Earnings Labs

BRP Inc. (DOO)

Q1 2021 Earnings Call· Thu, May 28, 2020

$53.47

-2.78%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning ladies and gentlemen and welcome to BRP Inc. FY21 First Quarter conference call. I would now like to turn the meeting over to Mr. Philippe Deschênes. Go ahead. Mr. Deschênes. Philippe Deschênes: Thank you Julie. Good morning and welcome to BRP’s conference call for the first quarter of fiscal year ’21. Joining me this morning are José Boisjoli, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Sébastien Martel, Chief Financial Officer. Before we move to the prepared remarks, I would like to remind everyone that certain forward-looking statements will be made during the call that are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties. I invite you to read BRP’s MD&A for a listing of this. Also during the call, reference will be made to supporting slides, and you can find the presentation on our website at brp.com. With that, I’ll turn the call over to José. José Boisjoli: Thank you Philippe. Good morning everyone and thank you for joining us. About two months ago when we presented our year-end results, we were on a roll. We had incredible momentum with every product line worldwide and were anticipating another great year ahead. Like the rest of the world, we were faced with the sudden impact of the COVID-19 crisis which brought rapid changes that significantly disrupted our business and operations and forced us to quickly adapt our plans. It began when our dealers had to close their business as the situation worsened in China in January. Closures followed in Western Europe in February where local governments enforced severe containment measures. As you can see on this slide, retail in North America had been strong until mid-March, was negative for one month, and once dealers started to reopen retail has been strong since mid-April. Our manufacturing has reopened or is in…

Operator

Operator

[Operator instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Steve Arthur with RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Steve Arthur

Analyst

Yes, thank you very much. I’m wondering first if we could just get a little bit more color on what you’re seeing with some of the retail trends into May. In the U.S., it sounds like a strong recovery started in late April and continuing, but just any comments on what you’re seeing now with dealer traffic levels, the restrictions that they’re working through and such in the U.S., and also the patterns that you’re seeing emerging now in Canada and Europe. José Boisjoli: Good morning Steve. Obviously for competitive reasons, I will not give you all the data that we see, but I will give you some. First, our dealers right now, about 90%of our dealers are reopened in the United States. There are still some states in the east and in California that are closed, but 90%-plus are open. In Europe, where everything was closed for a period of time in Germany, France, Italy and Spain, about 80% of our dealers are operational. I won’t give you the detail by product line or by country, but since the beginning of May we are up about 35% worldwide between all product lines and all countries. We don’t know how long this will continue, but that’s definitely a trend that is positive for our type of product.

Steve Arthur

Analyst

I guess just squaring that, if retail into May is that strong versus an outlook for down 40% in Q2, is the difference there just a lag in terms of production versus retail, since production’s been down for six weeks? José Boisjoli: Yes, for sure. That’s for sure.

Steve Arthur

Analyst

Okay. Secondly just in terms of the production ramp, I guess at your primary facilities in Mexico, it sounds like they’re ramping up now. Any comments on the level of utilization you’re at now and how you see that ramping? [Indiscernible] whether it’s local restrictions or supply chain, or just matching demand? José Boisjoli: In Mexico the government gave us the okay to restart on June 1, which is next week, and we’ve been working on the ramping up the production for the last two weeks. We’re allowed to let our people in and prepare for the ramping up. That’s what we’re doing right now, because you don’t just flip the switch on us, but we will be fully operational in our three factories starting next week. Obviously we expect to have some difficulty here and there with suppliers because we’re managing about 550 key suppliers around the world, and I think we will go through some difficulty overall for the rest of the year. But as we speak right now, everything looks good that everything will be operational next week.

Steve Arthur

Analyst

Okay, and just a final one - thank you - final one on operating costs and overhead savings. It sounds like you’ve been pretty aggressive with that, looking at a $450 million reduction. Presumably as things start to ramp back up, some of those costs come back online, but any sense of how much of those savings might be permanent or structural in the business now and therefore support longer term margins? Sébastien Martel: Yes, good morning Steve. What we’ve communicated is we have plans in place to reduce our expenses up to $450 million versus what we were planning initially for fiscal year ’21. Obviously we’ll remain agile and adapt our plans. We’ll see how things are trending. One thing I can tell you is with the discontinuation of the outboard engine business, that’s a reduction of about $80 million of overhead, so that’s going to be recurring year-over-year. As things evolve, we’ll be nimble as we’ve been in the past, in the last few months, and we’ll balance the short term financial priorities with our long term aspirations, so the good news is we have flexibility to adjust accordingly.

Steve Arthur

Analyst

Okay, thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Craig Kennison with Baird. Please go ahead.

Craig Kennison

Analyst · Baird. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. Seb, I think you just mentioned some metrics regarding the engine business that you’re exiting. Could you share with us the annualized revenue and margin profile of that business, so we can try to exclude it from future results? Sébastien Martel: Actually on the OE business, there’s actually two components - there’s the unit business and there’s the parts business. The parts business is a business that we’re going to be continuing. Obviously we’re going to be servicing our dealers for warranty but also for our consumers that are no longer under warranty but need service, so that business is going to keep going on. As José mentioned, the unit business, so the actual engines, was a business that we were subscale. We’ve been losing market share over the last few years, and from a margin perspective it’s a business that was almost breakeven. From a profitability, it was a business that was actually at a loss position, and that’s why we took the decision to discontinue it. When you look at OE in terms of the whole portfolio of our marine segment, the engine business is about 45% of total revenues, so if you carve that part out, it should give you a good appreciation of what the remaining business is.

Craig Kennison

Analyst · Baird. Please go ahead.

What would you estimate your market share to have been in that? Sébastien Martel: Oh, in the mid single digits.

Craig Kennison

Analyst · Baird. Please go ahead.

Thanks. Then going back to the comment on May retail trends, which appeared to be really strong, is there any way to look at that data and deconstruct it for whether you’re seeing an influx of first-time buyers or there may be some kind of catch-up demand from earlier periods where dealers were closed? Just trying to get a real feel for the extent to which this outdoor theme is really capturing new eyeballs. José Boisjoli: Yes, we’ve done some surveys about the customers who purchased our units in the last month, and we see more new entrants than typical. Typically, we have about 20% of our sales is to new entrants. Fro our survey, and again it’s a small sample, but we are more around 30% right now, and there is definitely a trend there where some people who were not considering our type of product, we see them entering into our type of industry and this is very positive. There is obviously a lot of money in the system, a lot of governments investing in the economy, and with again the staycation and the social distancing, cancelling vacations and travel restrictions, there is definitely hype there. This phenomenon is there, we can see it, we can feel it. On the other hand, we cannot ignore that the unemployment rate is going up, consumer confidence is low, and housing starts have reduced. All of this at one point will catch up, and we feel pretty confident for the next few months; but how this will play on the second half of the year, that’s a bit difficult to predict.

Craig Kennison

Analyst · Baird. Please go ahead.

Great, thank you.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Gerrick Johnson with BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Gerrick Johnson

Analyst · BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning guys. A couple questions. First, you’re talking about lower demand in the rest of the world. Why aren’t folks elsewhere looking for outdoor recreational products just like we’re doing here in the U.S. and North America? Is this just a North American phenomenon? José Boisjoli: I think there is some timing, like LatAm right now is down, but the COVID hit Brazil and Mexico later than in Europe and in Canada and the U.S. I think it’s just a question of timing. Those countries were [indiscernible] later than North America--than Canada-U.S., sorry, and now they are in the middle of it, and I think it’s only a question of timing. I think the phenomenon is exactly the same.

Gerrick Johnson

Analyst · BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Yes, but aren’t your markets bigger in Europe and Asia compared to Latin America? What about those markets? Sébastien Martel: Yes, what we’re seeing is that the confinement measures were more--I don’t want to say drastic or severe, and so there is a bigger aftershock event there for the consumers. We’re not seeing the pick-up that we’re seeing in the U.S. in terms of retail.

Gerrick Johnson

Analyst · BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Okay. Going back, say, two years ago, would you have acquired these boat brands if you did not have the Evinrude business? José Boisjoli: Absolutely. I mean, you saw the few presentations we’ve done about the boat strategy, but BRP is a diversified company and we are--I think this is one of our strengths, and we needed to diversify outside power sport. Marine is a good complement to what we do, and you see how many customers buy ATVs, Sea-Doo or snowmobiles are buying boats, and we see a big opportunity in the boat industry. Obviously our thinking is about creating new experiences by pushing innovation and technology, and that’s what we’re doing right now by redesigning the complete line-up of Alumacraft, Manitou and Telwater boats. For us, it’s a bit sad that we discontinued the production of the Evinrude, the outboard engine, but we will continue to invest in new technology and the new boats because we believe that our long-term strategy makes a ton of sense.

Gerrick Johnson

Analyst · BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Okay, so Project Ghost was not reliant on you having the outboard engine technology? José Boisjoli: Project Ghost, and I won’t tell you the details about it, but Project Ghost and Project M are ongoing right now.

Gerrick Johnson

Analyst · BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Okay. I’ll leave it at that. Thank you very much. José Boisjoli: Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Robin Farley with UBS. Please go ahead.

Robin Farley

Analyst · UBS. Please go ahead.

Great, thank you. I have two questions. First on the off-road business, you mentioned--well, I guess you didn’t give specific product line, but you mentioned sales up very strongly so far in May, and we’re assuming a lot of that in off-road. But with the restart just taking place next week, how long--or do you think that retail from here going forward is going to be lower than it would have been; in other words, is there not enough product that it’s going to impact your retail negatively in the next months, and then is it by six weeks from now that you feel like you would have enough inventory in the system to be able to meet the level of retail demand, or how long will that period last? Thanks. Sébastien Martel: Well, as you saw, Robin, at the end of Q1 our inventory was up in the network, about 7%, and part of that was driven by side-by-side, so year-over-year side-by-side at the end of Q1 was up mid-teens, and so we had a good level of inventory. Obviously the retail is very strong, but we had anticipated strong retail when we started the quarter and we had, I guess, filled the network with some inventory. It might be tight for a few models in some regions, but the retail in May continues to be strong and, as José mentioned, next week we’re going to be in full production and we’re going to be starting shipping units to dealers again. Obviously we’ll be shipping the units that are in high demand, so we believe that we’ll be able to meet consumer demand and continue driving strong retail in the second quarter as well.

Robin Farley

Analyst · UBS. Please go ahead.

Okay, I guess just looking at side-by-side inventories at mid-teens, but in theory retail is pacing--seems to be pacing up 40% still in the month of May, is that--and I know those are on different bases, right? The retail pace and the inventory base are different numbers, so do you have enough inventory? Is the mid-teens increase at the end of Q1 enough to support that kind of retail through Q2? Sébastien Martel: It’s enough to support strong retail. We’re going to finish Q2 probably with inventory down year-over-year. As I said in my prepared remarks, we might run out of certain models in certain regions, so unfortunately some consumers may not necessarily have the choice of color they wanted, but we believe that there is going to be enough inventory in the network to meet the overall demand and as we rebuild our--as we restart production and refill the pipeline, we believe that we’ll be able to sustain that momentum. So are we losing retail maybe in the second quarter? Yes, but we believe that with our production ramp-up, we’ll be able to catch up pretty quickly.

Robin Farley

Analyst · UBS. Please go ahead.

Okay, great. That’s very helpful, thank you. Then just another question, we had felt that the outboard engine business was operating at a loss, and you kind of confirmed that. Can you quantify what addition to EPS you get just from maybe taking that loss out? How much does that add to the bottom line? Sébastien Martel: Yes, good question. When I look back to fiscal year ’20 and I carve out the OE business, I’m looking at a $0.60 to $0.70 negative EPS impact.

Robin Farley

Analyst · UBS. Please go ahead.

Great, very helpful. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Mark Petrie with CIBC. Please go ahead.

Mark Petrie

Analyst · CIBC. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning. I just wanted to follow up on two things. First, with operational constraints and social distancing on manufacturing, does that ultimately impact your capacity or throughput, or do you expect to be able to ramp to previous levels? José Boisjoli: Good morning Mark. No. I mean, obviously we were lucky enough to restart engineering in Canada about five weeks ago because we needed to plan the transition from model year ’20 to ’21, and we could not lose the momentum we had. We developed a lot of good measures to make sure that our employees are safe, and right now we are implementing these protocols everywhere where have factories and we believe that in terms of assembly and all the manufacturing operations, we will be as efficient as before. That being said, as Sébastien explained, we need to rebuild the inventory, our own inventory to be efficient in shipping. You need a certain level of product, and we are lucky we have many product lines. Right now when we ship, we have a mix of watercraft, ATV, side-by-side. We’re optimizing the load for key dealers in certain areas. This will take time to rebuild, then in the factories our efficiency will go back quickly. I think it will take a few months before we are overall as efficient as before.

Mark Petrie

Analyst · CIBC. Please go ahead.

Okay, thanks. Then wondering if you can just give any other comments around the type of demand that you’re seeing at the dealer level in terms of price points and the type of product, and then maybe at least within side-by-side, rec sport utility, how the demand profile or the sales performance varies by those subcategories. José Boisjoli: I would say it’s all over. The demand is strong for every product line. It was a bit difficult for three-wheeled because we had to stop all our different activities to continue our momentum. Even today you cannot have a license or you cannot plate your vehicle because license offices are still closed. But except for three wheel, and now it’s ramping up, I think we will recover the year, but the demand for all the product lines is strong.

Mark Petrie

Analyst · CIBC. Please go ahead.

Okay, and then just a last one. Seb, you had mentioned the positive working capital flow-through for Q1. Just wondering about expectations of the balance of the year as production ramps up and inventory [indiscernible]. Sébastien Martel: Yes, I’m expecting Q2 to be a consumer of cash on the working capital side as we pay off suppliers, we rebuild inventory, so that’s going to be a negative probably in the range of $100 million. Then for the back half of the year, I’m expecting things to stabilize as they were in prior years and prior quarters.

Mark Petrie

Analyst · CIBC. Please go ahead.

Okay, thanks a lot, guys. All the best. José Boisjoli: Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Tim Conder with Wells Fargo Securities. Please go ahead.

Tim Conder

Analyst · Wells Fargo Securities. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning gentlemen. A couple of items. Just wanted to clarify and confirm a prior question here. Seb, you said that for fiscal ’20 the impact of the engine business that you’re discontinuing was about $0.60 to $0.70 in earnings? Sébastien Martel: Yes.

Tim Conder

Analyst · Wells Fargo Securities. Please go ahead.

Okay. Then gentlemen, can you talk about the potential incremental investments you may be making in ecommerce, either at the company level or with the dealer network that have maybe, as you’ve said you’re re-examined things through coming through the trough of COVID and now on, hopefully, the continued positive slope of recovery, to say we maybe need some more additional investments on ecomm here, both again at the company level or at the dealer level? Sébastien Martel: Yes Tim, it’s more rebalancing our portfolio of IT investments. Obviously we believe that there might be a continued phenomenon of people working from home, of people preferring to--obviously everyone has seen the trend of people shopping online, so how do we make sure that we have the best tools for consumers or dealers, so it’s shifting of money but it’s not a huge capital investment that we’re talking about. It’s more reprioritized.

Tim Conder

Analyst · Wells Fargo Securities. Please go ahead.

Okay. Then José or Seb, whoever wants to take this, the pricing and promotions, is there any way to bucket what you saw in q1 and are expecting here over the balance of the fiscal year into what may be, let’s call it normal promotions ex-COVID, and then COVID-related, which you’re having to because of COVID? It’s maybe a difficult question, but any way to sort of parse that? José Boisjoli: Yes, it’s a difficult question. Let’s say that promotion was quite aggressive on non-current, like it’s always do. Off-road, obviously everyone wants to benefit of the situation. On current, I would say it’s about similar to what we see from some of our competitors over the last few years. I would say no big change before and after COVID - non-current very aggressive, and some although on the current. We were aggressive on a retail promotion for consumers with a very good financing offer - zero interest for five years, and that definitely helped the retail because two or three weeks ago, we didn’t know how this would play. Overall, off-road, watercraft, I would qualify it as normal and three-wheel as normal. Going forward, it’s very difficult to predict. I think right now, if OEM are chasing capacity and want to make sure to ramp up, then most likely people will be maybe a bit less aggressive on programs, but very difficult to predict what will happen in the coming months.

Tim Conder

Analyst · Wells Fargo Securities. Please go ahead.

Okay, helpful. Then two last questions. One, do you see any furtherance of a working relationship with Brunswick outside of the supply agreement on the marine side? Then lastly, your thoughts on the potential of when you could potentially return to fiscal ’20 levels in terms of revenue or--I would think profitability may have a quicker ramp given at least the $80 million of structural savings on the engine side that you’ve eliminated? José Boisjoli: On your question about Brunswick, Brunswick obviously is the perfect partner for us because they don’t compete in power sports, then it’s a very good complement. We obviously are happy with the Evinrude--the outboard supply agreement that we have with them, and we could in the future exchange technology, but we’ll see how this will play in the future. Sébastien Martel: On your question, obviously I’d love to give you an answer this morning, to you and the rest of the organization at BRP. There is obviously, as you can appreciate, there’s still a lot of uncertainty how things will pan out, how the economy will react to massive job losses, and so today I’d say it’s much too early to call when we believe things will come back to normal. The good news is, again, at BRP I believe we are in a much better position than we were back in ’08 and ’09 with the Great Recession. You guys understand well the leadership position we have in all our brands, and we believe that that momentum is going to continue, as we are seeing it continuing when things come back to normal. So do we believe we’ll come back to fiscal ’20 levels someday? Absolutely, but today it’s too early to give any outlook.

Tim Conder

Analyst · Wells Fargo Securities. Please go ahead.

Thank you, gentlemen.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Benoit Poirier with Desjardins. Please go ahead.

Benoit Poirier

Analyst · Desjardins. Please go ahead.

Yes, thank you very much, and good morning gentlemen. With respect to the engine contribution in fiscal ’20, was this $0.60, $0.70 on EPS was positive or negative contribution? Sébastien Martel: It was negative, Benoit.

Benoit Poirier

Analyst · Desjardins. Please go ahead.

Okay, perfect. Now with respect to the Ghost project and the Project M, I understand the timing is unchanged and everything, but could you talk more specifically about who will be responsible of providing the engine and whether there is exclusivity or is Mercury--does Mercury need to build the new engine for this particular project? José Boisjoli: Good morning Benoit. Obviously, Benoit, for competitive reasons I cannot go into detail of your question. The only thing I can say is Project Ghost and Project M are ongoing and we are confident about our reoriented strategy. Sébastien Martel: But it will be an internally sourced technology, Benoit.

Benoit Poirier

Analyst · Desjardins. Please go ahead.

That will be manufactured by Mercury, or manufactured-- Sébastien Martel: We won’t go into the detail, but it’s--again, our partnership with Brunswick is for the supply of traditional outboard engine, and our plans for Ghost do not change and our plans for Project M do not change as well.

Benoit Poirier

Analyst · Desjardins. Please go ahead.

Okay, perfect. That’s great color. José, you mentioned that capex will come back and will be reduced obviously, and spending will be made on key projects. Would you maybe share some color on what you would consider as key projects right now, and maybe if you could share some discussions you had with the dealers following the announcement around the electric bikes last fall? Thanks. José Boisjoli: Benoit, we had before COVID an incredible momentum with all our product lines around the world, and in those reductions that we made, we did make sure to protect as much as we can our five-year line-ups for all product lines. There is some adjustment here and there, but globally we are very confident with what we’re planning for the years to come. A lot of capex was related to plant maintenance, equipment turnover that we will slow down for a period of time, but we protected our five-year line-up. Electrification is ongoing, and again we didn’t disclose when those products will be offered, but we’ll see how all of this will play and how fast we can come back to the level that we had before the COVID-19.

Benoit Poirier

Analyst · Desjardins. Please go ahead.

Okay, perfect. Now when we look at your kids’ line-up, could you let us know how these product lines are doing these days, and how would you compare your kids’ product line-up against your peers’ right now in terms of product offerings? José Boisjoli: You’re talking which product line, Benoit?

Benoit Poirier

Analyst · Desjardins. Please go ahead.

I’m talking about the kids’ line-up, so the DS9E, the DS7E, 225 I believe, so you have on the ATV side. You don’t have your snowmobile for kids anymore, but just wondering whether you’ve seen more momentum around the kids’ products and whether you have the good offering as opposed to peers. José Boisjoli: I think we have a competitive line-up in every segment that we are competing, and we decide to compete and overall--I mean, we didn’t see any drastic change with what happened in the last month and a half for those product lines. Like I said before, right now the surge in demand is touching every single product line, every price point, low and high end, and we didn’t see a surge on the youth products, products for youth people.

Benoit Poirier

Analyst · Desjardins. Please go ahead.

Okay, perfect. Last one for me-- Sébastien Martel: Ben, we need to move to the next caller on the line. We’re running--

Benoit Poirier

Analyst · Desjardins. Please go ahead.

Okay, perfect. Thanks. Sébastien Martel: Sorry, thanks.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Greg Badishkanian with Wolfe Research. Please go ahead.

Fred Wightman

Analyst · Wolfe Research. Please go ahead.

Hey guys, good morning. It’s Fred Wightman on for Greg. Just one quick one from us. If we look at the share gains in side-by-sides in the quarter, that was a big acceleration versus what we’ve seen over the past few quarters, so how should we think about that gap going forward, and what is driving that? Is it really just product availability in the channel, or is it something else? José Boisjoli: Again, we have--I believe we have very good competitive products and the Can-Am brand is more and more known. The [indiscernible] is improving. People like the quality of our product and how they ride, and I think it’s all those things that are happening. Again, good product, dealers making good money, better margin with our product line, and it’s a combination of all this that created the momentum.

Fred Wightman

Analyst · Wolfe Research. Please go ahead.

Great, thanks.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Derek Dley with Canaccord. Please go ahead.

Derek Dley

Analyst · Canaccord. Please go ahead.

Yes, hi guys. Just a quick one from me. In terms of your dealer network, have any of them decided not to reopen due to the financial distress that was caused to some of them over the past month or two? Sébastien Martel: We’ve been very lucky. None of our dealers have defaulted on their obligations with either their financial institution or the floor plan partners. Obviously the dealers came into this in a very good financial position because obviously our business with them has been growing and they’ve made a lot of money with us. We’ve been proactive as well early in the COVID-19 by supporting our dealers with extended floor plans, working with TCF also to provide extended payment terms on interest that may be due, so they deferred payments by over 90 days. Now with the retail that we’re seeing, obviously that’s providing good cash flows for the dealers, so as of now, we’re not seeing anything concerning on the dealer health side.

Derek Dley

Analyst · Canaccord. Please go ahead.

And is that more specific to you guys, the fact that you had zero of them have to close, or what did you see overall in the industry? Sébastien Martel: Well, obviously we know how our dealers are performing, and how other dealers, it’s not--I mean, it’s not a business that we’re looking at closely, but obviously we work hand-in-hand with TCF, they’re very proactive in assessing dealer health, and overall I think, as I said, given that the dealers have made money with us and maybe had a period of two to three weeks where things were tougher, but things restarted pretty quickly. I’m sure that brought a breath of fresh air to a lot of our dealers.

Derek Dley

Analyst · Canaccord. Please go ahead.

Okay, thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Jamie Katz with Morningstar. Please go ahead.

Jamie Katz

Analyst · Morningstar. Please go ahead.

Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. I’m curious, piggybacking on Tim’s question, since we don’t know when we get back to 2020 levels, are you guys basically tabling the 2025 plan for now and rethinking it, or do you think that there’s enough road ahead of us that we can--that you guys can get back on track to achieve those goals? Thanks. José Boisjoli: No, we don’t know. We are--the pillars of the M25 plan are still there, but before the situation stabilized and the situation--we have a better view on when we’ll go back to what we call new normal, we don’t want to commit on anything. At the right time, we’ll definitely, if there is a need to, realign M25, but for the time being, it’s too early. Sébastien Martel: And Jamie, when we announced M25 last fall, we did get the question, what happens if there’s a recession, and what we said then and it’s still relevant today is, well, if a recession happens, maybe it’s going to slow us down by a year or a year and a half, but the ultimate goal does not change. Today that’s still our position.

Jamie Katz

Analyst · Morningstar. Please go ahead.

Okay. Then at the end of the MD&A discussion, there was some commentary that internal controls for financial reporting were ineffective, and it looks like there no material restatements surrounding that. I’m curious what the timeline for the mitigation of that is, just to sort of get my head around what the timeline of maybe anything down the road that might come up with a restatement. Sébastien Martel: When we listed in the U.S. on NASDAQ, we were obligated to comply with the SOX requirements over the control environment. Related to financial reporting, obviously we’ve always had clean audit opinions, as you have seen, so the quality of our numbers still remains and José and I sign them every quarter and we stand behind them. Related to the material weakness that was noted, is around access controls around our systems. Obviously we have compensating controls, but the nature of the preventative controls need to be strengthened and the timeline to do this is over the next two years. Our objective is for fiscal year ’22 to be fully compliant.

Jamie Katz

Analyst · Morningstar. Please go ahead.

Thank you, that’s very helpful.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Cameron Doerksen with National Bank Financial. Please go ahead.

Cameron Doerksen

Analyst · National Bank Financial. Please go ahead.

Thanks, good morning. Just really one question from me, just with regard to gross margins, when you talked about in Q1 a 350 basis point impact from COVID-19 related stuff. How should we think about gross margins in Q2 with revenue down 40%? I guess maybe also if you could talk a little bit about what the second half of your gross margin profile might look like on lower revenue, but on the offset you’ve got the outboard engine that’s not going to be there. Just some commentary about gross margins in Q2 but also the second half of the year. Sébastien Martel: Yes, I’m expecting gross margins to be impacted quite significantly in the second quarter. Obviously our plants are going to be closed for a month out of the full quarter. Inventory ramp-up should help a bit on the margin side, but obviously with the significant reduction in volume, margins will be hit. When I look at the full year, and I’ll go through probably the EBITDA margin, again if we hit those revenue numbers that I talked about, I’m expecting my EBITDA margin probably to be in the range of what we reported back in fiscal year ’18, fiscal year ’19. Those would be the numbers that I’d expect to meet for the full year, Cameron.

Cameron Doerksen

Analyst · National Bank Financial. Please go ahead.

Okay, that’s very helpful. I’ll leave it there. Thanks very much.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Brian Morrison with TD Securities. Please go ahead.

Brian Morrison

Analyst · TD Securities. Please go ahead.

Thanks very much. I’ll keep this quick. Appreciate your comments on working capital. Just in terms of free cash flow for the year, based on what you’ve given us, Seb, is it fair to say that you’re looking at breakeven to slightly positive? Sébastien Martel: Well, free cash flow, we’ll call it free cash flow from operations, Brian, yes - breakeven, but obviously with the discontinuation of outboard engines, there will be a cash outflow coming with that. The expected cash outflow is about $60 million to $85 million that we reported in our financials, and so that’s going to be a headwind to cash generation, so I’m expecting to burn cash this year with the closure of outboard engines.

Brian Morrison

Analyst · TD Securities. Please go ahead.

Okay, thank you. Then just market share with the growth that you’ve had in side-by-side vehicles, specifically utility, can you update us where you think you are? José Boisjoli: Can you repeat your question?

Brian Morrison

Analyst · TD Securities. Please go ahead.

Sorry, José. Just in terms of your market share with side-by-side vehicles, what you think your current market share is with the growth that you’ve had, and specifically in the utility side? José Boisjoli: Obviously for competitive reasons, we don’t disclose the details, but we are around 20% market share globally.

Brian Morrison

Analyst · TD Securities. Please go ahead.

Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Brandon Rollé with Northcoast Research. Please go ahead. Brandon Rollé: Good morning. Thank you for squeezing me in here. Our conversations with dealers, actually Memorial Day weekend, indicated a lack of inventory in four to six seat units for side-by-sides, just from a surge of demand of families wanting to get into ORVs. Could you talk about the timing for production ramp-up for those units and any risk you see from maybe families going to alternative, maybe going to boats or RVs, or going away from ORVs because of the lack of inventory of those larger seated units? Thank you. José Boisjoli: Yes, like Sébastien explained, for sure there is some customers who will show up at the dealership and we will not have the exact model that he is looking for. He will have the blue or the red that he’s looking for, no doubt about that. If the customer wants exactly what needs, he might be unhappy. That being said, we try to encourage transfer of inventory between dealerships, and again like we said, we’re ramping up production, we’re restarting production this coming week, and we will try to refill the pipeline as fast as we can. But again, we know that in some areas, some models will be out of some product. Brandon Rollé: Okay, thank you. There was some fears that one of your competitors was ramping up production maybe a week or two before you and they have product in the field. Do you see that as a concern at all? José Boisjoli: For sure. I mean, like Sébastien presented, our inventory level at the end of the quarter as higher than last year, then we feel that we have sufficient inventory and we believe that for restarting the factories, we are all about the same timing because we’re all waiting for government to give us the green light to restart. That may be a week apart, but overall we are in the same situation. Brandon Rollé: Okay, thank you for that color.

Operator

Operator

There are no further questions at this time. I will turn the call back to the presenters for closing remarks. José Boisjoli: Great, thank you, and thanks everyone for joining us this morning. We look forward to speaking with you again for our Q2 call on August 27. Thanks again and have a good day.

Operator

Operator

This concludes today’s conference call. You may now disconnect.