Trex CEO Adam Zambanini Celebrates Decking Brand's 30th Anniversary of Founding

We're down here on the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange and we saw Trex company ring the opening bell to celebrate its 30th anniversary. The organization started in 1996 with a single composite decking product and has grown into an outdoor living brand. Well, joining me now with more is the company's CEO, Adam Zambanini. Adam, welcome and congratulations.

Thanks for having me, Kristen.

Great to have you here at the New York Stock Exchange today. What does it feel like to celebrate on that opening bell podium?

It's so exciting. So exciting to have the entire team here. It's just it's an honor, really.

It's incredible. What is worth celebrating today?

Yeah, so I mean, the 30 years, I've been there now for two-thirds of that history. so I've been able to see where we've evolved from a decking company made on green principles. If you think about the founders and when they started this, they were trying to take plastic bags and then what the kind of product you can make out of them. And now we've turned that into a pretty large company, a billion dollar company and you know, we have these aspirations to become a $2 billion dollar company over the next five years and all these decking, railing, pergolas, furniture. There's so many opportunities to grow in this $75 billion dollar outdoor living segment.

How has the company evolved over the decades?

Yeah, so there's been different sort of, uh, performance attributes. So when we first launched Trex, right? It's all to take share away from wood. Every 1% share away from wood is about $80 million in revenue. And that first generation was all about you didn't have to sand it, you didn't have to stain it. And then back in 2010, that kind of evolved to where we launched a product called Trex Transcend, which was scratch, stain, fade, mold resistant. Now, when we look at where Trex sits at today, performance engineered for your life outdoors. Now we're getting into products like heat mitigation technology, right? And so, there's things we're better for marine applications, for fire applications. So there's so many, we're really boundless in terms of where we can grow the company in terms of what performance engineered. It's all about material science and Trex is the best.

Yeah, it's incredible to see the growth. You were telling me uh before our live segment here that you have some of the Trex products at your own home. Tell me more about what differentiates them.

Yeah, so here's the thing. Yeah, we're really on the cusp of the performance piece, but also the aesthetics. So when I look at that outdoor living space, that's where the the you know, when you think about where do you want to invest in your home, you have the thing where you have the kitchens and the bathroom, but the cheapest place to invest within your home is that outdoor living spot. So, for me, it's just a place to go out and relax. A lot more people are stuck under those, you know, 3% interest rates so they don't want to move. We're 95% repair remodele. So they want to spend more time outdoors. So Trex the green product, spend more time outdoors. We align with all the trends in where the market is heading.

You know, it's incredible because your own history at Trex is pretty story. Tell me about your journey at the company.

Yeah, so really I started in the engineering realm. I went to school for mechanical engineering and as soon as I graduated, I knew one thing. I wasn't sure I wanted to stay in mechanical engineering long-term. So my pathway kind of led me to marketing. You know, I worked for Rubbermade prior to working at Trex and I got exposed to the business planning and all the aspects of how you go after new markets, do the research, and then commercialize the product. So with Trex, I came on board because it was such a young company, really in its existence, and I thought there's so much opportunity to grow. And that's what I always tell people that want to join Trex today. We're really at the foundation level. There's so many more opportunities to grow your career. So it's been an exciting ride and you know, now I'm trying to build that company for the next generation of Trex.

Your company is based in Virginia. How are your employees around your various locations celebrating today?

Yeah, so it's awesome. You know, we're we've really been celebrating our 30th year anniversary now all summer long. So we've had we recently our Apex dinner where we bring people that have over 25 years that worked at Trex. It doesn't matter if you're even if you're retired, you can come back and we kind of celebrate it. So we've done it in each one of our plants. We have the one in Fernley, Nevada, we have the Winchester Virginia site and now we've opened up a Greenfield in Little Rock. So everybody's been really selling uh celebrating the 30th year anniversary. We're very, very excited about the future.

Tell me more about the future and what's in store.

Yeah, so when you think about this, the biggest opportunity is to convert the market away from wood. So 75% of the market still today is wood. And so that is the opportunity that we want to tap into Trex. Just going back to that 1% share away from wood is $80 million in revenue. We're really a material conversions play. So we're really going after wood and then in some opportunities we're going after PVC. So there's really like tremendous amount of opportunity to grow this company.

Yeah. Um we will be watching it closely indeed. I think we're going to leave it there, but thank you so much for joining and congratulations again.

I appreciate it.

It's great to have you.

Nice to meet you. Thank you.

Of course, the CEO of Trex joining me down here on the trading floor after celebrating its 30th anniversary by ringing the opening bell. You can follow this stock, of course listed on the NYSE under the ticker symbol T R E X or Trex for short.