EXCLUSIVE: Janus CEO Ramey Jackson Looks Back At First Year As A Public Company

Janus International Group JBI, a provider of custom building product solutions and access control technologies within the self-storage sector of the commercial real estate industry, is observing its first anniversary as a publicly-traded company since merging with blank-check company Juniper Industrial Holdings on June 7, 2021.

Janus CEO Ramey Jackson spoke with Benzinga about the Temple, Georgia-based company’s progress since going public.

For Benzinga readers who are unfamiliar with Janus International Group, what is the company all about?

We’re celebrating our 20th year this year. We have 17 manufacturing facilities, over 10,000 active customers, more than 1,600 energetic employees, and we have operations in North America, Australia and in Europe. Since we went public over a year ago, we've simplified our capital structure, acquired our largest competitor DBCI and purchased a company called Access Control Technologies.

When you think about our markets — commercial warehousing in the self-storage space — we have over 50% market share. We provide mission-critical products and services in that space and have developed a go-to-market strategy that drives these types of results.

We manufacture doors, but we're not a products company at heart. We're a service solutions provider. We spent a couple of years investing in manufacturing and bringing the product up to today's standards, and that product line and division are really taking off today.

What is the current demand for your company's products and services?

When you look at some of the events that happened with COVID-19, that accelerated the need for self-storage with people moving all around the country. And then on the commercial side, with commercial warehousing, Amazon AMZN has been very active in the space. Logistics and terminals have ramped up due to e-commerce and distribution. It's a good market to be in.

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Last month, you announced first-quarter results. Were there any surprises, pleasant or otherwise?

I wouldn't say surprises. We were very happy with our results, all things considered with massive inflation and some of the obstacles that we had to navigate, just like everyone else.

We had massive increases. We have a consolidated revenue of approximately $230 million and that was an increase of over 50%, and over 35% on an organic basis, as well. So, not a lot of surprise. We're just digging in really hard and managing the business during these crazy inflationary times, and I'm very thankful that our markets are robust.

In your first-quarter results, you gave guidance where you updated your projected full-year revenue to a range of $890 million to $910 million, up from the previous range of $845 million to $865 million. You also updated your projected adjusted EBITDA in a range of $193 million to $200 million, up from the previous range of $183 million to $190 million. With the second quarter coming to a close in a few weeks, can we expect another updated guidance from the company?

I can't really comment on projected guidance in the next quarter at this time. What I can say is we're committed to delivering performance, and over the next few months we'll look at repositioning from a guidance perspective. But as of right now, we're just focused on trying our best to exceed the numbers that we put out.

Your company went public via a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), and your shares appear to be trading better than other companies that went public that route? Why do you think that is?

I think it has everything to do with what I mentioned earlier. We're a real company with two decades of solid growth, and we generate a tremendous amount of cash that I'm very proud of. And we're a lot different than your standard SPAC, which is more of a start-up or a pie-in-the-sky type of company.

As we continue to deliver results, I think our shareholders will continue to acknowledge that we have a real story, real customers and real products.

You mentioned our “crazy inflationary times” earlier. How is your company dealing with historic inflation and supply chain disruptions?

Self-storage is an event-based business. When you go back and look at how it's behaved under various economic conditions, you're going to see it's been a leader — it was a pandemic, darling. And the reason why is because of life events — death, divorce, downsizing, dislocation. It really just thrives on this, regardless of the economic times.

But that is a fair question. We continue to see challenges in certain areas of our business, including raw material, labor availability and inflation. We've had these issues pretty much all year and post-pandemic, and we'll continue to monitor those. We built a business to make it very resilient, and we have great partners from a supply chain perspective and great customers.

We're in a great industry, so I'm super optimistic about our end markets as it relates to demand. Although it seems like the world's melting around us, I'm very positive as it relates to Janus.

Photos courtesy of Janus International Group