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Too late for the 37-44 Sox? Maybe not in this division.
While many fans figured the Red Sox’ decision-makers were destined to dismantle their underperforming roster after a seven-game losing streak dropped them to 27-38 on June 15, since then the team has won 10-of-16.
It’s the second straight winning road trip and the second in which the Sox scored at least 12 runs in the final game (they beat the Royals, 13-2, to cap off a 3-2 trip on June 21). The Sox head home for eight crucial games before the All-Star break.
The Sox scored eight runs in the first inning on the road for the first time since 1994 and have scored 5.4 runs per game during their last 11.
With Ortiz homering eight times in his last 20 starts and Ramirez riding a seven-game hitting streak in which he’s gone deep three times, the Sox appear to have their big bats heating up.
The Sox tacked on three more in the seventh inning and another in the eighth as Betts (3-for-6), Holt (4-for-6) and Bogaerts (4-for-6) combined for 11 hits.
Starters with big leads are supposed to be in attack mode, but Wade Miley couldn’t find the strike zone, walking seven and allowing seven hits. He gave up four runs, all in the second inning, and eventually was removed after five innings.
It was all the Red Sox needed.
The hype train is moving for the next yearly Assassin’s Creed game. And by “moving” I mean inching along at a crawl, desperately hoping people hop on board.
Ubisoft has scheduled a grand reveal event for this Tuesday, which promises to unveil this fall’s Assassin’s Creed: Victory, which very well may be called Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate now, because maybe “Victory” implies some sort of hard ending. Which we know isn’t happening.
Rather, Assassin’s Creed will continue on until we beg it to stop, and the Call of Duty-esque annualization of the series is something that few can get behind, as Erik Kain wrote yesterday. But I wanted to explore a little bit about why COD’s yearly formula is so hard to repeat, and why Assassin’s Creed struggles with generating excitement for annual releases so consistently.
Call of Duty has its formula down cold. There’s a short campaign, about five to six hours, less if you’re flying through it. There’s multiplayer, where most avid fans will sink most of their time. And there’s the “third pillar” of Zombies or Spec Ops or whatever co-op type “challenge” mode the series has in place that year. Every year, the game is broken down into bite-size chunks. Nearly everyone can get through a five hour campaign, and the ease-of-play on normal difficulty modes ensures most people will see the end of it. And then after that, you, the player, have the option of playing as much multiplayer or co-op modes as you like. Play ten matches. Play a thousand. It’s up to you, as since they’re only 5-15 minute chunks, there’s really no limit.
This is in sharp contrast to Assassin’s Creed, a game that really only has one card to play year after year, a 20+ hour campaign that demands your attention for a very, very long stretch of time. The open world gets bigger each and every year, meaning there are not just more missions to complete, but more chests to open, stores to buy, armor and weapons to upgrade, towers to climb, feathers to collect, and so on and so on.
While Assassin’s Creed has the potential to live on forever because of a nearly infinite amount of time periods and locations throughout the world in which it could be set, the actual application of that concept does not lead to a fundamentally different experience year after year. Despite the new maps, the new characters, it’s always roughly the same. You’re tasked with killing a number of targets, all vaguely related to each other and serving some larger “the world is doomed” storyline. You will likely use your Assassin’s Blade to stealth kill 90% of the time, and then whichever sword suits you best once subterfuge fails. Some years counter-kills may be easy. Some years they may be hard. But across seven major console games now, the formula has not really changed.
Part of that is the desire not to mess with success. Part of that is the annualized schedule that doesn’t allow for too much innovation. Part of that may be that Ubisoft is just running out of ideas when it comes to their own series.
Call of Duty is a game that just fits like a glove when you put it on year after year. You slide in, play some games, mess around with the new gear, weapons and killstreaks, and stay around however long you see fit.
But when I think of starting a new Assassin’s Creed game, the only thing that comes to mind lately is exhaustion. Yes, it’s familiar territory as well, but in a way that requires you to go through the same process you’ve repeated six times already. Start with nothing, build up your income, skills and gear, clear out the map of the little icons infecting it at every turn. When you start Assassin’s Creed, you know you have 20+ hours of a campaign ahead of you, and the core gameplay isn’t that engaging to the point where that prospect always sounds fun.
I think most would agree that the best AC game in recent memory was Black Flag, which was barely an Assassin’s Creed game at all, and really a fully-fleshed out pirate simulator. It was the kind of departure that made you feel like to some extent, you were truly playing either an evolution of the series or a new game entirely. Despite similar elements, it was fresh, and an experience I was eager to dive into.
But Assassin’s Creed has struggled with replicating that kind of enthusiasm throughout its lifespan. After the fantastic evolution that was the jump from Assassin’s Creed 1 to 2, the series was content to stay there for two more unneeded installments, Brotherhood and Revelations, neither of which I could finish because they were repeating previously-tread ground to such a degree. (“Oh no, that house blew up with all my gear and money, better start again!”). The same thing happened with last year’s Assassin’s Creed: Unity, which debuted in such a stacked fall season, that 20 hours of AC gameplay locked back into a city seemed terribly dull after sailing the high seas in Black Flag, and many skipped it entirely. Now this year, with Victory/Syndicate set in Victorian London, the same problem exists, unless there’s somehow going to be some absolutely crazy departure for the series announced Tuesday.
This just isn’t the kind of game you were meant to play year after year. It’s too repetitive, and too long, to replicate the kind of magic that Call of Duty has as an annual franchise. That series has its own problems, sure, but its formula at least lends itself to being annualized like a sports game. Assassin’s Creed doesn’t. It’s the type of game you play through, and then would want to wait two or three years for a new installment that moves things forward in a meaningful way. Slamming players with 25 hour campaigns and maps dotted with thousands of icons every year feels more tiring than exhilarating, and now Ubisoft is starting to creep into possibly doing the same thing with Far Cry as well.
I like spaghetti. It’s actually one of my favorite foods. But if I’m served spaghetti night after night, day after day and eat it until I feel like I’m going to burst, it will quickly go from one of my most desired meals to my least. That’s what’s happening to Assassin’s Creed, and Ubisoft’s desire for a yearly cash cow is outweighing the logical capabilities and enduring appeal of the series itself.
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Reaction in the Mediterranean to BP's plans to start drilling five off-shore wells off the Libyan Gulf of Sirte in October has been surprisingly low key given the British oil giant's recent track record in the Gulf of Mexico. So far, the only group to express vigorous concern, at least in public, has been archeologists: The seabed off that stretch of the Libyan coast is rich in ancient sites and artifacts, including the remains of a sunken port once vital to Roman shipping.
Yet there is nothing particularly reassuring about BP's new $900 million operation, even as the company continues to deal with the multibillion dollar fallout of the Gulf oil spill. Drilling for the Libyan wells will start at a water depth 600 feet deeper than the Macondo well in the Gulf, which was some 5,000 feet. Significantly, Libya and Croatia are the only Mediterranean coastal countries that don't have a contingency plan in place to handle an oil spill in their waters. The Libyan ambassador to Rome, Abdulhafed Gaddur, told Corriere della Sera, "We know what we are doing. We've been doing this for 45 years, without advice from anyone."
Libya is a major oil producer, but Libya's oil drilling has been mainly on land, with some shallow off-shore exploration.
Last month, Italy's Environment Minister Stefania Prestigiacomo did call for a moratorium on drilling by the 21 Mediterranean coastline nations, "to give Europe time to define a new and specific strategy for the Mediterranean." But there has been no follow-up from her own government, and little reaction from other Mediterranean states.
The Financial Times recently put forward one theory why the reaction in the Mediterranean has been anemic: "With cash-strapped governments courting Libya's oil-fueled sovereign wealth funds, countries such as Italy, Greece, and Malta -- all within a radius of 310 miles of the Gulf of Sirte -- have refrained from commenting on Libya's plans," the paper said.
But it's not as though the threat of oil spills is new to the Mediterranean. What Homer called "the wine-dark sea" is arguably the most polluted body of water in the world. According to one estimate, 370 million tons of oil are transported annually in the Mediterranean -- more than 20 percent of the world's total. A lot of it is left there, too, in the form of spillage from tankers, refineries and pipelines -- between 150,000 and 600,000 tons a year.
Meanwhile, BP has said it will apply lessons learned from its Macondo well spill to this and other deepwater drilling operations. But how reassuring it that, given that nobody really knows yet what happened in the Gulf of Mexico?
RPM earnings call for the period ending November 30, 2018.
Good morning, and welcome to RPM International's conference call for the fiscal 2019 second quarter. Today's call is being recorded. This call is also being webcast and can be accessed live or replayed on the RPM website at www.rpminc.com. Comments made on this call may include forward-looking statements based on current expectations that involve risks and uncertainties, which could cause actual results to be materially different.
For more information on these risks and uncertainties, please review RPM's reports filed with the SEC. During this conference call, references may be made to non-GAAP financial measures. To assist you in understanding these non-GAAP terms, RPM has posted reconciliations to the most directly comparable got financial measures on the RPM website. [Operator instructions] Please note that only financial analysts will be permitted to ask questions.
At this time, I would like to turn the call over to RPM's Chairman and CEO Mr. Frank Sullivan for opening remarks. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you, Brandon. Good morning. Welcome to the RPM International Inc. investor call for our fiscal 2019 second quarter ended November 30, 2018.
On the call with me today are Rusty Gordon, RPM's vice president and chief financial officer; and Kristine Schulze, our senior director of financial reporting. I'll kick the call off by providing some broad perspective on our second-quarter results, and Kristine will run through our numbers in more detail. She'll be followed by Rusty, who will provide a progress report on our operating improvement plan and an outlook for the balance of the year. After which, we'll be happy to answer your questions.
For the second quarter, we generated solid top-line sales of $1,360,000,000, reflecting an organic increase of 3% and acquisition growth of 2.6% over last year's second quarter. Current-quarter sales also include the unfavorable foreign exchange impact of 2%. Growth was fairly well-balanced between our organic initiatives and acquisitions, while foreign currency translation obviously reduced sales. Organic sales growth was evenly spread across our three operating segments, which demonstrates the value in our approach to deliberately maintaining a strategic balance between our segments and a focus on growth as we pursue our 2020 MAP to Growth initiative.
Near-record wet fall weather resulted in disappointing sales at Tremco Roofing, Dryvit and various consumer segment products with exterior use. We believe this weather-related impact is temporary. From a geographic standpoint, we experienced disappointing international results across most all of our business, particularly in Europe, which was also aggravated by the unfavorable foreign exchange. Our gross profit margin was impacted by raw material cost in the quarter once again.
As mentioned last quarter, our businesses have been instituting price increases to combat the pressure put on margins by raw material cost increases, which have been rising now for six consecutive quarters. We anticipate that raw material cost will level off in the back half of our fiscal year and that our businesses will further close the gap on our margins, with price increases that have been negotiated and will be instituted in the coming months. We continue to reign in expenses during the quarter. Better cost control led to an adjusted SG&A to sales ratio improvement of 100 basis points over the second quarter last year on an adjusted basis.
Regarding our MAP to Growth operating improvement plan, we continue to make good progress. This quarter, we announced five additional manufacturing plant closures and eliminated another 149 positions. We began the transition to center-led manufacturing and procurement and we're moving forward on our supply chain initiatives, where we're starting to consolidate the number of vendors and negotiating more favorable terms and pricing. During the first half of our 2019 fiscal year, cash from operations improved by 29%, a direct result of improved working capital management.
Thanks, Frank, and good morning, everyone. During our fiscal 2019 second quarter, we reported restructuring and other one-time charges totaling $29.2 million. As further detailed in our earnings release, the largest component of these adjustments, or nearly $23 million, relates to our MAP to Growth initiative. Of these MAP to Growth charges, nearly $7 million is related to severance.
$6 million resulted from restructuring-related professional fees and ERP consolidation expenses, and the remaining amount is associated with our manufacturing consolidation initiative. I will now review results of operations for our fiscal 2019 second quarter on an as-adjusted basis. During the second quarter, our sales were a record $1.36 billion, up $47.1 million, which was a solid 3.6% increase over last year's second quarter. Organic sales grew 3% and acquisitions added 2.6%, which was offset by foreign currency translation of 2%.
Our earnings were impacted by several factors, which included continued raw material cost challenges, investment losses resulting from a new accounting standard and the unfavorable foreign exchange impact of the strengthening U.S. dollar. As we anticipated on last quarter's call, raw material headwinds persisted in the second quarter. In particular, we continued to experience significant challenges with the cost of silicones, asphalt, epoxy and acrylic resins, while cans and other packaging continued to rise modestly.
However, we continued to successfully institute price increases and were able to narrow the gap on our margins. We also noted that an unfavorable product mix and higher inbound freight contributed to the slide in our margins. Sales in our industrial segment increased 2.1% to $718 million, reflecting organic growth of 3.3%, and acquisitions contributed an additional 1.5%. Foreign currency translation reduced sales by 2.7%.
The segment benefited from solid performance in our businesses providing corrosion control coatings, North American construction sealants and concrete admixture and repair products. This was achieved despite the impact of the second wettest autumn on record in the U.S., which affected sales, particularly in our commercial roofing business. International sales, which account for approximately half of our industrial segment business, were soft this quarter. On the bottom line, higher raw material costs and unfavorable foreign exchange impacted results.
We made good progress on our operating improvement initiatives in the segment, which included progress toward consolidating production with the announced closure of three plants. Adjusted EBIT in the segment increased 1% to $70.9 million from last year's second quarter. In our consumer segment, sales increased by 4.1%, which was fairly evenly split between organic sales growth of 2.8% and acquisition growth of 2.9%. Foreign currency translation reduced sales by 1.6%.
Organic sales growth was aided by new account penetration, which offset poor POS performance resulting from exceptionally wet weather in the United States, the segment's largest market. Adjusted EBIT was $42.9 million. Price increases instituted late in the first quarter helped to slow margin erosion in the consumer segment. However, raw material cost continued to be a challenge.
Operational improvements which began during the fourth quarter of last year continued to be made in the segment and are leading to working capital improvements. Also we announced the closure of one additional manufacturing facility during the second quarter. Specialty segment sales grew at a strong 7.6% pace. This was driven by acquisition growth of 6.1%, primarily from the September acquisition of Nudura, a manufacturer of insulated concrete forms that extends our private product line offerings.
Organic growth contributed 2.3% to sales, while foreign currency translations had a modestly unfavorable impact of 0.8%. Driving organic growth were our businesses providing wood coatings, powdered coatings and florescent colorants. Specialty results were better than expected, since the prior-year comparison was a tough one. Performance by our restoration equipment business was brisk as it responded to recent natural disasters, but was below elevated sales levels that resulted from Hurricane Harvey last year.
We made MAP to Growth progress in this segment as well with the announced closure of one manufacturing facility. Adjusted EBIT was $34.1 million during this year's second quarter. During the quarter, our stock performance enabled us to redeem our 2.25% convertible senior notes due 2020, which was completed on November 27, 2018. By utilizing mostly cash for the redemption.
Going forward, this will have the impact of reducing our diluted share count by 3.3 million shares while being debt-neutral to RPM. On a related note, we repurchased approximately $82 million of our common stock through November 30, 2018, which is in line with our plan to return $1.5 billion in capital to our stockholders by May 31, 2021, through a combination of dividends and share repurchases. I'll now turn the call over to Rusty for some details on our outlook for the remainder of fiscal 2019.
Thanks, Kristine. We remain focused on executing our MAP to Growth operating improvement plan, targeting a 540 basis-point improvement in our operating margin. As we announced on November 28, 2018, we intend to return $1.5 billion in capital to our stockholders by May 31, 2021, through a combination of dividends and share repurchases. In addition to the previously mentioned convertible bond redemption, we have repurchased approximately $82 million of our common stock through November 30, 2018.
Additional actions we completed during our fiscal 2019 second quarter includes the announced closure of five manufacturing plants, the reduction of 149 positions and the start of our transition to center-led manufacturing and procurement functions. We also began to implement tactics to improve our manufacturing processes, optimize assets and reduce inventory while moving forward on our supply chain initiatives to consolidate the number of vendors used and negotiate more favorable pricing and payment terms. Accordingly, we are maintaining the long-term projections that we provided at our November 28 Investor Day. In regards to our sales outlook for fiscal 2019, we expect full-year fiscal 2019 industrial segment sales to grow in the mid-single-digit range as it benefits from steady commercial construction activity and a recovery in the oil and gas market.
In our consumer segment, we anticipate sales growth in the mid- to upper-single-digit range resulting from recent market share gains and stepped-up advertising to support new product placements. In our specialty segment, we expect sales growth in the low single-digit range. We have additional price increases negotiated recently, which are scheduled to be implemented in February and March as we look forward this year. I will now comment on our expectations for the third quarter of fiscal 2019.
From an operating perspective, revenue growth should remain in the low to mid-single-digit range, with FX headwinds remaining a challenge. While we are seeing the early benefits of our purchasing activities and softness in certain raw material categories, it is important to note that RPM is on a FIFO basis for inventory, which means that the benefits we are beginning to see on the raw material front will typically flow into our income statement 90 days later than if we were under the LIFO method of accounting as is the case with our larger industry competitors. Due to three non-operating items, we anticipate significantly lower reported earnings and earnings per share for the third-quarter period ended February 28, 2019. These items are the following: No.
1, an anticipated current tax rate of approximately 26% versus a benefit from certain tax items of $5.9 million last year; No. 2, while gains were realized in the prior year on sales of marketable securities, we expect a different result this year due to the combination of declines in the equities market in December and the new accounting standard, which requires unrealized gains and losses on equity securities to now be reflected in earnings, we anticipate a year-over-year negative impact during this year's third quarter to be in the range of $5 million to $6 million; and No. 3, an adverse comparison to last year's third quarter when we reversed approximately $3.4 million of long-term incentive compensation when it became clear that the targeted goals would not be reached. Taken together, expectations of continuing raw material cost challenges and these non-operating items are likely to result in third-quarter EPS in the range of $0.10 or $0.12 per share.
Although we are in the early innings of our restructuring efforts, we are making good progress, which has us excited about the prospects for the future. As we work through the plan over the next few quarters, we will continue to adjust out associated charges to provide a clear picture of the initiative and the progress we are making. With that, I'll turn the call back over to Frank.
Thank you, Rusty. I'd like to do a brief review of our 2020 MAP to Growth initiative, starting with our 2020 MAP to Growth time line. The program was kicked off in the spring of 2018. In June of 2018, we reached a settlement agreement with Elliott Management.
We added two new directors. We formed an operating improvement committee which met three times over the summer to assess the opportunity and program design. A full report was made to the RPM board in early October, and we communicated our 2020 MAP to Growth initiative to our global leadership team in early November, and then obviously had an investor communication on November 28. What have we accomplished? From a manufacturing perspective, including two plant closures in the second quarter of last year, five announced plant closures in the first quarter, an additional five announced plant closures in the second quarter of fiscal '19, we have announced and are in the process of completing the closure on 12 manufacturing plants.
This is also driving the closure of nine warehouses and nine related offices. From a procurement perspective, as of today, we have had meetings with vendors who represent approximately $400 million of what we believe is $1.5 billion of an addressable spend to discuss pricing and terms. By the end of February, we expect to have met with or addressed from an in-sourcing or strategic perspective approximately $1 billion of our addressable spend. I'd like to make a comment on the second-quarter raw material costs with some specifics.
Our top 10 raw materials, second quarter of this fiscal year to the second quarter of the prior year, were up 10% -- I'm sorry, 18%. A couple of these specifics include silicones, which year over year, are up 61%; and epoxy resins, which are up 31%. The second quarter sequentially versus the first quarter, we see our top 10 materials down 1%. Without addressing any additional specifics, the point is we have more timely and better data across purchasing categories and manufacturing cost and more hands than we've ever had.
And that's also a direct result of the improvements of our operating initiatives. With those comments, we would now be happy to take your questions.
OK. Thank you, sir. [Operator instructions] And from Bank of America, we have Steve Byrne. Please go ahead.
Good morning. I just wanted to see whether or not your projected cost savings from your MAP to Growth program are going to be adequate to hit that 16% EBIT margin target, given it seems like you're in a little bit of a deeper hole in your margin right now. Is that -- is it still on track to hit that 16% margin by the end of fiscal 2021?
Sure. As Rusty commented, I think we feel pretty good about our longer-term targets in the MAP to Growth program. And also as he mentioned, we expect, starting with our April call, we'd actually be able to provide some more detail. We want to be able to do a rearview mirror lookback that provides detail, for instance, on manufacturing in sites, once those have actually been completed.
It's the right way to do to keep our people focused on execution and also the right way to handle communication flow. We'll be in a position to do the same thing in other categories. And so far, we're on track in every category that we're focusing on.
Just one high-level question for you, Frank, on this MAP to Growth initiative. Your investor event down in Baltimore was certainly useful at drilling into all of your businesses. But one comment I have is that every one of them seems to be headquartered in a different city. I just wanted to hear your views on the potential merits of integration that includes the commercial infrastructure and the -- all of the back-office headquarters of all these businesses.
Is that on the table as well?
So as it relates to our structure from a sales and marketing perspective, as we commented, we're big believers in the entrepreneurial approach that's been successful for RPM. I think the organic growth that we're generating in this quarter and this year is reflective of that. And we do not see any benefit long term of consolidating sales force or marketing or product development activities. On the flip side, we are keenly focused on consolidating much of the G&A and accounting and ERP systems into the four groups that we've outlined on November 28, and we're making good progress on that.
We'll have more details on that again in April. I can tell you that we have been working with our internal team in terms of some new hires and some promotions and with AlixPartners on the manufacturing and operations perspective. And we are very much on target. We're very happy with the progress there.
On the G&A side, we didn't seem to have the same enthusiasm in terms of the outside resources, so we have talked to a number of other firms and we have engaged an additional firm to help us with the combination of consolidation in the G&A area and also opportunities for outsourcing. So we're continuing to advance the ball both on the original program and in ways that we can accelerate or enhance it.
From BMO Capital Markets, we have John McNulty. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. Hey, Frank. At the Investor Day, you spoke on procurement and raw material saves, and I think one of the baskets was just the commodity cycle recovering and essentially catching up to the raw materials, whether the raws fell or the pricing went through.
And if I remember, the basket was somewhere in the $65 million to $80 million range. I guess it looked like that was scheduled for kind of a wave two, wave three, which was 2021, 2022, but we've seen commodity prices fall pretty dramatically here. So I guess the question is if you kind of look at what your commodities are looking like right now in terms of raw materials, how much of that do you think you may see a couple years earlier than originally expected?
So the MAP to Growth initiative highlighted approximately $75 million to $80 million of savings that we believe we can get from a different approach to procurement over wave one and wave two, which is really between now and the end of May 31, 2020. And there was a $65 million number which we highlighted as commodity cycle recovery, and we're pretty agnostic as to how much it would be ultimately and when it would hit. I guess what I would say to that is just to refer back to the comments I made a minute ago. Year over year, we're still getting hit pretty significantly.
Second quarter, top 10 materials were up 18%, I highlighted a couple of the extreme examples. Sequentially, the top 10 materials are down 1%. That's not going to -- as Rusty highlighted in his outlook, we're still going to be facing a year-over-year significant raw material increase relative to the third quarter last year and the third quarter we expect this year. We are seeing some softening in certain categories.
There are still some other categories that are going up. And the underlying dynamics, whether it's oil prices or propylene or other things, are certainly moving in the right direction, does suggest the commodity cycle improvements certainly should be coming before what we had as wave three. So we ought to benefit from those, with the entire industry. We're also working internally on data to be able to track the difference between the structural procurement benefit changes and what would be coming in relationship to commodity cycle improvements anyways.
Got it. And then on the industrial side, I know there is -- it's a seasonally light quarter for you in terms of what you're in right now, but I guess, can you give us an update as to what you may be seeing there? And I know you had indicated, I guess, on the guidance for the full year in sales that one of the areas where there was some hope was on the energy markets. And I guess with that market coming under some pressure, I guess, I'm wondering what kind of demand trends you're seeing there, if there's been any change at all.
Yes. I think the biggest disappointment in our industrial business was weather-related. Our Tremco Roofing business, which has been very strong; Dryvit, which is, again, all exterior cladding, both had weak second-quarter results, a lot of that was weather-related in terms of a very wet fall. I think weather also negatively impacted, as I said, the kind of exterior-related products of our consumer segment.
We think that's temporary. The more challenging area for us in terms of revenue disappointment was international, in particular, Europe, which seems to be slowing down. And I'm not too sure that that is temporary. But when you put all that together, we had real solid organic growth in a lot of our construction categories, in corrosion control coatings and floor coatings, which obviously exceeded the industrial segment average, based on the challenges that we saw, weather in some categories and some international weakness.
We feel pretty good about that, and we feel pretty good about the progress we're making between raw material cost increases and price as the subsequent quarters are executed.
Great. And then just one last question, just on the Home Depot rollout, I guess, can you give us an update as to how that's progressing? Again, I know it's a seasonally relatively weak period, but be curious how that's moving along.
Sure. Consumer takeaway across most of the categories we're in has been relatively flat all year. I think there's a lot of belief that some of that's been weather related. We continue to pick up some market share in the interior wood stains and finishes category.
We are exceeding our expectations, we're exceeding our customers' expectations. And in a couple regions, we're well ahead of the brand that we replaced. So that program is off to a great start. As it relates to pricing across all of our categories, as folks on the call know, we had some major line reviews and some new category pickups, all of which came with some price commitments that precluded us from pursuing appropriate price increases in certain categories until those line review wins or new category pickups were annualized.
That will happen this spring, and those negotiations are under way.
Great. Thanks very much for the color.
From Great Lakes Review, we have Jason Rodgers. Please go ahead.
Yes. Would you be able to quantify the price increase benefit you experienced in the quarter and the expectation going forward?
2%, about 2% on the quarter. And I think you'll see the same and a little bit growing in the coming quarters.
And I was interested in your progress with the ERP consolidation. And perhaps, you can discuss the time line for implementation there.
Yes. I don't think we'll have that completed until the end of our MAP to Growth program. So you're looking December of 2020 or even into the spring of 2021, so by the end of our '21 fiscal year. We're making solid, steady progress.
We chose the path we did because we did have four core systems that -- where we are consolidating to. The people are very comfortable with those. So in our construction products categories, SAP; in consumer, SAP; and then Microsoft D 365 in specialty; and Baan LN in our performance coatings group. So it's really slow progress.
I think the tailors will be smaller international operations by the end of December 2020 with what will represent somewhere in the neighborhood of 80% to 90% of our revenues.
All right. That's very helpful. And it might be too early to ask this, but wondered if you were getting any early feedback on the daily performance standards you're implementing at the plants.
Absolutely. We are -- aside from the plant closures that I talked about, we are instituting the operating improvement and continuous improvement program across our plants. In the second quarter, we had three, what we call, fit events, which are focused manufacturing events. We are instituting metrics that are consistent across our businesses.
We are measuring, month by month, the performance to those metrics. We will be in the next 12 of our largest plants in the current quarter. We are marching through our plants and we are measuring and we are seeing progress that makes us comfortable that we will meet or exceed the operating improvement targets that we laid out on November 28, both as it relates to consolidation and as it relates to plant floor improvement. The last thing I'd mention is that one of the real benefits of what we're doing is we have access to data on the procurement side and the plant side in more leadership hands.
It's more timely and more accurate than we've ever had, and that's incredibly helpful.
All right. If I could just squeeze in a numbers question. If you have an estimate for CAPEX for fiscal '19 as well as a targeted amount of share repurchase for fiscal '19.
So I think for fiscal '19, we'll be flat to slightly up over last year. In terms of share repurchases, I'd be hesitant to put out a target, but we certainly were a repurchase of our stock in the mid- to low $60s, and I would expect us to be a repurchase of our stock where it is today. And we are much committed to the return of capital targets that we put forth in November 28.

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