票回购授权额度还剩5400万美元，但第三季度内未回购任何股票。

风险与关注点

管理层将房屋市场前景描述为极具挑战性。新屋开工量已连续两个季度下滑，且第三季度降幅进一步扩大，据称建筑商信心已降至2012年以来的最低水平。购房负担能力限制、高利率、通货膨胀以及修缮改造活动疲软仍是需求压力的主要来源。

运营成本也居高不下。柴油成本同比上涨64%，平板货车运费上涨44%。截至2026年第三季度，BlueLinx已处理了约80次供应商提价，而2025年同期约为30次。

管理层预计燃油成本和货运费率将维持在高位，并警告称难以保持近期同等节奏的销量增长。在特种产品方面，管理层认为需求破坏是主要的定价相关风险；而结构性产品仍面临大宗商品价格波动和工厂产能调整的影响。

计划中的供应商扩充需要在形成实质性销售之前进行库存投资。此外，客户转化也需要时间，因为BlueLinx必须与当地市场的现有分销商和竞争品牌展开竞争。

分析师问答要点

• 利润率执行力：管理层将利润率改善归因于集中定价能力、加快传导供应商提价、保持定价纪律以及改善库存管理。结构性产品利润率也受益于今年早些时候的大宗商品价格。
• 外墙及户外生活业务扩张：BlueLinx预计，与Trex、LP、Fiberon、RDI和Westlake Royal Building Products扩大的合作关系将有助于提高在传统客户、多家庭住宅客户和大客户中的市场份额。管理层特别强调了德克萨斯州、东南部阳光地带以及东北部修缮改造市场的机遇。
• 第四季度销售放缓：管理层表示，预计日均销售额的下降既反映了正常的季节性因素，也反映了住宅需求的疲软。公司计划利用多家庭住宅、大客户和建筑商拉动计划来缓解市场压力。
• 库存策略：BlueLinx正在需求增加之前将库存引入其分销网络。管理层认为，客户越来越倾向于以更高频率小批量采购，这有望提升二级分销以及按件拣选、施工包装准备等服务的价值。
• 结构性产品与特种产品增长对比：结构性产品的增长受益于多家庭住宅和较新的渠道举措。然而，由于特种产品拥有更高的利润率和战略供应商计划，管理层的长期目标仍是向特种产品倾斜。

业绩电话会议完整文字记录

完整财报电话会议逐字稿

管理层陈述

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the BlueLinx Holdings Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call.

[Operator Instructions] And today's call is being recorded. We will begin with opening remarks and introductions.

At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to your host, Investor Relations Officer, Tom Morabito. Please go ahead.

Thomas Morabito

Thank you, operator, and welcome to the BlueLinx third quarter 2026 earnings call.

Joining me on today's call is Shyam Reddy, our Chief Executive Officer; and Kelly Wall, our Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer. At the end of today's prepared remarks, we will take questions.

Our third quarter news release and Form 10-Q were issued yesterday after the close of the market, along with our webcast presentation, and these items are available in the Investors section of our website. We encourage you to follow along with the detailed information on the slides during our webcast.

Today's discussion contains forward-looking statements. Actual results may differ significantly from those forward-looking statements due to various risks and uncertainties, including the risks described in our most recent SEC filings. Today's presentation includes certain non-GAAP and adjusted financial measures that we believe provide helpful context for investors evaluating our business. Reconciliations to the closest GAAP financial measure can be found in the appendix of our presentation.

Now I'll turn it over to Shyam.

Shyam Reddy

Thanks, Tom, and good morning, everyone.

Our third quarter results demonstrate our continued ability to execute successfully in a challenging market with strategic volume growth and margin strength top priorities. Despite ongoing pressure from elevated interest rates, affordability concerns, inflation and cautious customer spending, we once again generated volume growth in key areas of the business while effectively managing the company through waves of escalating costs.

During the quarter, net sales were up 8.5% year-over-year, driven by continued momentum in our strategic customer channels, contributions from Disdero and the ongoing expansion of our supplier relationships. We also benefited from favorable pricing and solid volumes in structural products. Specialty gross margin was 18.7% and structural gross margin was 10.7%, both of which reflect the strength of our customer value proposition and effective inventory management. The specialty gross margin includes the impact of an import duty item and an inventory provision tied to a strategic vendor realignment in outdoor living products, both of which Kelly will discuss in a moment.

Our specialty product strategy remains a key element of our growth engine, representing approximately 70% of net sales and 80% of gross profit during the quarter. Our channel strategy continues to serve as a powerful commercial engine for our supplier partners. The combination of our multifamily focus, builder pull-through programs and national accounts business is helping us drive branded product adoption across multiple end markets to create value through the distribution chain for all customers. These initiatives are helping us identify opportunities earlier in the project life cycle, convert additional business to strategic brands and deepen customer relationships. In turn, they are strengthening our position as a preferred growth partner for suppliers seeking to drive demand, expand their reach and accelerate product adoption across our entire customer base.

The value of our model is being recognized by manufacturers looking for innovative and disruptive distribution partners capable of creating demand and supporting growth across multiple geographies and customer segments. Our differentiated channel focus, scale, broad geographic footprint, local market expertise and value-add services allow us to provide a level of commercialization support that few distributors can match. We continue to build on that advantage through expanded supplier partnerships, additional product introductions and broader geographic coverage of key brands.

Recent momentum with strategic suppliers has accelerated, reflecting the success of these efforts and further validating our commercial strategy. Examples include the addition of eight locations to our RDI railing distribution network, bringing the total footprint to 21 locations. Broadening our partnership with Westlake Royal Building Products to now distribute their clear PVC trim products in 27 locations as well as to expand the availability of their true exterior siding and trim products from 12 to 17 locations, expanding our relationship with LP to offer their SmartSide Trim and Siding products in 20 attractive locations, expanding our relationship with Fiberon to include decking in 34 locations and railing in 15 locations.

Our rollout of Trex products is on track and proceeding as planned. We have 11 location Trex footprint touching three of our five regions has inventory and each one is delivering products to its customers. All of these examples clearly demonstrate our commitment to focusing on our higher-margin specialty products business in a manner that's strategic, not just expansion of specialty products for the sake of expansion, but rather growing and deepening key vendor relationships in ways that fuel our channel growth strategy. Capitalizing on branded expansion opportunities in outdoor living, siding and trim products, all of which are some of the most attractive categories in residential construction and repair and remodel work touching two-step distribution densifies the specialty product foundation to create long-term durable relationships with our customers.

Operationally, we remain highly disciplined. Our teams continue to actively manage inventory levels, respond quickly to changing market conditions and maintain a strong focus on working capital efficiency no matter the market backdrop. These capabilities have contributed to our performance through the trough of the cycle while positioning us well for above-market growth as conditions improve.

We are also advancing our AI and digital transformation initiatives with our latest round of investments focused on commercial growth insights, customer self-service and digital engagement, streamlined quoting and ordering and inventory optimization. These efforts are intended to drive profitable sales growth and stronger returns on working capital, enhance decision-making and strengthen our ability to support customers and suppliers more effectively than the competition.

Finally, our balance sheet remains strong. We ended the quarter with $689 million of available liquidity, providing us with continued flexibility to invest in the business, pursue strategic growth opportunities and continue allocating capital in a disciplined manner. While market conditions remain uncertain, our strategic priorities have not changed nor will they. We remain focused on growing specialty products, expanding supplier relationships in terms of geographic scope and SKUs, increasing penetration in key customer channels and growing our multifamily sales, all while investing in tech-enabled solutions and executing with efficiency and discipline in mind.

Now let me provide a few additional highlights from our third quarter performance. We generated net sales of $813 million and adjusted EBITDA of $32 million for a 3.9% adjusted EBITDA margin, a significant improvement on a year-over-year basis. Disdero, which we acquired in Q4 2025, contributed over $25 million in net sales and $2.5 million in adjusted EBITDA. Adjusted net income was $5.5 million or $0.68 per diluted share. Our results continue to demonstrate the benefits of our strategic initiatives that we've discussed throughout the year, which are delivering growth against another quarter of housing start declines and soft repair and remodel activity. Specifically, multifamily volumes increased low double digits, national accounts volumes increased slightly and our builder pull-through programs supported growth across several strategic product categories.

We're especially proud of our solid gross margin and EBITDA margin performance despite cost inflation, freight challenges and the competitive pricing environment. Our teams did so by managing inventory effectively, maintaining pricing discipline, providing differentiated value-add services, better leveraging our new transportation management system and successfully navigating ongoing cost pressures. For example, diesel fuel costs and flatbed freight rates are up 64% and 44% on a year-over-year basis, respectively. We've also dealt with approximately 80 cost increases from suppliers through Q3 2026 compared to around 30 through Q3 2025. We've done our best to recover as much of these cost increases through disciplined pricing and fuel surcharges.

With the challenging market as a backdrop, our scale, geographic reach and broad customer base provide us with strategic areas of diversification that enable us to participate in areas of relative strength while maintaining a disciplined approach to managing the business efficiently. Despite another successful quarter of growing volumes in key areas of focus, we believe that maintaining that momentum at the same rate will remain challenging. Housing starts have declined for two consecutive quarters, with Q3 showing a meaningful acceleration of declining housing starts since Q2. We also believe fuel costs and freight rates will remain high. That, combined with the lowest builder sentiment since 2012, a 14-year low, stubbornly high inflation and housing affordability issues portend a challenging backdrop for the foreseeable future.

Regardless, we are convinced that our ability to outperform and outcompete will remain strong because we are focused on our profitable sales growth strategy and controlling what we can to drive efficiency. We are also investing selectively in the business and maintaining the financial flexibility necessary to pursue future opportunities that accelerate our growth objectives.

To wrap-up, I'd like to thank all of our associates for their ongoing dedication to our customers, suppliers, one another and the communities we serve.

Now I'll turn it over to Kelly, who will provide additional details on our financial results and our capital structure.

Christopher Wall

Thanks, Shyam, and good morning, everyone.

Let's first go through the consolidated highlights for the quarter. Overall, both Specialty Products and Structural Products delivered solid sales growth and gross margins in what continues to be a challenging new home construction and repair and remodel market. Net sales for the third quarter of 2026 were $813 million, up 8.5% year-over-year. Total gross profit was $131 million and gross margin was 16.1%, up from 14.4% in the prior year period.

As Shyam mentioned, two unusual items impacted both consolidated gross margins and specialty gross margins during the quarter. First, we recognized a $2.2 million benefit related to expense recognized in prior periods for import duty items. Second, we also recorded a onetime inventory provision of $2.9 million, resulting from a strategic brand and vendor change within one of our key product lines. Excluding the impact of these items, gross margin was 16.2% in the quarter versus 14.7% last year. SG&A was $106 million, up $17 million from last year's third quarter. This increase was mainly due to the acquisition of Disdero in Q4 last year, higher fuel and third-party freight expenses as well as higher employee compensation-related expenses. Given the challenging demand environment and continued pressure on operating costs, consistent with prior quarters, we remain focused on disciplined expense management and identifying additional opportunities to improve efficiency.

Net loss for the quarter was $600,000 or $0.07 per basic and diluted share. Adjusted net income was $5.5 million or $0.68 per diluted share, up approximately 50%. Our effective income tax rate for the quarter was not meaningful, largely given the impact of nondeductible items. Adjusted EBITDA was $31.7 million, up 42% from the third quarter of 2025 due to increased sales, including Disdero, improved gross margins in both Specialty and Structural Products, continued disciplined expense management and the benefit of the duty-related items.

Turning now to the third quarter results for Specialty Products. Net sales for Specialty Products were $550 million in the third quarter, up nearly 5% year-over-year. This increase was driven by Disdero sales and increased pricing in nearly all product types, partially offset by lower volumes. Gross profit from Specialty Product sales was $103 million, up 18% year-over-year. Specialty gross margin was 18.7%, up from last year's 16.6%. Adjusted for duty-related items and the inventory-related item I mentioned before, gross margin for Specialty Products increased to 18.8% from 17% last year. In the current fourth quarter, we expect Specialty Product gross margin to be in the range of 17.5% to 18.5%, with daily sales volumes slightly lower than the third quarter of 2026 and the fourth quarter of 2025.

Now moving on to Structural Products. Structural Products had another very strong quarter. Net sales were $263 million for the third quarter, up nearly 18% compared to the prior year period. This increase was primarily due to higher pricing and volumes for both lumber and panels when compared to last year. Gross profit from Structural products was $28 million, an increase of 36% year-over-year and structural gross margin was 10.7%, up from 9.3% in the same period last year. We expect Q4 structural product gross margin to be in the range of 9% to 10%, with daily volumes to be slightly lower than the third quarter of 2026 and the fourth quarter of 2025.

Now turning to our balance sheet. Our liquidity continues to be very strong. At the end of the quarter, cash and cash equivalents were $350 million, $32 million higher than Q2 2026. When considering our cash on hand and undrawn revolver capacity of $339 million, available liquidity was approximately $689 million at the end of the quarter. Total debt, excluding our real property financing leases, was $371 million and net debt was $21 million. Our net leverage ratio was 0.2x trailing four-quarter adjusted EBITDA, and we have no material outstanding debt maturities until 2029.

Additionally, given the strength of our balance sheet and continued strong liquidity, we remain well positioned to support our strategic initiatives. These strategic initiatives include continued growth with our large national customers and in the multifamily channel with a focus on benefiting our traditional local customers; product demand pull-through efforts to drive strategic sales that benefit our customers with respect to large national and regional builders, continued specialty product expansion with key suppliers, including the recent announcements that Shyam highlighted earlier, our business and digital transformation efforts and other organic and inorganic growth initiatives.

Now moving on to working capital and free cash flow. During the third quarter, we had operating cash flow of $45 million and free cash flow of $40 million, both strong results, but down from the third quarter of 2025, primarily due to net changes in inventory and timing of payments for accounts payable.

Turning now to capital allocation. During the quarter, we incurred $5 million of CapEx, primarily related to investments in our fleet, facility and technology improvements. For the remainder of 2026, our capital expenditures will include facility maintenance and improvements as well as investments that support our channel and product strategies and our business and digital transformation initiatives.

During the third quarter, we did not repurchase any common shares. And at quarter end, we continue to have a total of $54 million remaining under our share repurchase authorization. Our guiding principles for capital allocation remain consistent with prior quarters. We intend to maintain a strong balance sheet, which enables us to invest in our business through economic cycles, expand our geographic footprint with strategic suppliers, pursue a disciplined inorganic growth strategy as demonstrated by our acquisition of Disdero and opportunistically return capital to shareholders through share repurchases. We also expect to maintain a long-term net leverage ratio of 2x or less.

Overall, we are pleased with our strong third quarter results, especially given the challenging market backdrop. We were particularly pleased to see an increase in net sales, gross margins and adjusted EBITDA year-over-year. That said, we remain measured in our expectations for the fourth quarter of 2026 and 2027 as housing conditions are expected to remain soft.

Operator, we will now take questions.

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Reuben Garner with StoneX.

分析师问答

Reuben Garner

Maybe we could start with the gross margin performance, really encouraging in the environment, especially with what's going on with fuel and whatnot. Can you talk about that, how -- what actions you guys have used to kind of offset the cost pressures you faced and maybe kind of tie into that what the competitive dynamic is like within two-step right now?

Shyam Reddy

So Reuben, we've talked a bit about this through the earlier quarters in the year. Pricing has been and margin kind of effectiveness have been a big focus of ours this year, right? On the structural side, we have benefited from the increase in commodity pricing that we had seen through the first half of the year and into kind of the first part of Q3. And then on the specialty side, we've seen price increases from our vendors, and we have been successfully passing that through. I think a big part of that is one of our key business transformation initiatives this year has been centralizing and building capabilities around pricing management. And as we continue to kind of grow nationally with certain vendors, right, and then also the focus on our channel growth strategy, this has been a great tool and discipline for us, right, as we've been able to kind of manage these changes in pricing more quickly, right, and more effectively and consistently across our branches, and we're seeing that in the results.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Jeffrey Stevenson with Loop Capital.

Jeffrey Stevenson

So you've recently announced several new and expanded partnerships with leading exterior building product manufacturers, including Trex, LP and Fiberon, which you detailed in your opening remarks, Shyam. Just wondered if you could talk about the long-term share gain opportunities in exterior and outdoor living, given the perceived improvement in product offering with well-known and respected brands.

Shyam Reddy

Yes. Thanks, Jeff. Appreciate the question. Yes, obviously, the strength of these brands provide us with significant share gain opportunities with our traditional customer base across the country while also providing us with enhanced opportunities to accelerate our multifamily and national accounts growth, which are two primary elements of the channel growth strategy. And when you think about the builder pull-through side of our channel growth strategy, we have a much stronger mix to drive bundled product offerings, which when paired with our business excellence initiatives, I think, put us in a position to, quite frankly, outperform at the local market level and drive share gains. So we're really excited about the developments that we have.

Another point I'd like to make, too, is in many of these cases, we got expansion in top-tier markets where you're seeing significant demographic growth trends, for example, in Texas and the Southeast Sunbelt region, while also in strong repair and remodel markets like the Northeast, where you don't necessarily have big track builders, the outdoor living assortment that we have is very friendly to those markets and in particular, with those customers that have long-term brand loyalty, for example, with respect to Fiberon and RDI. So we're really pleased with how our long-term efforts have led to this evolution of brand assortment.

Jeffrey Stevenson

That's great to hear, Sam. And I wanted to shift to your fourth quarter average daily sales expectations, which is expected to be down slightly, both on a year-over-year and sequential basis. Is the slowdown largely in line with normal seasonality? Or are you baking in sequential softening in residential demand fundamentals as well?

Shyam Reddy

Yes. So clearly, seasonality is part of it. But honestly, as I think through the seasonality and cyclicality of this business, the best way to overcome the slowdown, whether it's tied to the market conditions or even on the seasonality front is to continue leveraging our channel strategy, i.e., multifamily, the national accounts and builder pull-through side of the coin to drive share gains and to minimize any market-related impacts that are kind of affecting all of us in an equal opportunity way in this area of the distribution chain, but also to take advantage of our business excellence initiatives to outperform at the local level to drive those share gains in a profitable way as well.

And if you look back and see how we have managed our working capital, how we're executing on our pricing and cost pass-through efforts in order to ensure that we're getting paid appropriately for the value-add services and investments we're making, I think we're well positioned to manage through those kind of the general market conditions, whether it's seasonality or big picture market declines on housing starts and multifamily softness.

Jeffrey Stevenson

Got it. That's really helpful. And then I guess, lastly, if we see another year of single-family start declines and softness in underlying R&R, could you walk me through which product categories in both your Specialty and Structural product segments would be kind of most at risk for incremental price deflation?

Shyam Reddy

So when you think about the specialty side of the business and you look at public reporting and even as we think about our conversations with suppliers, they're obviously facing significant inflationary cost, inflationary impacts, which they are definitely passing down to their two-step distribution partners. As I mentioned, we've had over 80 price increases this year, which we have successfully passed through into the marketplace, which has been accepted, right? So from that perspective, those pass-throughs are pretty much happening. So to the extent there's any risk, it would honestly be on the demand destruction side. And for us, we're leveraging our value-add services and the investments we're making to, quite frankly, mitigate against that risk. And as we've shown over the course of the year, we've been actually driving year-over-year volume growth.

Now on cost -- on the structural side, the fact is we've had a good year on a year-over-year basis, although pricing has come down in the back -- in the last few months and heading throughout Q3, heading into Q4. But as you well know, in the commodity space, manufacturers and mills, they do curtailments, they take out capacity, which we've seen publicly announced over the last few weeks. So there generally is a rightsizing relative to market demand that calibrates pricing fairly quickly. So I think -- I guess the upshot is with specialty, the manufacturers and we, given our -- the business excellence investments we've made are doing a really good job of making sure that pricing is stabilized. Obviously, there are certain aspects.

Earlier in the year, we talked about how EWP was very competitive given some foreign engineered wood products coming into the market. But given inflation on the fuel front, marine freight rates, I think that's quickly ending, if not -- will be ending in the not-too-distant future. But for the most part, I don't see as much of a risk there. And then on the commodity, it's just managed through the general means by which mill capacity is managed. And of course -- and I'll end on this point. We've always done -- we've got strategic supplier relationships. We do a pretty good job managing between consignment and cash positions in order to navigate market conditions so that we drive profitable sales growth.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Reuben Garner with StoneX.

Reuben Garner

I just had a follow-up. I don't know what happened before. I got cut off for some reason, so sorry about that. So the structural versus specialty growth in the quarter. I was wondering if you could speak to the organic volume differences. It's a couple of quarters in a row that I think that the structural side is outperforming. And I was wondering if -- is that a leading indicator of what could come on the specialty side? Are you using structural to get some new business in multifamily and with the national accounts and in time, hope to kind of expand on that? Or what's kind of driving the delta? And should we expect that to continue going forward?

Shyam Reddy

So clearly, our multifamily focus is driving structural volume growth to some degree. But also given some of the local market, regional market and whether it's builder pull-through or national accounts business, that those are kind of new areas of focus for us over the last couple of years. So that's obviously contributing to structural volume growth. Again, it's very -- it's transactional, it's bid-ask, whereas a lot of the other -- the specialty products, there is transactional business, but we obviously have programs in place with strategic customers around the country that keeps that a little bit more normalized.

One thing we always talk about is growing the business up and to the right, which means driving specialty mix shift. So we're growing both structural and specialty products. But ideally, you want to grow your specialty products at a faster rate than you're growing structural product sales. However, the channel strategy is also driving how we think about our go-to-market strategy.

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Your next question comes from the line of Kurt Yinger with D.A. Davidson.

Kurt Yinger

I wanted to go back to some of the new supplier dynamics. I guess, can you just maybe level set us kind of back half of '26, first half '27, like how you're thinking about kind of putting inventory on the ground relative to where you'd like to be as you kind of go to market within some of these product categories, specifically decking and siding? And then I guess, separately, like as we think about the sales progression of that, is it something where it's a little bit of a slow trickle here in the winter months and then kind of the spigot turns on come spring and summer? Or just talk about the development of that a little bit, if you could.

Shyam Reddy

Yes, I'll take the first part of that. So yes, in -- just strategically, the answer is we're investing in inventory now in order to prepare ourselves for the uptick late at the beginning of the year, although we've got inventory on the ground, especially with Trex, inventory with respect to the other suppliers is flowing through a little bit later because those deals were cut later than we had with Trex. Now the expenses associated with it, the working capital build are obviously all happening now through the end of the year. So we won't really -- to the extent we see the sales pick up and the gross profit pick up, that will be more minimal this year relative to next year. But the idea is to make critical strategic investments now, so we're well prepared for the beginning of the year.

And then Kelly can spend more time talking about the working capital build and how we're thinking about inventory management.

Christopher Wall

Yes. And Kurt there, I mean, obviously, we're bringing the inventory in as we speak. And so our inventory levels will be elevated a bit before those sales start to come in really kind of early next year. So just to put the numbers around it, I'd expect this inventory investment on the front end to be kind of an additional $15 million to $20 million net across all the brands that we're talking about here. And then yes, the timing of the sales. We'll see some this year, not much for the reasons that you mentioned, and then we'll see it ramp into Q1 and Q2 next year.

Kurt Yinger

Got it. And just on the sales side, just maybe so we can understand better, like is that, hey, some of these guys are going to be new customers, you've got to establish new programs and seasonality? Or is there a component of kind of that sales ramp where you just have a lot of different distribution partners of inventory that you're competing against as these transitions occur?

Shyam Reddy

Yes. The transition is definitely very commercial in the sense of you've got to -- big picture, you've got to convert customers who were buying that product from other distributors, and we want to convert them over to us. Then you're also facing head-to-head competition with respect to competing brands, like in the case of Trex, you're obviously competing against the Deckorators brands and you're competing against the TimberTech brands and so on. And so it's a multifaceted conversion approach that requires head-to-head work at the ground level in collaboration with your supplier partners. And so that's happening in all the markets that we have. And then include whether it be the Northeast, the Southeast Sunbelt region, that's why it takes time in order for all this to shake out and not just for us, but for everybody. And that's where I feel like our business excellence initiatives, for example, the value-add services on top of the channel strategy and the focus we have put us in a better position to compete at the ground level.

Christopher Wall

Yes. And Kurt, I would add, we're in the middle of our program season with our kind of largest accounts. And we're -- from a program perspective, these are brands that we're talking about this year, right, that we didn't have last year. So that factors into the equation as well as we map out what those programs look like with some of our existing and new customers.

Kurt Yinger

Okay. That's helpful. And then maybe kind of irrespective of the brand transitions, I mean, what are you kind of seeing and hearing from the dealers? I mean it seems like an environment where they might look to tighten inventory days on hand, go kind of risk-off mode, which is probably good for two-step distribution. But just curious your sense on whether we're going to see inventory levels continue to decline, whether that's a little bit different than maybe what you would have thought a couple of months ago?

Shyam Reddy

I think the market is very two-step distribution friendly. First of all, we're going to manage our inventory levels tightly like we always do. We have a very good approach that involves Kelly and folks at the highest level here in Atlanta working collaboratively with our branches to ensure that we're managing our working capital investments very strategically, and we're matching market demand, which, quite frankly, as we think about our customers, they're in a position where the market is generally tight and soft, where they want to buy less more often. And when you think about products that have longer turn days, in particular, things like outdoor living products and siding and so on, that actually works in our favor, especially when you factor in the value-add services that go on top of those products, whether it be building a complex order, piece picking, putting together job packs, et cetera.

So I think we're heading into a year where we become even more valuable. And then you take our channel strategy and our business excellence initiatives to basically put us in a position to outcompete at the local market level. But I do think the key is going to be taking advantage of how well we manage our inventory and then supporting our customers in an environment where they don't want to build big inventory positions and where they would prefer to buy less more often.

Kurt Yinger

Okay. That makes sense. And then just lastly on specialty kind of organic volume in the quarter. I know you touched on some of the strategic kind of growth drivers. But from a product category perspective, can you just walk through kind of the puts and takes and maybe areas of pressure in Q3 on the specialty side?

Shyam Reddy

Yes, Kurt. So in Q3, right, on the specialty side, we had really strong pricing execution, right, success pushing through kind of price increases, not only related to what we saw from our vendors, but also just kind of covering our general overall increase in operating costs. On the quarter, year-over-year, specialty really across all the categories, volumes were down. But again, we more than made up for that on the price side. And I'd say that the -- in terms of which minor categories, right? Millwork was the one that was down the most. And then all the other products were down kind of roughly low single-digit percentages.

Operator

There are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call back to Tom Morabito for closing remarks.

Thomas Morabito

Thanks, Warren. Thank you again for joining us today, and we look forward to speaking with you in late February as we share our fourth quarter and full year 2026 results.

Operator

This concludes today's call. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect.