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Companies · BLDR · Retail-Lumber & Other Building Materials Dealers · Earnings · Jul 30, 2026

Quarterly miss followed by a sharp full-year outlook reset

Misspartly known
Adjusted EPS $1.17 vs ~$1.25 consensus
Builders FirstSource, Inc. (BLDR) — what happened, in plain English, and what it means versus what the market expected.

The quarter came in below already-lowered expectations. Adjusted EPS was $1.17 versus a published consensus of roughly $1.25, while revenue was $3.86 billion versus about $3.91 billion expected. The miss was not just headline weakness: adjusted EBITDA fell 34.9% year over year to $329.3 million, and margin contracted 350 basis points to 8.5% as lower volume reduced operating leverage (Adjusted EBITDA reconciliation; Financial Performance Highlights).

MetricQ2 2026Q2 2025 / expectationChange
Net sales$3.86B (Financial Performance Highlights)$4.23B prior year / ~$3.91B consensus-8.8% YoY
Adjusted EPS$1.17 (Adjusted Net Income reconciliation)$2.38 prior year / ~$1.25 consensus-50.8% YoY
Adjusted EBITDA$329.3M (Adjusted EBITDA reconciliation)$506.1M prior year-34.9% YoY
Adjusted EBITDA margin8.5% (Adjusted EBITDA reconciliation)12.0% prior year-350 bps
Free cash flow$32.2M (Free Cash Flow)$255.0M prior year-87.4% YoY

The more important news is the full-year reset, not the quarterly miss alone. Management cut 2026 revenue guidance from $14.8B-$15.8B to $14.0B-$14.8B and adjusted EBITDA guidance from $1.3B-$1.7B to $1.0B-$1.2B. The underlying assumptions also deteriorated: single-family starts are now expected down mid- to high-single digits and multifamily starts down mid-single digits, versus the prior assumption of flat starts in both categories (2026 Full Year Total Company Outlook; 2026 Full Year Assumptions).

Profitability is being reset faster than revenue. The new EBITDA range implies a 7.1%-8.1% margin, below the prior 8.8%-10.8% range. That reflects gross margin pressure and fixed-cost deleveraging: gross margin fell to 28.1% from 30.7%, while SG&A declined only 3.0% against an 8.8% sales decline, pushing SG&A to 24.8% of revenue (Financial Performance Highlights; Income Statement).

The balance sheet provides liquidity, but the cushion is thinner. Liquidity remained approximately $1.6 billion, yet net debt rose to $4.6 billion and leverage increased to 3.6x LTM adjusted EBITDA from 2.3x a year earlier. Free cash flow fell sharply to $32.2 million, while cash declined to $65.7 million and inventory increased to $1.27 billion from $1.09 billion at year-end (Capital Structure, Leverage, and Liquidity Information; Cash Flow statement; Balance Sheet).

Net read: a genuine earnings miss compounded by a material outlook cut. Weak housing demand was already understood, so the novelty is mainly the magnitude: weaker revenue, sharper margin erosion, higher leverage, and a lower second-half outlook than the market had been carrying. Cost savings and reduced capital spending offer some defense, but they do not offset the downgrade in the near-term operating picture (Productivity Savings; 2026 Full Year Total Company Outlook).

Read the original 8-K on SEC EDGAR ↗
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