Martin Marietta books a record $2.37 billion quarter, but profit per ton of stone falls 17%

Martin Marietta Materials, the biggest US supplier of crushed stone, sand and gravel to road and building crews, reported record third-quarter revenue of $2.37 billion, up from $1.85 billion a year earlier, according to its earnings release filed with the SEC. The headline is real. What sits under it is a company that grew by buying, while the price and profit on each ton it digs out went the other way.

The number behind the number: profit per ton

Aggregates, Q3	2026	2025	Change
Shipments (million tons)	67.1	57.9	+15.9%
Average selling price per ton	$22.41	$23.24	-3.6%
Gross profit per ton	$7.62	$9.17	-17%

Source: Martin Marietta Q3 2026 release. Continuing operations.

Shipments rose almost 16%, but the company says that was acquisitions "more than" offsetting a modest organic decline. The average price per ton fell because the stone it bought sells for less than its own average. On a like-for-like basis the price rose 1.0%, or 2.7% once the mix is adjusted. So the 3.6% drop is mostly a mix effect, not customers paying less for the same rock.

Costs are the harder part. Our arithmetic from the release: price minus gross profit per ton implies cost per ton of about $14.79 this year against $14.07 last year, roughly 5% higher. The company blames higher depreciation and amortization and energy costs. Diesel is the obvious one: our recent piece on diesel near $6.35 shows what that does to anything hauled by truck or run by loader. Adjusted earnings per share fell 11% to $5.47 from $6.12, and diluted earnings per share fell 34% to $3.94 from $5.97.

The guidance: more revenue, lower price

Martin Marietta set full-year revenue guidance at $7.75 billion to $7.85 billion (midpoint $7.80 billion) and adjusted EBITDA at $2.45 billion to $2.50 billion. For aggregates it now expects volume up 12.5% to 13.5% and price per ton down 2% to 3% against 2025's $23.30. The company says acquisitions will "more than offset" softer demand in its older operations.

It closed a combination with Lhoist North America, a lime and limestone producer, on August 21 for $12.9 billion: $7.0 billion in cash and about $5.9 billion in stock. Since closing, that business contributed $216 million of revenue. To fund the cash piece the company took a $1.5 billion term loan and issued $5.5 billion of notes. At September 30 it held $140 million of unrestricted cash and $1.4 billion of unused credit capacity. Nine-month operating cash flow was $896 million versus $1.16 billion a year ago, though $250 million of that gap was a cash tax payment tied to an earlier asset exchange.

What management says about demand

CEO Ward Nye said he expects "continued strength in infrastructure and data centers with softer interest rate-sensitive private construction markets." That split matches the government data. As our look at September construction spending showed, home improvement spending fell about 18% from a year ago while office and power construction rose. The company also expects January 1 price increases to deliver mid- to high-single-digit mix-adjusted pricing growth in 2027.

Who feels this

• Paving and site-work contractors: a 5% increase on a $22 ton is about $1.10. A crew that moves 50,000 tons of base and fill a year would add roughly $55,000 on that arithmetic. That is illustrative: contractors pay delivered prices that include hauling, which varies by quarry distance. The point is that quotes written now should carry a clause for January.
• Ready-mix and block producers: stone is a large input. With diesel and energy already up, an aggregates increase lands on the same margin line.
• Homebuilders and remodelers: the producer itself calls rate-sensitive private construction soft, so the pricing pressure lands on a part of the market that is also short of volume.

Our own listings show how fragmented the buyer side is:

141,913 independent construction and contractors are listed on CheckThisBiz, a directory of 7,704,724 independent US businesses, including 12,896 in TX, 12,642 in CA, 11,414 in FL. Chains and franchises are excluded from that count, so these are the owner-operated businesses that actually apply for funding.

Few of them read supplier earnings releases, which is why this one is worth a look before the January price letters arrive.

The stock

Martin Marietta traded at $546.52 at 11:26 a.m. ET, up 0.5%, according to Nasdaq data. Its 52-week range is $464.92 to $710.97. Our own chart shows it about 22.7% below its February 10 peak.

Sources: Martin Marietta Materials Q3 2026 earnings release (SEC EDGAR); Nasdaq quote data; Census Bureau. Per-ton cost and delivered-price illustrations are Chronicle arithmetic. This is market information, not investment advice.