Good afternoon everyone, and thank you for participating in today's conference call to discuss Clarus Corporation's Financial Results for the Fourth Quarter and Full Year ended December 31, 2023. Joining us today are Clarus Corporation's Executive Chairman Warren Kanders; CFO, Mike Yates and the company's External Director of Investor Relations Matt Berkowitz. Following the remarks we'll open the call for your questions. Before we go further, I would like to turn the call over to Mr. Berkowitz as he reads the company safe harbor statement with any meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 that provides important cautions regarding forward-looking statements. Matt, please go ahead.

Thank you. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that during today's call, we'll be making several forward-looking statements, and we make these statements under the safe harbor provisions of this Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. These forward-looking statements reflect our best estimates and assumptions based on our understanding of information known to us today. These forward-looking statements are subject potential risks and uncertainties that could cause the actual results of operations or financial conditions of Clarus Corporation to differ materially from those expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. More information on potential factors that could affect the company's operating and financial results is included from time to time, in the company's public reports followed with the SEC. I'd like to remind everyone this call will be available for replay through March 21, 2024, starting at 7 pm. Eastern Time tonight. A webcast replay will also be available via the link provided in today's press release, as well as on the company's website at claruscorp.com. Now, I'd like to turn the call over to Clarus's Executive Chairman, Warren Kanders.

Good afternoon and thank you for joining Clarus' earnings call to review our results for the fourth quarter and the full year. I am joined today by our Chief Financial Officer, Mike Yates. I will start the call by addressing the overall business and corporate strategy. Mike will then provide specific comments on the performance of our segments and a more detailed financial review. While consumer demand remain constrained, adversely impacting our fourth quarter results, we have taken crucial steps to realign our overall platform and individual brands to position Clarus for long-term, profitable growth as a pure play, ESG-friendly outdoor business. Specifically, we completed the sale of our Precision Sports segment, streamlining the company to focus on our Outdoor and Adventure segments. As we have communicated in prior quarters, we are establishing new baselines for our brands. During this transition period, our leadership teams of both Outdoor and Adventure spent much of 2023 identifying areas for structural change, business process improvement and enhanced operational efficiencies. Incremental initiatives in the fourth quarter included taking sharp action on inventory and product categories that we view as non-core going forward while exiting unprofitable retail decisions from prior years. We entered 2024 with highly capable leadership teams committed to increasing profitability and unlocking new opportunities while continuing to build the foundation to scale and achieve operating leverage in future years. Before discussing those segments in greater depth, let me first address the monetization of our Precision Sports segment. Last week, we completed the $175 million sale, which represents a highly successful outcome for Clarus. I'd like to highlight that we invested approximately $132 million in this segment since 2017, and during our ownership period, Precision Sports returned nearly $94 million of cash to Clarus. Inclusive of the gross proceeds from the sale, we…

Thanks, Warren, and good afternoon, everyone. I'll start with our performance in the fourth quarter. But before I dive into our reported results, I'd like to share a summary of our performance inclusive of both continuing and discontinuing operations. As Warren mentioned, we announced the sale of Precision Sports on December 29, 2023, and completed and closed on the sale of the segment for approximately $175 million on February 29, 2024. Accordingly, under U.S. GAAP, the financial statements have been presented on continuing operations and discontinued operations presentation. The financials and results of the Precision Sports segment have been segregated and reported as assets and liabilities held for sale on the December 31, 2023 balance sheet, and the income statement has been reported under discontinued operations for all periods presented in today's earnings release and in our Form 10-K filed earlier today. In the fourth quarter, sales of Precision Sports were $18.3 million, which exceeded our expectation compared to the guidance we gave when reporting our third quarter 2023 results. Including Precision Sports, total fourth quarter sales were $94.8 million. This compares favorably to the $83 to $87 million we guided for the fourth quarter. For the full year sales, including the contributions of Precision Sports, we delivered sales of approximately $376 million, which again reflects our performance versus our guidance range of $364 to $368 million of revenue. From an adjusted EBITDA perspective, Precision Sport generated $26.8 million for the full year 2023 on sales of nearly $90 million, or 29.8% EBITDA margin. And $4.9 million of adjusted EBITDA in the fourth quarter are 26.7% on the $18.3 million of revenue. Beginning today, going forward, our U.S. GAAP results will be comprised of our Outdoor and Adventure segments and results will be referred to as continuing operations. Fourth quarter…

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Laurent Vasilescu with BNP Paribas. You may proceed.

Good afternoon. Thank you very much for taking my question. I wanted to ask about the Investor Day for next week. I don't know if you can share any highlights ahead of the meeting, but should we anticipate three to five-year targets next week?

Yes, that's a good question. So we'll be going through all the segments next week, and we'll be providing you with three-year outlooks for our businesses for each one of them.

Super helpful. And then on the TRED business, I don't think you quantified the size of it, whether it was the announcement in today's press release, just so that we can understand the organic revenues. How much did it contribute in the fourth quarter? I think its de minimis. But more importantly, how do we think about TRED and the context of FY '24 revenues of $270 million to $280 million?

I think you'll hear more about that from Matt Hayward next week. We're not going to break out specifically the various brands, but he'll take you through the automotive as a single segment.

Okay, fair enough.

And he can speak to -- and he'll be able to speak to kind of the margin complexion of the various businesses and how it all rolls up.

Okay, fair enough. And then maybe just on the guidance for the midpoint of EBITDA margin -- adjusted EBITDA margins of 6.2. I think that's roughly 600 basis point improvement over the last year. Is that driven by gross margin or SG&A efficiencies? And then second part of this multi-part question is the PFAS, the magnitude of PFAS. I recall, tell me if I'm wrong here, but I thought apparel was like 15% of Outdoor. So it seems like it's a small business, but if you can clarify just how big the apparel business as we think about this PFAS situation?

Sure, Laurent, we'll kind of work backwards. You're right, apparel is about 15% of our business. So it's historically been about $30 million to $40 million of Outdoor. As I mentioned, the risk here in '24 is both the inventory we have on hand and commitments we have to purchase inventory. It really comes down to our execution of how well we execute here selling and how well the market absorbs what essentially is the waterproofing product.

Right. I just want to say just before we talk to the first part of your question, so everybody has this PFAS issue right now. The technology for PFAS is a very good technology, but it's not -- these are superb products. And in some cases, in many cases actually the alternative approaches for waterproofing aren't as good. So we believe at this point, we believe that we will be able to move our inventory that we have the PFAS related. But given the fact that everybody's got the same in the market or has the same issue, there could be a supply of it. So we are being cautious about it. I mean, it would be, the numbers aren't large, but it's a minor risk. We do think actually prospectively, in a year's time, these products will be desired by consumers just because of how well they perform. Mike, do you want to answer the first question?

Yes, with regards to kind of guidance next year, most, all of that improvement that you referenced, Laurent, is all at the gross profit level, right? As you recall during 2023, there was so much promotional pricing in place, you know, margins were hit pretty significantly as a result of the promotional pricing. We see a recovery both from a price stability in '24 and from some margin enhancements at the gross profit level that both the Outdoor and more importantly, the Adventure business are focused on.

Very helpful. Thank you very much for taking my questions.

Sure.

Thank you. One moment for questions. Our next question goes from Matt Koranda with Roth MKM. You may proceed.

Hey, guys. I guess a few from me. Wanted to focus on the 2024 outlook you've provided. For the roughly $275 million in revenue, are you willing to just kind of roughly split out the assumptions between Outdoor and Adventure? It just looks like Adventure has been growing nicely even if you strip out TRED. It looks like some really healthy organic growth in the fourth quarter. I would assume we can probably maybe not pull forward that rate of growth, but we can probably pull forward some growth, which would suggest that Outdoor is declining. So, why the decline after kind of a down year in '23, are we shedding some unprofitable revenue that sounded like that was what you were alluding to, so, maybe just the split there and just a little bit more around the puts and takes of growth at Outdoor and Adventure?

Matt, thanks. Thanks. Good question. You pretty much nailed that though. Yes, I expect Adventure to grow. We're not going to give specific guidance today by segment. You'll see on Monday, we'll talk a little bit more in detail about where we see the business is going, but Adventure will grow, it should grow. In Outdoor, we'll actually shrink, but that's a direct result of some of the simplification and the SKU reduction and leaning into our best products. It's a journey that we're going through here in '24 to kind of turn the outdoor business around. Your view and your assumptions are spot on.

Yes Matt, Neil will take you through, from start to finish, what he found, how we're processing that, and what the future looks like. But one of the things I had him do was really to look at SKU rationalization. And you'll see that in quite a bit of detail. By virtue of that, we will shrink the revenues somewhat, but margins will improve quite considerably. And I think when he goes through the plan and you look at the margin progression over the next couple of years, I think it will all come into focus.

Okay, that's helpful. And then just, I guess the bigger broader question that I know we're going to get here is basically that the guidance has revenue down at the midpoint for year-over-year, but EBITDA up pretty healthily, and I guess that implies. We're sort of doing away with some unprofitable business and/or removing structural costs. I know you mentioned most of the improvements going to come from gross margin, but maybe just help us square all of that. And are there corporate costs that can come out now that Precision is no longer part of the portfolio here?

Yes. So we'll get into all of that on Monday to provide all the detail that you're going to need to put together the accurate models. The corporate overheads will be coming down during the course of the year. That's our expectation. Some of the things that we've had in place we're able to reset. The other thing that, as you know, we've given some guidance to what our legal expense has been for the 16(b) trading issue. And we have baked in to our guidance for this year the appropriate amount of legal expense to continue to pursue not just the 16(b) issue against HAP Trading, but also, as Mike said, we will be filing complaints against both Parallax and Caption. So that's built into the numbers. But now, obviously, what's not built into the numbers is obviously any interest income that we'll get on our cash balances, which is now already at a 5% plus rate.

Okay. That makes sense. And then, I guess the PFAS commentary, can we just nail down and maybe I missed it, but did you guys quantify the exposure there? Obviously, there's some exposure to inventory, which sounds minimal, but then the more interesting or maybe the thing I'm more interested in understanding is the vendor question that you mentioned. Maybe there are some commitments for minimum purchases and stuff like that, maybe just any way to think about that?

I think - go ahead, Mike.

I was going to say, we didn't quantify it. It all depends. It could be $3 million to $4 million or $5 million, but it depends how we execute that. That's why we're bringing it up, right? How the market absorbs this product. But as long as we work through this, as Warren alluded to, it's the waterproof product.

It's all great. It's all great products. We're just highlighting it, because it is conceivably a risk to our numbers. At this point, we don't think it's a material risk, but we're just highlighting it again because every other company in the world also has a PFAS issue. And so, depending upon how that all processes through, it may be a little more challenging for us to sell the product. But again, we believe that product. People may buy this now because they won't be able to get it in the future. And it is better. The waterproofing with PFAS is better than the other technologies that are out there that we have to use.

And Matt, the charge that we took -- we did take a charge in the fourth quarter related to PFAS. That was for commitments to take product that we said, no, we don't want any more of this, so we didn't want to compound our problem. So that's key to understand, I think, is what you're trying to get to. The inventory on hand or the inventory being built already is where the exposure is. And as long as we execute and move that inventory through our channels, as Warren said, we don't think it'll be material, but in the same breath, for some reason, we're not able to move that inventory. We wanted to be upfront with the situation, because we do believe we've adjusted our inventory to the appropriate level. And if we do have an issue in the '24, we didn't want to ask you asking questions or those three asking questions, but hey, I thought you wrote down your inventory to the right levels at the end of last year. So this is the one thing that's out there that could potentially be a risk, but as we said, we think it's a very good inventory. It's a very good product that should move. But and we did take a charge in the fourth quarter for the stuff that we were committed to buy that we haven't been bought yet. And that's we put a line in the sand from that perspective. So the risk is just inventory on hand and inventory that's being built that we have to take still.

Okay, no, that's clear. Just timing on potential risk there, it sounds like you got to sell it into retail by summer, roughly?

I would think so by the third quarter.

Max, most of it will go through the second quarter.

Okay, great guys. I'll take the rest up on. Thank you.

Thank you. One moment for questions. Our next question goes from Anna Glaessgen with B. Riley. You may proceed.

Hello, Anna.

Hi, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. I guess encouraging to hear that you're starting to see some stabilization at wholesale in North America. I guess would you characterize their inventory levels now as having been mostly appropriately normalized and to what extent just the 2024?

No.

Okay. And so I guess when would you expect that to normalize and what's being assumed in the 2024 guide?

Well, so I'll answer that. It's normalizing. It's normalizing. So, we're working on. Things are getting better, but we don't believe that our retail partners are fully stocked at a normalized level yet.

Got it. So I guess when would you expect sell-in and sell-through to become more balanced?

We're actually seeing sell-in improve on a year-over-year basis, week-over-week basis here in the first quarter compared to first quarter last year. And as Warren just mentioned, I think that's starting to take hold here in the first quarter, first half of the year, and hopefully that normalizes back half.

You'll hear from Neil, and I don't want to steal his thunder about the changes that he had made. But what I can say is that our people are on it now, and we are actively pointing out to our retail partners where they're short, and we're pushing them to fill out the assortments in their shelf. And that seems to be working. But everybody is cautious right now. So I think that's part of it. But our view is that we're looking forward to a great summer, and we think that the fill-in will accelerate. And we have the right inventory to achieve those goals. I think you'll hear about that.

Got it. And turning to some of the commentary around Promotionality and DTC specifically, is that a function of mix? I know that's skews more toward apparel and footwear than the wholesale exposure, or is that a function of closing some of those retail locations and just clearing that inventory or something else?

It's more in the market place for apparel [ph].

Mike? Mike, do we hear you?

Did you hear my answer? I'm sorry.

No, no, we lost you, Mike. Can you just say?

Oh, I'm sorry. I said it's the former, Anna. It's the apparel, the promotional pricing in the marketplace for apparel right now. All throughout Q3, Q4 was extremely strong, and that's really the main driver.

Got it. Looking forward to Monday. Thanks, guys.

Thanks.

Thanks.

Thank you. One moment for questions. Our next question goes from Mark Smith with Lake Street. You may proceed.

Hi, guys. First question, I just want to confirm

Hi, Mark.

. Hey. The EBITDA guidance that you guys gave for '24 here, that is stripping out and excluding all of your one-time items, including the legal expense expected and some of these lawsuits. Is that correct?

The EBITDA guidance, the $16million to $18 million full-year guidance does not include significant costs associated with the legal costs. That's what I said in my statements, in my prepare remarks.

Okay. And then it sounds like on Monday, you guys will walk through a little bit some of the corporate overhead as well as kind of total SG&A outlook. But does it seem like in the near term here, this kind of $30 million range on total SG&A seems like about the right range here in the near term?

Yes. That's a little high, but it's a little less than that, but you're in the ballpark.

Okay. And then the last question for me was just, if you can call out, I haven't seen it yet, or maybe I missed it, impact from FX and currency here in the quarter and then kind of your outlook, if you will, for '24?

Well, the comments I made in the prepare remarks at FX was completely immaterial during the quarter, during the fourth quarter. Our forecast for this year is based on exchange rates here from a few weeks ago. So it's not significantly different than what kind of the business has been functioning at throughout the third and fourth quarter of this past year.

Excellent. Thank you.

Thank you. I would not like to turn the call back over to Mike Yates for any closing remarks.

Thank you. Thank you for your interest in Clarus, and we appreciate everyone's questions. And we look forward to spending more time with you next week in New York City for our Investor Day, where both Warren and I are excited to have Matt Hayward speak in depth about the Adventure business and Neil Fiske to spend equal time walking through his plans and vision for the Outdoor business. So we thank you for your continued interest in Clarus and look forward to speaking and seeing many of you next week in New York.

Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.

Thank you.