Tracy Alloway
๐ค SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
But directly, we were not clobbered by the tariffs.
The weather clobbered us a lot more than the tariffs.
What is the main commodity input for insulation?
Oh, it's chemical.
It's chemically created and it's refined in a manufacturer with a lot of people looking like chemists.
So like, is it petrochemical?
Like if like oil prices were to surge, would that be a sort of like margin crimping factor for insulation prices?
Well, I think we're better off with oil prices lower for demand, not so much for the cost of the goods, but lower oil prices, there's more confidence and more demand.
But the real factor for building products is mortgage rates.
So mortgage rates when they were seven and a half percent was really bad.
Because people had 3% mortgages or 3.25% mortgages, and people just have a problem paying off a 3% mortgage and taking out a 7% mortgage.
They're now down a bit, 6.5-ish percent, but they've got to come down more.
So when the Iran war finally ends, and it'll end someday, and interest rates come down, which they will under this administration, it's pretty good odds that mortgage rates will come down and business will start booming.
Yeah, this is what I wanted to ask, which is, I guess, financing availability at the moment, because clearly we are in the midst of this Iran situation and we have seen some very volatile markets out there.
We've seen traders start to ratchet down, I guess, their expectations for a rate cut later this year.
What's financing been like for you at QXO?
We have no problem getting access to capital.
That's not been an issue for us.
We've raised, since I started the company,