Aaron Erter, love rat
It's been a year of betrayal upon betrayal for James Hardie shareholders.
Lo and behold, not even two months since closing on a self-destructive acquisition, James Hardie is self-destructing!
On Wednesday morning, the building materials giant announced its first quarter results: a year-on-year net sales decline of 9.3 per cent and a 21 per cent drop in adjusted EBITDA.[[James Hardie reports on a March 31 year-end calendar.]] On the earnings call, James Hardie's infamous CEO Aaron Erter told incredulous analysts that, "Look, our Q1 results were as expected, and they were embedded in our FY26 guide".[[He also posted on his LinkedIn that, "Our Q1FY2026 results were largely as we had anticipated" – and the word 'largely' was really doing the heavy lifting there.]]
Intentionally or not, Erter has in the last five months established himself as a man able to say hilarious things with a straight face. At the previous quarter's results in May, James Hardie had reaffirmed FY26 guidance of adjusted EBITDA growth in the low single digits. It was also guiding to US$500 million of FY26 free cash flow and net sales growth in its main North American division. This week, James Hardie downgraded free cash flow guidance of US$200 million (a 47 per cent collapse in FCF versus 2025) and unveiled a 12 per cent fall in North American net sales.
Erter says these shocking results were "as expected". Well, if Erter expected collapsing sales and profit contrary to the company's standing guidance of growing sales and profit, why didn't he tell the market the second he began to expect it, in the spirit if not the formula of his continuous disclosure obligations?