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Tecnoglass Inc
NYSE:TGLS

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Tecnoglass Inc
NYSE:TGLS
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Earnings Call Analysis

Q2-2024 Analysis
Tecnoglass Inc

Record Single-Family Residential Revenue, Strong Future Outlook

In its second quarter, Tecnoglass achieved record single-family residential revenues of $95.7 million, a 10% increase year-over-year. Total revenue was $219.7 million, slightly down 2.5% from last year. Adjusted EBITDA was $64.1 million with a 29.2% margin. The company updated its full-year 2024 guidance, expecting revenues between $860 million and $910 million, driven by a robust backlog and strong orders, particularly in vinyl products. Cash flow remained strong with $34.5 million generated, and the firm made significant debt repayments, reducing net leverage to almost zero. Gross margins are expected to be in the low to mid-40s range.

Solid Performance in Single-Family Residential Sector

In the second quarter, Tecnoglass reported record revenues of $95.7 million from its single-family residential business, marking a 10.1% increase year-over-year. This growth was primarily driven by improving market trends and a temporary boost from the end of a Florida sales tax waiver. Residential orders surged over 60% compared to the previous year, reflecting strong demand and positioning the company for continued solid growth throughout the latter half of 2024.

Robust Backlog and Project Pipeline

The company's backlog for the multifamily commercial business stands at a notable $1 billion, with a growth trajectory allowing visibility through 2026. This backlog is strengthened by significant bidding activity, achieving a book-to-bill ratio of 1.5x for the second quarter. The sustained demand in this area, despite challenges like higher mortgage rates, suggests a promising outlook for revenue continuity.

Financial Metrics and Cash Flow Management

Overall revenues for the second quarter decreased slightly by 2.5% year-over-year to $219.7 million, primarily due to lower multifamily and commercial income, offset by single-family growth. Adjusted EBITDA reached $64.1 million, with an EBITDA margin of 29.2%. The company maintained a healthy gross margin of 40.8%, although this was down from the previous year's 48.7%. Operating cash flow was robust at $34.5 million, allowing for strategic actions like debt reduction and shareholder returns.

Optimistic Outlook for Revenue and Margins

Looking ahead, Tecnoglass raised its revenue guidance for 2024 to a range of $860 million to $910 million, indicating organic growth of approximately 6% at the midpoint. The company expects gross margins to improve, projecting a range in the low to mid-40s for the year. Likewise, adjusted EBITDA is anticipated to fall between $260 million and $285 million, reflecting operational efficiency and market resilience.

Strategic Investments and Future Growth

Investments in expanding capacity in anticipation of significant demand in 2025 and 2026 are underway, with capital expenditures expected to fall between $40 million and $45 million for the year. Additionally, the company is optimistic about a continued ramp-up in vinyl product sales, projecting approximately $20 million in revenue during the second half of the year as products become increasingly available.

Market Landscape and Competitive Position

Despite challenges, such as inflation and fluctuating material costs, Tecnoglass is well-positioned within the market. The company reports that its backward integration strategy regarding aluminum procurement has insulated it from price shocks resulting from tariffs and global supply chain fluctuations. Overall, positive market conditions, geographic expansion, and a growing product portfolio enhance the company's competitive position.

Earnings Call Transcript

Earnings Call Transcript
2024-Q2

from 0
Operator

Good day, and welcome to the Tecnoglass Inc. Second Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]. Please note, this event is being recorded.

I would now like to turn the conference over to Brad Cray from Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

B
Brad Cray

Thank you for joining us for Tecnoglass' Second Quarter 2024 Conference Call. A copy of the slide presentation to accompany this call may be obtained on the Investors section of the Tecnoglass website. Our speakers for today's call are Chief Executive Officer, Jose Manuel Daes; Chief Operating Officer, Chris Daes; and Chief Financial Officer, Santiago Giraldo.

I'd like to remind everyone that matters discussed in this call, except for historical information, are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 including statements regarding future financial performance, future growth and future acquisitions. These statements are based on Tecnoglass' current expectations or beliefs and are subject to uncertainty and changes in circumstances. Actual results may vary in a material nature from those expressed or implied by the statements herein due to changes in economic, business, competitive and/or regulatory factors and other risks and uncertainties affecting the operation of Tecnoglass' business. These risks, uncertainties and contingencies are indicated from time to time in Tecnoglass' filings with the SEC.

The information discussed during the call is presented in light of such risks. Further, investors should keep in mind that Tecnoglass' financial results in any particular period may not be indicative of future results. Tecnoglass is under no obligation to and expressly disclaims any obligation to update or alter its forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events, changes in assumptions or otherwise.

Finally, as previously announced on June 25, 2024, Tecnoglass' Board of Directors is conducting a review of strategic alternatives with the assistance of outside financial and legal advisers. There is no deadline or definitive timetable set for completion of the review process, and there can be no assurance that this process will result in the company pursuing a transaction or any other particular outcome. The company does not intend to make any further public comment regarding its review until the Board of Directors has approved a specific course of action or the company determines that additional disclosure is appropriate or necessary.

I will now turn the call over to Jose Manuel, beginning on Slide #4.

J
Jose Daes
executive

Thank you, Brad, and thank you, everyone, for participating on today's call. We are pleased to report another quarter of strong results to close out the first half of the year. We achieved record single family residential revenues of $95.7 million and our second highest total revenue of $219.7 million. This demonstrates the resilience and the [ ratability ] of our business model in a complex macroeconomic landscape. These accomplishments reflect the strong demand and level of orders result towards the end of the first quarter. We remain confident in our ability to capitalize on attractive opportunities and to gain market share despite certain challenges related to inflation and higher interest rates.

Record single-family residential revenues reached a quarterly record of $95.7 million, up 10.1% year-over-year. The solid growth in our residential business reflects our ability to capitalize on the strong demand we saw at the end of the quarter as well as improving market trends, which led to a record level of orders in the second quarter of the year. We also continue to expect [ manual ] orders to contribute more meaningfully during the second half of the year.

Our multifamily commercial business saw sequential improvement but was impacted by higher interest and market rates during the second quarter. Despite this trend, we are seeing a substantial amount of new activity, especially on the high-rise market as evidenced by yet another record level of backlog. We anticipate this positive trend to continue through the second half of the year. Our forward-looking optimism is supported by the significant level of orders we received in June with residential orders up over 60% year-over-year, contributing to a record backlog of approximately $1 billion at quarter end. As a reminder, [indiscernible] reflects the pipeline of multifamily commercial activity and firm single-family residential orders in our key geographies providing visibility through 2025 and building into 2026.

Despite some year-over-year headwinds including unfavorable foreign exchange impacts, we were pleased to see a sequential increase in gross margin and adjusted EBITDA margin. The sequential improvement in profitability and the relative stability in exchange rates over the past several quarters support our positive outlook.

Our improved profitability also gives us confidence in our ability to navigate the evolving market landscape and continue to create value for our shareholders. The solid growth in our shorter cash cycle single family residential business and careful working capital management, resulting in robust cash flow generation of $34.5 million. Impressively, this was achieved even with the timing of seasonal tax payments during the quarter.

Our solid cash generation continues to provide us with additional flexibility to return value to our shareholders through our share repurchases and [ dividends ]. Our cash flow has also allowed us to enhance our operational flexibility and balance sheet through another $15 million voluntary prepayment of our term loan during the quarter, totaling $30 million of debt repayments year-to-date. Overall, we are pleased with the improvement we see in our business, and we remain encouraged by the recovering demand trends in our end markets. As we look to the remainder of the year, our positive growth outlook is supported by our strong customer relationships, record backlog and [indiscernible] product portfolio.

I will now turn the call over to Chris to provide additional operating highlights.

C
Christian Daes
executive

Thank you, Jose Manuel. Moving to Slide #5. Our second quarter results reflect our focused execution on the growth initiatives in our business and our ability to generate solid cash flow. Our single-family residential business continued its strong trajectory with revenues increasing 10% year-over-year to a record $95.7 million in revenues. This growth reflects improving market trends along with the benefit of some demand pull forward related to the recent expiration of a Florida Windows sales tax extension in June. Our demand momentum, along with the favorable demographic trends we see in Florida and in the Southeast positions us for a strong single-family residential revenues through year-end. As it relates to our vinyl products, quoting activity remains strong and we remain on schedule to increase deliveries in the second half of 2024.

In our multifamily commercial business at quarter year backlog of approximately $1 billion. Our backlog growth reflects an expanding pipeline of projects with visibility through 2025 and now building into 2026. This robust backlog represents 2.1x our LTM multifamily commercial business, providing us with a multiyear view on the multifamily commercial portion of our revenues. In our multifamily commercial business, we saw sequential growth in the second quarter of 2024, including a strong level of orders for light commercial projects. Revenues decreased compared to the prior year quarter, given record activity during the second quarter of 2023 and higher interest rates and mortgage rates during 2024. That said, we were encouraged by the improving trends and expect continuous positive momentum in the second half of the year.

Moving to Slide #6. Our backlog has seen consistent sequential growth in each quarter since 2021. We expect this momentum in our project pipeline and the strong bidding activity we are seeing will help us keep a strong book-to-bill ratio, which stood at 1.5x as of Quarter 2, 2024. This adds to our track record of maintaining a book-to-bill ratio above 1.1x over the past 14 consecutive quarters. Historically, roughly 2/3 of reported backlog are invoiced over the following 12 months.

Historically, there are virtually no project cancellations [ given delay state ] installation of windows into largely completed buildings. Therefore, we believe that this ratio provides a strong visibility on invoicing despite the fact that certain external factors can cause temporary delays in deliveries.

I will now turn the call over to Santiago to discuss our financial results and outlook for 2024.

S
Santiago Giraldo
executive

Thank you, Christian. Turning to single-family residential on Slide #7. We generated record single-family residential revenues of $95.7 million in the second quarter, compared to $86.9 million in the prior year quarter. The year-over-year increase was primarily due to improving market trends and what we estimate to be a partial pull forward effect related to the Florida sales tax waiver Christian mentioned.

Additionally, we were thrilled to see second quarter residential orders up over 60% year-over-year, reflecting solid traction in this business and supporting our expectation for solid single-family growth in the back half of the year. Looking ahead, we continue to see organic growth opportunities in our single-family residential business through several Tecnoglass specific tailwinds.

First, our expanding dealer base, driven by short lead times, innovative products and demand for impact resistant and energy-efficient solutions. Second, ongoing geographic expansion in Florida and increasing brand recognition across the U.S., supported by new showroom openings in key markets. And lastly, our strategic entry into the vinyl market, which has significantly expanded our addressable market and provide substantial runway for revenue growth and product diversification.

Customer enthusiasm for our vinyl products remains strong with solid quoting activity, which we expect to translate into a ramp-up of deliveries as we move through the second half of the year. The overall enthusiasm for our vinyl offering strengthens our conviction in this strategic expansion and underscores the significant long-term opportunities we see in this category.

Turning to drivers of revenue on Slide #9. Total revenues for the second quarter decreased 2.5% year-over-year to $219.7 million. This represents our second highest revenue quarter in the company's history. The decrease was primarily due to lower multifamily and commercial revenues, partially offset by growth in single-family residential.

Looking at the profit drivers on Slide #10. Adjusted EBITDA for the second quarter was $64.1 million, representing an adjusted EBITDA margin of 29.2%. SG&A was $38.4 million compared to $35.2 million in the prior year quarter, with the increase primarily attributable to higher personnel expenses from annual salary adjustments that took place at the beginning of the year. As a percentage of total revenues, SG&A was 17.5% up from 15.6% in the prior year quarter due to lower revenues and the aforementioned salary adjustments. Second quarter gross profit was $89.6 million, representing a 40.8% gross margin. This compared to gross profit of $109.7 million and a 48.7% gross margin in the prior year quarter.

Similar to recently reported quarters, the year-over-year change in gross margin primarily reflects an unfavorable FX impact of nearly 340 basis points, reduced operating leverage on lower revenues and higher salary expenses. On a sequential basis, gross margin improved by 200 basis points compared to 38.8% in the first quarter of 2024. The unfavorable FX comparisons seen in the last few quarters should largely dissipate given the relative stability in currencies during the last 12 months and expectations through year-end.

Now looking at our strong cash flow and improved leverage on Slide #11. We generated strong operating cash flow of $34.5 million in the second quarter, primarily driven by our disciplined working capital management. Our capital expenditures of $20.3 million, including payments for previously purchased land for future potential capacity expansion as well as a down payment for our new Miami headquarters which will include a new flagship showroom to help us drive incremental business activity. We were pleased to continue our track record of returning capital to shareholders through our recently increased cash dividend payment during the period. At quarter end, we also had approximately $26 million remaining in our share repurchase authorization. We also made $50 million of voluntary prepayments on our syndicated term loan during the quarter with $30 million of debt repayments year-to-date, driving our net leverage ratio to a record low near zero net debt to LTM adjusted EBITDA compared to 0.2x in the prior year. As of June 30, 2024, we had total liquidity of approximately $300 million, including $127 million in cash and $170 million available under our revolving credit facilities, giving us financial flexibility to drive additional value in our business.

On Slide #12, we're proud to showcase our track record of delivering exceptional shareholder value. Over the last three years, our strategic initiatives have consistently yielded returns that surpass industry benchmarks. This outperformance is driven by our robust profitability and significantly improved cash flow generation. The superior returns we've achieved not only benefit our investors but also validate the effectiveness of our multifaceted growth strategy.

Now moving to outlook on Slide #14. Based on the momentum in our business and our visibility in the expected timing of deliveries through year-end in our residential and commercial markets, we are updating our outlook for the full year. We expect full year 2024 revenue to be in the range of $860 million to $910 million. This outlook represents entirely organic growth of 6% at the midpoint. Based on these sales outlook, [ our ] anticipated mix of revenues and our expectations for cost and expenses we expect full year adjusted EBITDA to be in the range of $260 million to $285 million. We also expect gross margins to be in the low to mid-40s range for 2024 and for healthy year-over-year cash flow growth given most capital expenditures related to facility upgrades and vinyl investments are now complete.

Our outlook is predicated on a few key assumptions, namely Growth in residential revenues based on the strong orders we received through June, our ramp-up in vinyl related revenues through the second half of the year as well as stable FX rates between [ 3,900 and 4,000 ]. This full year outlook is also anchored in our expectations for large multifamily and commercial projects staying within scheduled time tables and for stable activity in short-term small commercial projects.

In summary, we are pleased with our results during the first half of the year, which demonstrated the resiliency of our business and our ability to capitalize on market opportunities. As we look to the remainder of the year, we remain confident in our ability to continue creating value for our stakeholders, given our low leverage profile and numerous avenues for market share expansion.

With that, we will be happy to answer your questions. Operator, please open the line for questions.

Operator

[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from Sam Darkatsh from Raymond James.

S
Sam Darkatsh
analyst

A couple of questions. First off, Santiago, could you help us directionally think about third quarter sales, gross margin and EBITDA expectations and then the caveat to that or the addendum to that would be, what are you seeing in single-family orders in July now that the incentives have expired?

S
Santiago Giraldo
executive

Yes. So if you take the ranges, Sam, you're going to get to revenues in the neighborhood of $240 million to $250 million, depending on where you are and gross margins picking up probably to the range of 43%, in line with what we had discussed kind of earlier as to how you get operating leverage on those incremental sales. And then in terms of EBITDA, you could be getting to kind of a range of like around $75 million, $80 million, depending on where you are in the range as well.

In terms of orders, the July came in probably at about 75% to 80% of a normal month, but August month to date is in line with previous months. So the pull forward that we saw in June was partially in nature. I mean we're seeing kind of normalized level of orders as of today.

S
Sam Darkatsh
analyst

And then my follow-up question, prevailing aluminum prices look like they're down, I don't know, call it, 15%, 20% or so over the past month or two. Are you expecting a favorable impact on gross margins? And what are you expecting for industry pricing as a result?

J
Jose Daes
executive

Well, this is Jose. We have bought most of our aluminum at a very favorable price for this year and for next. And the aluminum went from 2,200 to 2,500 and then to 2,700, but for a very short while because there was a plant down in Australia. But now the plant is back and aluminum went back to normal. But we have hedged before that.

S
Santiago Giraldo
executive

And just to follow up on that, Sam, remember that on the residential orders, it's kind of spot in nature, so you don't get a pickup. Basically is a match based on how you quote versus how the LME behaves. And then on the commercial side, as Jose was saying, we enter into forward contracts to hedge against what was quoted. So not necessarily a fact that we're kind of going long or short on inventory.

S
Sam Darkatsh
analyst

I guess the spirit of my question was your market intelligence in terms of how others that you compete against in the state or that use aluminum, how much they've hedged and whether the lower aluminum prices of late, at least may have influenced pricing, especially in July and August after the incentives expired.

J
Jose Daes
executive

No, we have seen in the last 6, 7 months of this year that a couple of our competitors have increased prices because of the aluminum tariffs more than the LME and most of them imported from Turkey and from China and from other places that were [indiscernible] with the tariff and also glass prices are going a little up. And I believe by next year, they're going to go a lot up. So we have very stable pricing, so we're very happy with that.

Operator

The next question comes from Alex Rygiel with B. Riley.

A
Alexander Rygiel
analyst

Jose, can you provide us a little bit more color on the new orders and the strength in backlog in the quarter, like geographically, where are you seeing the strength come from?

J
Jose Daes
executive

Well, mostly it's coming from Florida, New York, Boston, and now since we have some sales in the Carolinas and Virginia. That's where most of the orders are coming from.

A
Alexander Rygiel
analyst

And then how should we think about the mix in backlog today between installation and product sales and how that might affect margins over the coming kind of 12, 18 months?

J
Jose Daes
executive

Well, it's always around the same. We believe it's around half and half. Half is installed and half of it is -- or perhaps 40% is just product. But we are getting much better margins now in the installation side because we have caught a lot of [ fat ] that we had and we have reached much better deals with the installation crews, et cetera.

S
Santiago Giraldo
executive

Just as a follow-up. Remember that we only do installation on certain commercial projects in Florida. All of the other geographies, we only provide the windows. So to the extent that we continue growing outside of Florida, the mix there is more favorable as far as doing installation or not.

A
Alexander Rygiel
analyst

And lastly, as it relates to vinyl windows, have you started shipping yet? And how might we think about the cadence over the next two quarters and maybe even an early look into a revenue target for 2025?

J
Jose Daes
executive

We ship it already. Yes, it's slowly coming up. We had a couple of products that we were [ missing ]. They are going to be in line for next month. And we see that we can increase to maybe $5 million a month and we hope for next year, we can do for 5 to 10 months.

Operator

The next question comes from Julio Romero with Sidoti & Company.

U
Unknown Analyst

This is Alex on for Julio. First question on CapEx. Could you give us a quantified CapEx guide for 2024? And does that include any further capacity expansion?

S
Santiago Giraldo
executive

Yes. So we had already kind of provided at beginning of the year CapEx guidance to be around $40 million to $45 million. So if you kind of do the math, it's front-loaded [ and it ] steps down in the third and fourth quarter, that includes investments in land that we had previously made but there's also some things that are getting done to increase capacity to address the orders for 2025.

C
Christian Daes
executive

Yes. This is Christian. We're trying to especially increase capacity in certain areas where we believe that we're going to have the big demand in 2025 and 2026. And instead of waiting until we are there, we already -- especially with the buildings that we need. We're going to have them ready. So when -- because we are certainly -- we are pretty sure that 2025 is going to be a very busy year for us.

U
Unknown Analyst

And then one more for me. We touched on this a little bit earlier in the Q&A. But on the promotional activity from last quarter within single-family residential, did that have an impact at all in the second quarter? And do you think that there's some residual impact for the remainder of the year?

S
Santiago Giraldo
executive

Not for the remainder of the year, I would say, the residual impact was already taken in Q2 and in line with what you're seeing with the effect of the expiration of the sales tax waiver in Q2. Some of those orders were taken ahead of time, so people took advantage of the opportunity, not to be delivered only in Q3, but a little bit in Q4. You get that same effect with the promotional stuff at the end of last year where a lot of it kind of went through in Q1, but a little bit in Q2. The expectation is for that to be completely through and [ not FX ] going forward.

Operator

The next question is from Tim Wojs with Baird.

T
Timothy Wojs
analyst

On the first one, just on the backlog piece. Obviously, really strong performance this quarter. Just given the June kind of uptick in single-family, I mean, did that get captured a little bit in the backlog? I'm just kind of curious if you can quantify that. And -- just also wanted to verify if you guys do expect backlog to continue to grow year-over-year in the back half of the year.

S
Santiago Giraldo
executive

Yes, I'll take the first one, and I'll let Jose speak on the backlog of the rest of the year. Yes, there were firm orders that came in, in June that get added to the backlog. You saw kind of the numbers that we provided, orders for Q2 were 60% higher than what they were the previous year. So if you take just as a general benchmark, just take the revenues from last year, and do the math as to what the orders were. And you probably get to the neighborhood of like $50 million to $60 million that is still in the backlog. So despite that, there was a lot of pickup on the commercial side as well. And I'll kind of like use that as a segue for Jose to tell you what he's seeing in the markets, the rest of the way.

J
Jose Daes
executive

Talking about the backlog in commercial, we will see an increase in the next two quarters for sure because every month, we invoice [ X ], we are closing at least 2x. It's unbelievable, the amount of new buildings that we're getting. It's just [indiscernible].

T
Timothy Wojs
analyst

And then maybe just on the backlog conversion. So I think historically, you talked about in the slides, you've converted about 2/3 of your backlog over the next 12 months. And so I know the mix of the backlog has changed a little bit. But if I would kind of apply that kind of same conversion percentage to kind of your trailing 12-month backlog, I have a [ non-res ] business that's probably going to be closer to $550 million to $600 million over the next 12 to 18 months versus kind of the $450 million that you're kind of reporting on a run rate basis today. So I just want to kind of verify that the math I'm doing is kind of okay and if there's any kind of change in that kind of conversion time line.

S
Santiago Giraldo
executive

The one -- there's a couple of variables here. The first one is that there is more kind of a high-end luxury towers that are multiyear in nature, right? So you have these high rises that not -- they don't take one year or two years, they sometimes go longer than that. If you're talking about like an 80, 90, 100 story tower, so you're going to have a little bit more of that mix in there. And the other variable is what assumptions you make for the [ light ] commercial that kind of gets booked on a month-to-month basis. But generally, I mean, I would say with the combination of how we're seeing both of those. I think that the 18-month formula still kind of plays out. We don't see that, kind of, varying too much.

If you look at the graph, I think that the range in which that move could be 90% to 105% conversion so I would expect that range to [ hold through still ].

T
Timothy Wojs
analyst

And then just the last one for me. On the salary increases that you kind of mentioned in the quarter, I guess, were those kind of standard in nature? Or were those any sort of kind of special increases? And I guess as you think about the back half of the year, will you get some leverage on that as you just get better volumes?

S
Santiago Giraldo
executive

Yes. No. I mean -- and remember, we -- I think we even discussed this in Q1. The way it works in Colombia is that you get salary increases adjusted for inflation at the beginning of the year for the rest of the year. So this was already kind of a headwind in Q1, especially against lower revenues. But as you ramp up revenue sequentially, you start diluting those salaries more and more and you get leverage. But it's not like you are to expect incremental salary adjustments the rest of the way. I mean it was done once and it plays out for the rest of the year.

T
Timothy Wojs
analyst

So it's kind of just the normal kind of salary increases, I see.

S
Santiago Giraldo
executive

Yes, that's right.

Operator

The next question comes from Jean Ramirez with D.A. Davidson.

J
Jean Paul Ramirez
analyst

Could you help me understand what the bridge looks like between your 3Q guidance and the year-end? I mean, at the midpoint, it looks like there's some sort of inflection point that needs to happen to reach your gross margins and that revenue guidance. But your gross margins this quarter with that 14% quarter-over-quarter revenue growth was sort of kept down at [ 40.8% ]. Could you help me understand like what needs to happen for that gross margin growth? And given the FX, it's now starting to taper down or starting to sort of materialize [ itself out ] [indiscernible].

S
Santiago Giraldo
executive

Okay. A couple of moving pieces. Just to clarify, sequentially, gross margin didn't tick down, it went up 200 basis points. I don't know if that's what you meant. But in terms of what happens, I mean, the guidance that we're providing is for low to mid-40s for the full year. That makes in, as I was mentioning earlier in the first question that came up that, that implies that gross margins get to a range of like 43%, 44% or so.

Where that's coming from is a couple of things, revenues going up and you get a substantial amount of operating leverage on that. And what gives us a lot of visibility on revenues is the fact that we already have the orders in place. On the residential side, the headlines that you read, 60% higher year-over-year gives us a lot of clarity as to what the second half of the year looks like, and we're already seeing that in July and August. And then you mentioned FX.

FX is actually trending in the right way for us. FX was averaging close to 3,800, 3,900 in the first half of the year, now it's is closer to 4,100. So both of those factors are actually playing a favorable part in what we're projecting for the second half of the year.

J
Jean Paul Ramirez
analyst

And for vinyl, can you provide some color on the shipment trends and invoice trends post 2Q? And do you still expect around $20 million in the second half in vinyl?

J
Jose Daes
executive

That looks reasonable. We expect vinyl to keep growing. I mean, this is a learning curve, it's normal. And I believe it should be around that figure. And next year, it's going to be much, much better.

S
Santiago Giraldo
executive

And just to follow up on that, the contribution from vinyl in the first half was non-material, as we discussed earlier in the year. So all of the pickup and the record level of revenues that you saw on the residential side, we're still kind of the legacy aluminum product.

J
Jean Paul Ramirez
analyst

And last one for me. If you could provide some update on that strategic [ review ] that was announced earlier in the quarter. Is there anything you can say regarding that?

S
Santiago Giraldo
executive

No, not at this point in time. we will not provide comments on that, and we will, once it's is warranted. If there is something to announce.

Operator

This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to CEO, Jose Manuel Daes for any closing remarks.

J
Jose Daes
executive

Well, thanks, everyone, for participating on today's call. And as I said the last time, the best is yet to come. We are doing great we see a very favorable future for the company, our shareholders and our employees. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.