Participants

Mark Warren; Vice President, Investor Relations; Vulcan Materials Co

J. Thomas Hill; Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer; Vulcan Materials Co

Mary Carlisle; Chief Financial Officer, Senior Vice President; Vulcan Materials Co

Trey Grooms; Analyst; Stephens Inc.

Steven Fisher; Analyst; UBS Equities

Kathryn Thompson; Analyst; Thompson Research Group

Jerry Revich; Analyst; Goldman Sachs

Angel Castillo; Analyst; Morgan Stanley

Phil Ng; Analyst; Jefferies

Mike Dahl; Analyst; RBC Capital Markets

Adam Thalhimer; Analyst; Thompson, Davis & Company

Timna Tanners; Analyst; Wolfe Research

Garik Shmois; Analyst; Loop Capital

Keith Hughes; Analyst; Truist Securities

Brent Thielman; Analyst; D.A. Davidson & Company

Michael Dudas; Analyst; Vertical Research Partners

David MacGregor; Analyst; Longbow Research

Presentation

Operator

Good morning. Welcome, everyone, to the Vulcan Materials Company fourth quarter 2024 earnings call. My name is Shayna, and I will be your conference call coordinator today. Please be reminded that today's call is being recorded and will be available for replay later today at the company's website. (Operator Instructions)
Now I will turn the call over to your host, Mr Mark Warren, Vice President of Investor Relations for Vulcan Materials. Mr. Warren, you may begin.

Mark Warren

Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone. With me today are Tom Hill, Chairman and CEO; and Mary Andrews Carlisle, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Today's call is accompanied by a press release and a supplemental presentation posted to our website vulcanmaterials.com.
Please be reminded that today's discussion may include forward-looking statements, which are subject to risks and uncertainties. These risks, along with other legal disclaimers, are described in detail in the company's earnings release and in other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Reconciliations of non-GAAP financial measures are defined and reconciled in our earnings release, supplemental presentation and other SEC filings. During the Q&A, we ask that you limit your participation to one question. This will allow us to accommodate as many as possible during our time we have available.
And with that, I'll turn the call over to Tom.

J. Thomas Hill

Thank you, Mark, and thank all of you for your interest in Vulcan Materials today. 2024 was another year of successful execution. Our two-pronged growth strategy of enhancing our core and expanding our reach is working.
We improved our industry-leading Aggregates cash gross profit per ton by 12% and deployed over $2 billion towards value-creating Hagers led acquisitions. These acquisitions expanded our presence into new attractive growth areas and strengthened our existing franchise in three of our top 10 revenue states.
We finished the year strong we plan to capitalize on our solid momentum and deliver attractive earnings growth again in 2025. Before discussing our outlook in more detail, I will provide you some key highlights from our fourth quarter performance.
Our teams delivered $550 million of adjusted EBITDA in the fourth quarter, a 16% improvement over the prior year. Importantly, adjusted EBITDA margin improved on a year-over-year basis for an eighth consecutive quarter.
In the Aggregates segment, cash gross profit per ton expanded 16% to $11.50 in the quarter through a combination of continued pricing momentum and moderating year-over-year unit cash cost of sales. Aggregates freight-adjusted price improved 11% in the quarter. consistent with full year results.
Price improvement remained geographically widespread. Aggregate shipments were more mixed in the quarter across geographies and end uses. Shipments were three% lower than the prior year.
Growing public shipments and strong demand in the storm-impacted areas of Western North Carolina and East Tennessee helped to particularly offset headwinds in private construction activity. With less disruption from weather and our consistent focus on maximizing efficiencies through our Vulcan Way of operating efforts.
Freight adjusted unit cash cost of sales increased 5% compared to the prior year. This was a meaningful improvement compared to previous quarters and a testament to the execution of our operating teams. This continued execution will be a focus for us in 2025.
The pricing environment remains healthy, and we expect freight-adjusted aggregate price to grow between 5% and 7% in 2025. Now this includes an over 100 basis point negative mix impact from recent acquisitions. Inflationary cost pressures continue to moderate and we're making progress on our Vulcan Way of operating process intelligence adoption.
We expect freight-adjusted aggregates unit cash cost to increase low to mid-single digits in 2025 leading to another year of double-digit year-over-year expansion in our aggregate unit profitability. We expect 2025 aggregate shipments to increase between 3% and 5% compared to last year.
This growth outlook is driven by recent acquisitions, coupled with expectation of stable demand for our legacy business. I expect that continued growth in public construction activity will offset ongoing more modest contraction in private activity. Over the last year, trailing 12 months highway starts have increased by another $7 billion to $122 billion.
Blowing highway input cost inflation and continued IIJA related spending support ongoing growth in highway shipments in 2025 and beyond. Additionally, $45 billion of funding initiatives were passed at the state and local level in the recent election cycle to spur additional transportation investment in Vulcan states.
Affordability and elevated interest rates remain headwinds for residential construction activity. Increasing single-family starts over the past 12 months support modest growth in single-family housing in 2025. But multifamily (inaudible) data and elevated vacancy rates point to another year of declining demand in multifamily housing.
Because the demographics in Vulcan markets support a consistent need for additional housing, the timing of additional interest rates, reductions and overall improvement in affordability will dictate when residential construction activity returns to growth. Likewise, a return to growth in private nonresidential construction will also be a matter of timing.
While we expect lower private nonresidential demand in 2025. We currently anticipate that starts will bottom by mid-2025 and may begin to recover by the second half of the year boding well for 2026 activity. Recent trends in both warehouse starts and data centers have been encouraging.
Trailing 12-month warehouse starts the largest category in private nonresidential construction have continued to flatten out. We had prepandemic levels after a precipitous drop from historic highs throughout 2023.
We current planned data centers activity in our markets remains robust. And according to CoStar data, approximately 7% of proposed data center activity is within 20 miles of a Vulcan facility. As I said earlier, the focus of our teams is execution, controlling what we can control. Against the demand backdrop I just described, we expect to deliver between $2.35 billion and $2.55 billion of adjusted EBITDA in 2025.
Now I'll turn the call over to Mary Andrews to provide some additional commentary on our 2024 performance and more details around our 2025 outlook. Mary Andrews?

Mary Carlisle

Thanks, Tom, and good morning. I commented a year ago that our balance sheet was a source of strength and provided us considerable financial flexibility to continue to grow. In 2024, we deployed approximately $2.3 billion towards strategic acquisitions.
We also reinvested in our existing franchise and furthered our greenfield efforts with $638 million of operating and maintenance and internal growth capital. And we returned $313 million to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases.
At year end, our net debt to adjusted EBITDA leverage was 2.3 times. In March, we redeemed our 2026 notes at par for $550 million, and in the fourth quarter, we issued $2 billion of notes across 5-, 10- and 30-year tenures to fund our 2024 acquisition activity.
Recently, we provided notice of our intent to redeem the $400 million of 2025 notes with cash on hand, effective March 28 to 2025. Given another year of solid cash generation in 2024, we remain well positioned to continue our long track record of growth through discipline to capital allocation and consistent execution. In 2024, our teams executed well in a challenging volume environment to expand adjusted EBITDA margin by 190 basis points and delivered $2.1 billion of adjusted EBITDA for the full year.
Aggregates cash gross profit per ton grew by 12% to $10.61, demonstrating the durable compounding nature of the aggregates business and our continued progress toward our $11 to $12 per tonne goal. SAG expenses for the full year were 2% lower than the prior year.
We remain focused on continuing to drive value for the business through disciplined investments in SAG expenses to support our organic growth initiatives and innovation through technology. SAG expenses as a percentage of revenue were 7.2% in 2024. Our return on invested capital at year end was 16.2%, largely consistent with the prior year.
The increase in invested capital was driven by fourth quarter acquisitions which provided very little earnings contribution given the closing date. Absent that timing impact, return on invested capital improved 40 basis points.
Carrying strong momentum into 2025, we anticipate another year of attractive margin expansion and earnings growth. Tom highlighted our views around demand, pricing and aggregates unit profitability. So let me provide a few additional details around the 2025 guidance.
We estimate that recent acquisitions will contribute approximately $150 million of adjusted EBITDA in 2025. We expect our downstream businesses to contribute approximately $360 million in cash gross profit with an estimated two-thirds of the contribution from the asphalt segment and one-third from the Concrete segment.
These expectations reflect expansion in cash unit profitability in both segments and the contribution of recent acquisitions. We forecast SAG expenses of between $550 million and $560 million. We project depreciation, depletion, amortization and accretion expenses of approximately $800 million, interest expense of approximately $245 million and an effective tax rate between 22% and 23%.
In 2025, we plan to reinvest in our franchise through operating and maintenance and internal growth capital expenditures between $750 million and $800 million. Included in this plan is approximately $125 million of spending on three sizable plant rebuild projects that are underway in addition to capital for recently acquired businesses. Overall, we expect 2025 to mark another year of expansion in adjusted EBITDA margin, attractive growth in adjusted EBITDA and strong cash generation.
I'll now turn the call back over to Tom to provide a few closing remarks.

J. Thomas Hill

Thank you, Mary Andrews. I want to take a moment to thank the men and women of Vulcan Materials for your consistent and enduring commitment to excellence. Most importantly, you kept one other safe and looked out for your brothers and sisters across the company and the communities in which we live and work, particularly in the face of persistent inclement and sometimes severe weather.
And I am so proud of your consistent execution of the work we operate in the Vulcan Way of selling strategic disciplines. You proved your metal and increased cash gross profit per ton every quarter for the second year in a row.
I'm excited about what we will achieve in 2025. Together, we remain focused on controlling what we can control and drive value for our customers, our communities and our shareholders. And now Mary Andrew and I will be happy to take your questions.

Question and Answer Session

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Trey Grooms, Stephens.

Trey Grooms

Yes, well done on the strong finish to the year. I wanted to ask on aggregates pricing. It seems like some markets have seen a shift from January to April as far as just the timing. Can you talk about a little bit about that and maybe it's the success of January increases that you've seen? And how we should be thinking about maybe the cadence of pricing this year?

J. Thomas Hill

Sure, Trey. So Q4 in the total year last year went with pricing up 11%. So that allows us to carry really good pricing momentum into this year. As you saw, our guide is 5% to 7%, but that's also negatively impacted over 100 basis points by the acquisitions. I'm not worried about those.
We'll get those back up to our average quickly. But our January 1 price increases, you couple that with our booking and backlogs I think it supports our guide. As did -- I thought our January results, our '25 results. The timing of price increases, I think, will be very similar to last year. whether it was in bid work or asphalt or ready-mix price increases, the vast majority of our price increases took effect January 1.
I think we should -- we would guide you to -- I think we'll be in the range quarter to quarter throughout the year. Now remember, mix can impact a single quarter. It can impact it up or down. but mix adjusted, I think we should be consistently in that 5% to 7% range.

Mary Carlisle

Yes. And Trey, I would add that most importantly, we expect that the consistent pricing improvement, coupled with moderating costs that we talked about in the prepared remarks, will yield low double-digit improvement in cash gross profit per ton consistently each quarter as well. extending what we've now strung together a nine-quarter run on double-digit improvement.
And really, the underlying performance of the aggregates business is going to be the biggest driver of our 2025 EBITDA growth, which we expect going to improve by about 12% on an organic basis. So really expecting a strong performance from the Ag segment.

Operator

Steven Fisher, UBS.

Steven Fisher

I think you mentioned on the aggregates volume side, an organic steady pace. So I'm assuming that means about flat organic volumes expectation, if that's correct? And feel free to correct me on that. But just curious about the cadence of how that plays out during the year, and we've been observing this slowdown in overall nonres construction. And you mentioned the private side being a little weak to start off.
So just curious what you've assumed for the cadence of that organic trend in the first half of the year versus the second half? Do you have actual declines maybe in the first half before maybe easier comps and growth in the second half?

J. Thomas Hill

Yes. I think you completely understand it. It is growing public offsetting some challenged private. If you look back at '24, we really never got out of the weather problem. The easiest comp to your point is Q3.
If you look at January, February, we got a slow start. Some of that is coal and wet weather. But remember, it's just January and February. So I'm not too worried about that. I think regardless of the challenges our vulcan teams will perform.
I think I have complete confidence in our full year guide. But as you said, back half loaded, probably with some easier comps, coupled with probably some help from single-family and nonres construction in the second half.

Operator

Kathryn Thompson, Thompson Research Group.

Kathryn Thompson

So your volume guidance in the quarter was very close to ours pricing exactly in line, but what jumps out at me is -- and correct me if I'm wrong with this, that your gross margins came in at a record Q4 level. Could you -- you've articulated in the past the bulk of way operations.
But if you could parse out a little bit more for this quarter and project how we should think about next year in terms of that margin of the why behind that record for Q4, the components and how that plays into the longer-term strategy, including for this year?

J. Thomas Hill

Sure. Our cost increase in the fourth quarter was much improved over the past three quarters, three reasons why. One was weather was not a negative; two, volumes were not as negative. And three, Vulcan Way of operating technology and tools and disciplines or improving our efficiencies. And as we look to 2025, we believe we'll continue to mature the Vulcan Way of operating, which will continue to enhance our operating efficiencies.
We would guide you to the low to mid-single-digit increases in 2025. That is a substantial improvement over the past couple of years, but really back closer to what we've seen in history. So I think what you're seeing is the Vulcan Way of operating at work and offsetting some of the headwinds we would see.

Mary Carlisle

And Catherine, on gross margin, we saw improvement on a year-over-year basis each quarter in 2024. That's what I would expect for you to see in 2025. I think in terms of the cadence of gross margin, I would think about it, it's typically lowest obviously, in Q1, highest in Q2 or Q3, we did have an outstanding fourth quarter and plan to carry that momentum into 2025.

Operator

Anthony Pettinari, Citi.

This is Asher (inaudible) on for Anthony. I just wanted to ask around administrative policy. Have you seen any pressure on the pace of IAG rollout or project starts from any of the policy decisions or expected orders we've seen? And then on tariffs, what impact your business we could expect potentially?

J. Thomas Hill

So I don't think we see any impact from policy on the public demand. It's IIJA, which you're seeing is the growth in public going to work. And remember that money is protected through dedicated long-term funding. So nothing is going to happen to it. Looking forward, we would think this government will support traditional aggregate intensitive public work legislature.
So probably a positive from that perspective on tariffs. On aggregate tariffs directly, we see very little impact on everything else, and we've looked at steel and rubber, I'm not sure anyone can tell you what's going to happen. But I don't think it's a big impact to us. And the flip side of that is I'm confident that Vulcan Materials teams will navigate whatever comes at us.
Look, we've seen a pandemic, we've seen volumes down, we've see record inflation, and our teams consistently grow unit margins and earnings, and that's exactly why we develop Vulcan Way of selling and Vulcan Way of operating so that we can consistently grow our unit profitability regardless of any outside challenges.
So the government, I think, supports infrastructure, and I don't think we'll handle whatever comes out on the tariffs.

Operator

Jerry Revich, Goldman Sachs.

Jerry Revich

I just wanted to pull the thread on the cost performance. If we back out the period cost absorption, your variable costs per ton were essentially flat in the quarter. So I'm wondering if you could just expand on what part of your cost structure is actually deflationary now.
And if we just straight line the performance into the first quarter with normal seasonality, that would imply cost per ton are about flat year over year in the first quarter, which I just want to make sure that's right, considering the pricing outlook relative to that is pretty attractive.

J. Thomas Hill

I think I'll take that one. I think I would not call costs flat. I would call them up mid- to single digit, and I think pretty consistently through the year. Now remember, quarter to quarter, cost is going to be choppy is just the nature of the beast. So really need to look at it on a trailing 12-month basis.
Fourth quarter was encouraging, but we've got to stream that together. If you look at inflation, I don't think there's any deflation on anything out there that I can think of. As we guide to '25, I would tell you, diesel up slightly.
Wages mid-single-digit, electricity up high single digit and all of that partially offset by improved operating efficiencies. So -- but I would not guide you to flat. I think you would stay in that longer term, that low- to mid-single-digit cost performance.

Operator

Angel Castillo, Morgan Stanley.

Angel Castillo

Just wanted to go back to the comments on private nonresi. You talked about potential for starts to move bottom in the middle of the year and maybe even rebound in the second half. Can you just maybe help us understand, I guess, what you're seeing or hearing, whether it's from your customers or in terms of quoting activity and maybe just what gives you confidence on that a cadence.

J. Thomas Hill

Yes. So I think let me be clear, I think we do see nonresidential construction and shipments are still down in 2025. I think the good news is we're starting to see some turn in that performance. data centers will be a bright spot and most of the planned data centers are in our footprint. And while warehouses has been a big drag and will be still a drag in the near future.
I think that's changing. And if you look at a number of our markets on a trailing three-month basis, we've seen that turn positive, not everywhere, but it's starting to turn. So -- and then -- so I think you're starting to see some green shoots. I think you starting to see some things turn. There's a lot of money sitting on the sidelines.
Light traditional nonres is still a drag, but that's going to follow a subdivision. So it's going to take a while. So while nonresidential construction will be negative in 2025, we think it should gradually get better as we progress through the year, which sets us up for a more positive outlook at this point, very preliminary for 2026.

Angel Castillo

That's helpful. And anything in the quoting activity that you're seeing?

J. Thomas Hill

Yes. So we're -- there's -- that's interesting. I'm glad you asked that. For the last six months, we've quoted a lot of non-res work that has -- that is still sitting on the sideline. So we think there's pent-up demand there.
But I think people want to see more. They're hoping interest rates go down and -- but that's good news because at some point in time, that money will go to work.

Operator

Phil Ng, Jefferies.

Phil Ng

Tom, congrats on another strong quarter. I have a few questions around the pricing commentary. You talked about 100 basis points drag on price mix from these recent deals. Can you give us a sense how much lower is ASP for some of these deals versus the corporate average? And how quick do you think you can narrow that over time?

J. Thomas Hill

So it's substantially lower. I mean, and I'm not going to quote numbers on that, but if it had over 100 basis points on the whole company, it is lower. We've already started that work.
I think we were successful with January price increases in those markets, and we'll continue that as progress through the next few quarters and years. I don't think it takes us long to get it back up to where a more reasonable Vulcan market would look like.

Phil Ng

Okay. And then separately, from a pricing standpoint, if account for the 100 basis points, you're still talking about really good pricing, but perhaps a little softer than the high single-digit framework you gave us last quarter.
Any puts and takes you want to give us a little more color because it doesn't sound like timing is a real issue for you Jan versus April like your competitors. So just give us some puts and takes on perhaps what you're seeing in the marketplace on pricing.

J. Thomas Hill

I think we were pretty consistent throughout our geographies on price increases, same thing with end users. The -- I think you got to remember, you're a little lower than double-digit, maybe same-store, high single digit. You also are not looking at double-digit cost increases.
You're looking at mid to low. So we continue that trend of taking money to the bottom line, which is the most important thing we can do is grow our unit margins by double digits. You've seen us do that over the last couple of years, and I think you'll see us do that. That's what our guide is for 2025. And I think we feel pretty good about it.

Operator

Mike Dahl, RBC.

Mike Dahl

Tom (inaudible), you obviously put a lot of capital to work with the acquisitions. They did come with some mix of downstream businesses. Can you help us understand how you view the downstream portion, whether those are businesses that are likely to stay within the portfolio and what is or is not incorporated into the guide with respect to that?

J. Thomas Hill

So the acquisitions are pretty new. They were very successfully run with good management team and good assets. Like anything else, we're going to look at this as a set of assets. And if it fits us, we'll run it earns an appropriate return that suits us well run it. If it is more valuable to someone else, then we'll divest of that, and we'll take those proceeds and put them back in the aggregates business.

Mary Carlisle

And in terms of the guide, Mike, the guide assumes we own the businesses like we do, maybe for a little helpful context for you. We commented in the prepared remarks that there's $150 million of EBITDA contribution from the acquisitions. That's about 60% in the aggregate segment and about 40% of that would be contributing to the downstream businesses.

Operator

Adam Thalhimer, Thompson Davis.

Adam Thalhimer

Congrats on the Q4 beat. Mary Andrews, do you have the -- well, I was also curious about the downstream portion because that was a pretty big increase year over year. So that looks like it's from acquisitions. I was curious if you have the $360 million is cash gross profit. Do you have that on a reported basis?

Mary Carlisle

We're -- I'm going to list stick with the $360 million for now, and we can talk offline about some more specific. But maybe what would be helpful to you is the improvement in the cash gross profit contribution from the downstream businesses, about 75% of that overall improvement is from the acquisitions. We also see improvement in the underlying business in both segments, and that's about 25% of the improvement year over year.

Operator

Timna Tanners, Wolfe Research.

Timna Tanners

Wanted to ask you a little bit about the M&A landscape after the deal who just finished what -- how you're looking at 2025, if it could build from what you just accomplished. And then if I could sneak in a question on Mexico, any update on the (inaudible) respitation efforts with the USMCA panel.

J. Thomas Hill

Yes. So I think there's still a very healthy pipeline of M&A. There's a number of projects we're working on. It'll take some -- it will take some time, but I think we'll continue to be successful with that as we go through 2025. On Mexico, I think the short answer there is no real news there.
We're still waiting on the tribunal to make a decision. We feel very good about our case, and I think we will win that. And we'll -- when they make a decision, we'll let you guys know. We are anticipating that sometime this year.

Operator

Garik Shmois, Loop Capital.

Garik Shmois

You spoke to the pricing cadence being similar this year as opposed to last. So I would love to hear your thoughts on your increases, what opportunities you see there potentially in what the time frame could be?

J. Thomas Hill

Yes. So they are not included in our guide, but we will absolutely announce midyear price increases. We will announce those probably towards the end of the first quarter, so we got time down those conversations.
Again, as I always remind you, midyears will have a better impact on 2026 than they will in 2025. But you'll -- it's too early to call how successful those will be, but we'll, for sure, going to announce then we'll have conversations with our customers, and we'll see where we go from there.

Garik Shmois

Great. Do you have by chance how much 2024 midyears are impacting 2025.

J. Thomas Hill

Well, that's a really hard to parse out. They definitely had an impact. I think we're pleased with. Part of the things that they do is help you give notice to your customers, so they have more time to react, which allows us to be more successful for January 1. So some of it is amplitude the price and some of it is timing, but it definitely helps both.

Operator

Keith Hughes, Truist.

Keith Hughes

I'll ask a short-term weather question that everybody asked me (inaudible) the day is weather been supportive of shipments? Or have we still had delays year over year or some of the storm activity.

J. Thomas Hill

So short term in January, February has been very cold. We're going to see that this week with cold and snow. So not a great start. But when we put a plan together, we expect weather impact at some point in time in the year, and we expect to get lucky in some quarters.
But we tried to look at more normalized weather as we make a prediction and in our guidance, I think as we pointed out, Q3 was particularly challenged last year. Hopefully, that will be easy comp in the middle of the season. So hopefully, that will help us, ex hurricanes.

Keith Hughes

And one other question on the Southern California acquisition. Is that -- particularly the downstream is that mix and (inaudible) current operations at broken? Or does that operate more as a stand-alone entity?

J. Thomas Hill

So if you look at the overall, it fits us very well. particularly on aggregate perspective, we don't have a lot of downstream ready mix in those markets, but it also has some asphalt with it. So part of it fits in aggregates and asphalt as far as us being there and then the ready-mix, they have an excellent position in those markets, but we were not in the ready-mix business in those markets.

Operator

Brent Thielman, D.A. Davidson.

Brent Thielman

Tom, I have a question more on maybe the direct impact of tariffs on your business and in Mexico is not really in the conversation, but I was thinking more along the West Coast and what Vulcan's response is going to be to the extent that tariffs are implemented on some of your assets shipping down in Canada.

J. Thomas Hill

Well, I think our -- we'll follow the letter of the law. We've looked at that. It is a pretty negligible impact for us. and whatever it is, we'll handle in the business. But I wouldn't -- it doesn't move the needle.

Operator

Michael Dudas, Vertical Research.

Michael Dudas

Tom, with the very solid pricing, it looks like for 2025, even (inaudible) for 2024, do you sense this is -- even like say, your organic volumes are flat and flattish on the overall market. Does this look like maybe a more normalized level of pricing relative to history spend? Or is there still room for upside on that going forward?

J. Thomas Hill

Yes. I think that there's always upside on price. You've got to earn that with your customers. Obviously, growing demand always helps that. and we haven't seen growing demand now for a few years, which puts some pressure on price.
But I think if you look at the bulk of where selling and the way we service our customers. I think we earn price, and I think we're doing that. And I think you see that in our performance in '24 and our guide in '25.

Operator

(Operator Instructions) David MacGregor, Longbow Research.

David MacGregor

Congratulations on a really strong quarter. Great performance I wanted to ask you about pricing in the Vulcan Way of selling. And clearly, this process has been very successful and that delivered some very visible results.
But as your markets evolve, and I'm thinking, for example, of your ready-mix and fixed plant customers who in many instances are now paying more for their limestone than they are for the cement. And then, I guess, secondly, your Vulcan Way of operating process.
It's giving you better incremental costs. the profitability algorithm adjust at some point to rely on slightly smaller price increases in favor of larger unitship gains that are achieved maybe in the way of market share gains from competitors who are continuing to push hard on price increases.

J. Thomas Hill

Yes. Well, let me be clear. I wish we had some net pricing. We don't. It's much lower than cement pricing, but also that cost is much lower.
I think that as you look forward, I think the -- I would go back to the strategic initiatives of Vulcan Way of selling and Vulcan Way of operating. Vulcan Way of selling allows you a much in-depth -- much better in-depth look into what's going on in the market. and gives your sales people the tools to price better and also gives them logistics and other tools to better service your customers.
I think on the Vulcan Way of operating, it allows for better training and better operators and how we inspect our equipment and reduce downtime. And also the technology allows for better throughput and throughput of critical sizes.
You put those two together, and I think both of them have a lot better chance of beating history, both the sales piece and the operating piece, which leads you to better opportunities on unit margin growth that again will be history, and you've seen us do that over the last nine quarters, a double-digit improvement.
So that's not happening by accident, and it doesn't have -- by accident going forward. Again, if you -- that's over time frames when volumes have actually gone down. This year, we call it flat. But when volumes come back, you have a better opportunity to improve your unit margins, both on the price side and on the cost side.

Operator

It appears we have no further questions in the queue. I will turn the program back over to our presenters for any additional or closing remarks.

J. Thomas Hill

Yes. Thank you for your time and your interest in Vulcan Materials today. We appreciate the relationship. We hope that you and your families stay safe, particularly with all the weather we're having, and we look forward to talking to you throughout the quarter. Thank you.

Operator

This does conclude today's program. Thank you for your participation. You may disconnect at any time.