Company: ASTE
Filing Date: 2025-02-26
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0000792987-25-000013
Chunk: 60

Company: ASTEC INDUSTRIES INC
Filing Date: 2025-02-26
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1
Chunk 60
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 economic conditions and is particularly sensitive to the amount of public sector spending on infrastructure development, privately funded infrastructure development and changes in the prices of liquid asphalt, oil, natural gas and steel. In addition, many of our markets are highly competitive, and our products compete worldwide with similar products produced and sold by a number of other manufacturers and dealers.

Federal funding provides a significant portion of all highway, street, roadway and parking construction in the United States. As federal highway funding programs have consistently been in place for several decades, we believe that these funding programs provide stability in the purchasing decisions of our customers by allowing them to plan and execute longer-term projects with federal legislation in place over a multi-year period. The U.S. government enacted the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act ("IIJA") in November 2021 as a replacement for the prior program. The IIJA allocates $548 billion in government spending to new infrastructure over the five-year period concluding in 2026, with certain amounts specifically allocated to fund highway and bridge projects. We believe that multi-year highway programs (such as the IIJA) have a positive impact on the domestic road construction industry.

Significant portions of our revenues from the Infrastructure Solutions segment relate to the sale of equipment involved in the production, handling, recycling or application of asphalt mix and, to a lesser extent, concrete as surface choices for roads and highways. Liquid asphalt is a by-product of oil refining. An increase or decrease in the price of oil impacts the cost of asphalt, which is likely to alter demand for asphalt and therefore affect demand for certain of our products. While increasing oil prices may have a negative financial impact on many of our customers, our equipment can use a significant amount of reclaimed asphalt 

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pavement, thereby partially mitigating the effect of increased oil prices on the final cost of asphalt for the customer. We continue to develop products and initiatives to reduce the amount of oil and related products required to produce asphalt. While oil prices had declined from the peak prices in 2022, throughout 2024 they remained relatively stable. Price volatility continues to make it difficult to predict the costs of oil-based products used in road construction such as liquid asphalt and gasoline. Oil prices have routinely fluctuated in recent years and are expected to continue to fluctuate in the future. Based on the current macroeconomic environment, we anticipate that oil prices will experience moderate fluctuation throughout 2025.

Steel is a major component of our equipment. Throughout 2024, steel prices eased from the historically high levels