Boise Cascade (NYSE: BCC) reported Q4 EPS of $4.26, $1.91 better than the analyst estimate of $2.35. Revenue for the quarter came in at $1.8 billion versus the consensus estimate of $1.58 billion.

Outlook:

During 2021, our Wood Products and BMD locations continued to experience periodic short-term disruptions due to COVID-19 as we continued efforts to increase production rates and distribution capabilities in response to strong end-product demand. Furthermore, supply-side constraints across product lines including shortages of materials, labor, and transportation resources limited the industry's ability to meet underlying demand. The effects of the COVID-19 vaccine and COVID-19 safety protocols helped slow pandemic-related disruptions at times; however, COVID-19 variants continue to spread throughout the United States, causing more short-term disruptions as we entered 2022. We continue to conduct business with certain modifications to mill and distribution center housekeeping and cleanliness protocols, employee travel, employee work locations, and virtualization or cancellation of certain sales and marketing events, among other modifications. In addition, we continue to actively monitor evolving developments, including the impact of COVID-19 variants, and may take actions that alter our business operations as may be required by federal, state, or local authorities, or that we determine are in the best interests of our employees, customers, suppliers, communities, and stockholders.

Economic uncertainty due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic continues. However, mortgage rate levels, continuation of work-from-home practices by many in the economy, and demographics in the U.S. have created a favorable demand environment for new residential construction, which we expect to continue in 2022. As of February 2022, the Blue Chip Economic Indicators consensus forecast for 2022 single- and multi-family housing starts in the U.S. was 1.60 million units, compared with actual housing starts of 1.60 million in 2021 and 1.38 million in 2020, as reported by the U.S. Census Bureau. In addition, limited new and existing home inventory availability and the age of the U.S. housing stock will continue to provide a favorable backdrop for residential construction and repair-and-remodel spending. Although we believe that current U.S. demographics support the higher level of forecasted housing starts, and many national home builders are reporting strong near-term backlogs, labor shortages and supply induced constraints on residential construction activity may continue to extend build times and limit activity. In addition, the pace of residential construction and repair-and-modeling activity may be affected by the economic impact of the cost of building materials and construction, housing affordability, mortgage interest rates, wage growth, prospective home buyers' access to financing, consumer confidence, as well as other factors.

As a manufacturer of certain commodity products, we have sales and profitability exposure to declines in commodity product prices and rising input costs. Our distribution business purchases and sells a broad mix of commodity products with periods of increasing prices providing the opportunity for higher sales and increased margins, while declining price environments expose us to declines in sales and profitability. Our 2021 results were favorably impacted by historically high commodity wood products pricing, as well as rising prices for EWP and general line products. Composite lumber and panel prices were very volatile throughout 2021 with rapidly rising prices in second quarter, sharp price declines in third quarter, and prices steadily increasing again during fourth quarter. As we enter 2022, commodity wood products pricing continues to be above historical averages as strong demand and capacity constraints continue to create supply/demand imbalances in the marketplace. We expect future commodity product pricing and commodity input costs to be volatile in response to capacity restoration and industry operating rates, the impact of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic on residential construction, net import and export activity, transportation constraints or disruptions, inventory levels in various distribution channels, and seasonal demand patterns. EWP and general line products have historically experienced limited price volatility, and we expect the firm pricing environment to continue in 2022.

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