Earnings Labs

Generac Holdings Inc. (GNRC)

Q3 2016 Earnings Call· Wed, Oct 26, 2016

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Generac Holdings Third Quarter 2016 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will have a question-and-answer session and instructions will be given at that time. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to your host for today's conference, Mr. Mike Harris, the Vice President, Finance. Sir, you may begin.

Michael W. Harris - Generac Holdings, Inc.

Management

Good morning and welcome to our third quarter 2016 earnings call. I'd like to thank everyone for joining us this morning. With me today is Aaron Jagdfeld, our President and Chief Executive Officer; and York Ragen, our Chief Financial Officer. We will begin our call today by commenting on forward-looking statements. Certain statements made during this presentation as well as other information provided from time to time by Generac or its employees may contain forward-looking statements and involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in these forward-looking statements. Please see our earnings release or our SEC filings for a list of words or expressions that identify such statements and the associated risk factors. In addition, we will make reference to certain non-GAAP measures during today's call. Additional information regarding these measures, including reconciliation to comparable U.S. GAAP measures, is available in our earnings release and SEC filings. I will now turn the call over to Aaron.

Aaron P. Jagdfeld - Generac Holdings, Inc.

Management

Thanks, Mike. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Third quarter results exceeded our expectations in terms of net sales, adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EPS. Shipments of home standby generators were better than expected as they benefited from successful promotional programs. And portable generator sales were also higher than expected as a result of an increase in power outage activity during the third quarter. Importantly, power outages have moderately increased so far during the second half of the year relative to our previous assumptions. And we expect this to further benefit our business during the fourth quarter. The higher shipments of residential products during the third quarter helped to offset a weaker than expected performance of mobile products within domestic and international markets. During the third quarter, we also generated a strong level of operating and free cash flow, which enabled us to remain active with our share repurchase program. In fact, despite the headwinds experienced across several of our end markets, we have generated approximately $210 million of free cash flow over the last four quarters, which was a key factor in allowing us to complete our share repurchase program nearly a year ahead of schedule. On a year-over-year basis, net sales in the third quarter increased 4% to $373 million as compared to $359 million in the prior year, which includes a one-month benefit from the Country Home Products acquisition and a full three-month contribution from the Pramac acquisition. Although exceeding our expectations for the quarter, shipments of home standby generators declined modestly over the prior year as field inventory levels entering the current year third quarter were elevated when compared to last year and demand in the Northeast region remained soft on a year-over-year basis. Regarding power outages, since reporting second quarter results in…

York A. Ragen - Generac Holdings, Inc.

Management

Thanks, Aaron. Net sales for the quarter were $373.1 million as compared to $359.3 million in the third quarter of 2015, including $60.8 million of contribution from the recent acquisitions of Country Home Products and Pramac. As a reminder, The Country Home Products acquisition closed on August 1, 2015. So results for the third quarter of 2016 include one month of contribution before becoming annualized and the Pramac acquisition closed on March 1, 2016. Looking at consolidated net sales by product class. Residential product sales during the third quarter of 2016, which are predominantly sold through the Domestic segment, increased 4.3% to $192.9 million as compared to $185 million the prior year quarter. The increase was primarily due to the contribution from the recent acquisitions of Country Home Products and Pramac partially offset by a decline in shipments of home standby generators. As Aaron mentioned, the year-over-year decline in home standby generators was modest. And shipments during the quarter came in ahead of our expectations benefiting from increased power outage activity coupled with successful promotional programs. The organic decline in home standby generators as compared to the prior year was impacted by excess field inventory levels entering the third quarter as well as ongoing headwinds in activation rates in the Northeast region. As we enter the fourth quarter, we believe field inventory levels for home standby generators are now better balanced when comparing to the prior year levels. Looking at our commercial and industrial products, net sales for the third quarter of 2016 increased 1% to $149.7 million as compared to $148.2 million for the prior year period in 2015. The increase was due to the contribution from the recent Pramac acquisition, which was mostly offset by a significant reduction in shipments of mobile products, given continued softness in the…

Aaron P. Jagdfeld - Generac Holdings, Inc.

Management

Thanks, York. We are revising upward our prior guidance for revenue growth for the full year 2016, which is primarily due to an increased outlook for portable and home standby generators as a result of the higher power outage activity being experienced during the second half of 2016 as previously discussed. Net sales are now expected to increase between 9% to 10% over the prior year, which is an improvement from the 6% to 8% growth previously expected. Total organic sales on a constant currency basis are now anticipated to be down between 8% to 9%, which is an improvement from the previous assumption of down between 10% and 13%. Looking at our guidance by product class on a consolidated basis. For residential products, we now expect net sales to increase in the low to mid teens range during 2016, which assumes an organic increase in sales in the flat to low single-digit range. This compares to the previous expectations for net sales to increase in the mid to high single-digit range and organic sales to decline in the low to mid single-digit range. As discussed, the increase in organic net sales for residential products is primarily due to a large increase in demand for portable generators in response to Hurricane Matthew along with an improved outlook for home standby generators benefiting from the more favorable outage activity thus far during the second half of 2016, along with the success of our promotional programs. With regards to our commercial and industrial products, we now expect net sales to increase in the low single-digit range, a slight reduction from the previous expectation of a low to mid single-digit increase due to the lower shipments of mobile products. Organic net sales for C&I are now expected to decline in the low to…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our first question is from Jeff Hammond with KeyBanc Capital Markets. Your line is open.

Jeffrey Hammond - KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.

Analyst · KeyBanc Capital Markets. Your line is open

Hey, good morning, guys.

Aaron P. Jagdfeld - Generac Holdings, Inc.

Management

Good morning, Jeff.

York A. Ragen - Generac Holdings, Inc.

Management

Good morning, Jeff.

Jeffrey Hammond - KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.

Analyst · KeyBanc Capital Markets. Your line is open

Hey. So good color on the additional power outage activity. Can you just talk about, Aaron, maybe what you think are the one or two biggest things that you've changed in your approach or tools that are going to favorably impact kind of the reaction from these outages and maybe some of the early feedback you've gotten from those initiatives?

Aaron P. Jagdfeld - Generac Holdings, Inc.

Management

Sure, Jeff. I think for us, one of the interesting things is a lot of the tools that we put in the hands of distribution and frankly in our own hands are relatively new since the last kind of increase in outages occurred back in the kind of 2011-2012 type of period. So as an example, our PowerPlay iPad-based selling solution which is a – it's basically a sales system which has given us tremendous visibility into the markets and has really helped us understand the performance dealer to dealer, market to market, and what's going on in terms of close rates, in terms of activity, in terms of quoting, all things that we never really had visibility to before, the differences in installation costs, all those additional pieces of information have been great for us to kind of really focus on tightening up. I think one of the unknowns for us is really how does that lead system is which is really what it is, how does that perform in a period of increased outage activity. So one of the things that is very evident to us is this area of the country where the most recent outages took place, so kind of the eastern coast of Florida all the way up through the Carolinas, is an area that hasn't had a lot of outage activity in a number of years, and no, we're not going back just to 2011-2012. Really Florida, 10 years; the Carolinas, a little bit longer in some parts. So that's an area where you might argue that distribution has been a bit atrophied just in terms of engagement. And we actually have quite a few dealers in the affected area, over 400 dealers in that area. But in terms of alignment and in terms…

Jeffrey Hammond - KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.

Analyst · KeyBanc Capital Markets. Your line is open

Okay. And then just a quick – that's helpful. Just a quick follow-on on – so you took your revenue guidance up, you left the margins unchanged. Can you just speak to – I thought there'd maybe a little bit more leverage there. Maybe speak to what might be holding that back.

York A. Ragen - Generac Holdings, Inc.

Management

Yeah, Jeff, this is York. So we have a longwinded answer for this one as well. So as you'd imagine, so we raised our residential guidance, brought down our mobile products guidance down a little bit. Overall, though that would generally imply a more favorable overall sales mix with that higher residential sales. You'd also get favorable overall SG&A leverage on those higher residential sales. But partly dampening that is just the fact that bringing our mobile guidance down a bit, we're also – not only top line but also the margin. So we're just seeing relative to previous expectation that those mobile product margins down overall. We did talk about promotional activities and whatnot here in the third quarter. So that – when you factor that into the full-year guide, that is something that's sort of offsetting some of those favorable impacts. And then just the fourth quarter with the updated guidance. You're going to have some additional employee incentive comp accrual. So when you put that all together, that allows us to hold the 19.5% EBITDA guidance for the year.

Jeffrey Hammond - KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.

Analyst · KeyBanc Capital Markets. Your line is open

Okay. Thanks, guys.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is from Mike Halloran with Baird. Your line is open.

Michael Halloran - Robert W. Baird

Analyst · Baird. Your line is open

Hey. Good morning, guys.

Aaron P. Jagdfeld - Generac Holdings, Inc.

Management

Good morning, Mike.

York A. Ragen - Generac Holdings, Inc.

Management

Good morning, Mike.

Michael Halloran - Robert W. Baird

Analyst · Baird. Your line is open

So just on the C&I piece, any signs of stability at the bottom there for some of those affected markets?

Aaron P. Jagdfeld - Generac Holdings, Inc.

Management

Yeah. I think domestically, Mike, we're starting to obviously – we'll get around the horn here in terms of getting into easier comps in that business. But that would be probably – the only sign of stability is just the fact that the numbers get quite a bit smaller in terms of comparatives going forward from a demand – just a pure market demand standpoint, we saw some normal seasonality kind of manifest itself in Q3 in terms of lighting towers, which is typically when we'd see that. The heating season, we've seen better interest in heat this year versus last year, of course. But we're coming off of a warm winter. And to be very frank, that business has been – that product line has been disappointing since we acquired it. It's just the timing of our acquisition was challenging. And that's really what the difficult comp in Q3 was all about, this time around was heat. We delivered a significant amount of heat last year in the third quarter and that didn't repeat this year. So as we get into the fourth quarter, we still have some headwinds that the way our guidance plays out, that we'll have to fight through. But as we get into 2017, we think that that'll abate certainly. But I think the key measurements and the key KPIs that we keep watching there are around rental rates, fleet utilization and then secondary market equipment pricing. All of those metrics are moving, I think, in a favorable direction. But without a meaningful recovery at least in energy prices, it's kind of a wait-and-see game. And you got to wait for these fleets to age. And until they age, it's – the fleet refresh cycle, that replacement cycle is just going to be deferred. And we're seeing – I think at one point, we were hopeful that might happen more likely in the back half of 2017. Frankly, that may play out to be more of a 2018 story depending on where energy prices go here. But we just don't see anything in the short term that gives us a tremendous amount of confidence in any major change there.

Michael Halloran - Robert W. Baird

Analyst · Baird. Your line is open

Yeah, okay, that's fair. And then back on the activity you've seen over the last couple of months here. Could you try to frame that a little bit from a historical perspective? Obviously, with the new tools you're implementing, that's going to be skewed more favorably for you. But what kind of pull-through do you typically get from this type of outage activity, what kind of tail is it? And at what point do you have a little better sense for how much pull-through you start getting on the standby side?

Aaron P. Jagdfeld - Generac Holdings, Inc.

Management

So what we've said in the past and what we've experienced in the past – and again, the category is only about 15 years old with standby. So there's been a couple of notable points of over-indexed activity and under-indexed activity. So I'll speak to those. But I think our typical response has been – we'd see two to four quarters of follow-on demand in general on an average basis in the home standby category following an elevated period of outages. That was, of course, exacerbated after Sandy. That was really pushed to something more like six quarters to eight quarters. It really was a very strong follow-on. I think a lot of that, Mike, is the fact that when you kind of peel back the onion on an event like Sandy, that region had been impacted serially by a number of events in a short period of time. So there was a strange – you had Hurricane Irene and then you had a Snowtober event which was the snow on the leaves that caused trees to drop and take out power and then you had Sandy. And you had kind of those three things happen in rapid succession over the period of about kind of a year and a half. And this event, Matthew, in the Southeast is kind of a one-time deal in 10 years' time. So I think it would probably fall more along the lines of our two to four quarter statement. Just putting it in context, when you compare it to those other events that I just mentioned; in terms of our – kind of the way we look at power outages, right, and we've talked about this proprietary severity index which is a – it's really a mathematical formula of not only the number…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our next question is from Stanley Elliott with Stifel. Your line is open. Stanley Elliott - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc.: Hey, guys. Good morning and thank you for taking my call. Just a quick question for you on the number of dealers kind of in the impacted area. It didn't sound like many of them had been using your PowerPlay tools. Is that correct? And how quickly would it be to get them ramped up with that to take advantage of the storm?

Aaron P. Jagdfeld - Generac Holdings, Inc.

Management

Yeah, Stanley, that's exactly what my comments were about. We have a good dealer base there. But it's not as what we would refer to as engaged as maybe some other parts of the country, that engagement level as measured by usage of those tools like PowerPlay. So it is a small percentage that are on the PowerPlay system in that region. And so in response to your question, how quickly can we get them to engage and get them signed up on the system; it's a very easy process. It's as easy as them getting an iPad and buying a license for the software. And that's something that can be done in very short order. And that actually is the number one priority of the team. We're deploying a field team. As I mentioned, that team will hit the ground next week in fairly large numbers to engage those 400 dealers in getting them signed up for PowerPlay. Remember that what's really important for those dealers, the messaging there is all of the activity we do in terms of marketing – so the infomercial and all the other lead generation activities that we do; all drive consumers, homeowners to our lead team internally here and that lead team qualifies those leads and then schedules those leads by pushing them out to dealers that are on PowerPlay. So if you're not on PowerPlay as a dealer, you're not going to get those leads. So the alignment that is required there is really important for those dealers to get those leads. So the messaging is a pretty simple one. If you want to see the leads – we're going to spend a lot of money in that area to work on awareness and of the category and through our marketing efforts. And if you want to get the leads in your hands, you've got to be on PowerPlay. So it's a pretty simple message. What we'll do is we're actually going to do a lot of what we refer to as ride-alongs. So we're going to go out with dealers and actually do a lot of handholding to do those first kind of initial kind of couple of IHCs with the system so that they get a feel for it. And then we'll turn it over to them and we'll be onto the next dealer. So we think over the next 60 days, we're going to be able to get a much higher adoption level of PowerPlay in that region of the country. Stanley Elliott - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc.: Perfect. And thankfully, the election is going to be over here in a couple of weeks. But does that impact your ability to -

Aaron P. Jagdfeld - Generac Holdings, Inc.

Management

Thankfully. Stanley Elliott - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc.: Yeah. Does that impact your ability to get favorable advertising rates in some of these markets which are going to be contested states? And how do we think about that? Does it delay the ability to get down and get the message out right on the heels of the storm or does it have to have a little bit of a lull period? How do we think about all that?

Aaron P. Jagdfeld - Generac Holdings, Inc.

Management

Yeah, advertising rates are a little bit more elevated at this time of year in an election cycle than you would see without that, of course. But I think the timing of this, maybe it pushes it a week or so. Really, the event just happened a couple of weeks ago. You have to wait for the power to come back on. We've got to get the dealers engaged and then we've got to get our media plan put together. We've actually started playing some media in that region already. But we'll double-down on that effort after the election passes. We also don't want to get caught up in the noise. Not only the just elevated pricing for the media cost today, but we don't want to get caught up in kind of the noise. People are – I know in our household, anytime there is an election ad that comes on; we're turning the channel. So I don't know. At some point, people are going to get the hint. But it's one of those things that it's just – we'll have to deal with it. It may push this out a week or so. But I don't think it's going to have a material impact on kind of the cadence that we would normally have around post-outage.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our next question is from Brian Drab with William Blair. Your line is open. Brian P. Drab - William Blair & Co. LLC: Hey, good morning. I was wondering if you could go through some of the organic revenue growth figures for the quarter. I don't know if you'd be able to give us. For resi, it is up 4% in total and C&I up 1%. But if you give us organic numbers there and then maybe even organic on Domestic and International.

York A. Ragen - Generac Holdings, Inc.

Management

Yes, Brian. It's York. So on the residential side, organically, that's only down slightly. It's a modest decline organically on the residential side. So they did get some contribution from one month of CHP that didn't get annualized. And then Pramac, if you recall, does sell portable generators which we classify a certain amount, not a lot, but a certain amount goes to that residential bucket. So organically, residential's down, call it modestly, organically. And then on C&Is, given that oil and gas decline; they're down about mid-20% range. So that's still weighing on the year-over-year growth rates. And I think Aaron mentioned it earlier in a commentary as we sold a lot of heat in the prior year. And that didn't necessarily repeat given the underutilization of that equipment on the field. Brian P. Drab - William Blair & Co. LLC: Okay. And then I guess that's then Domestic versus International.

York A. Ragen - Generac Holdings, Inc.

Management

Yeah, I think the key there is – Domestic is where all the residential is. And International is primarily all C&I. And most of that growth year-over-year there, Brian, for International is in fact the Pramac acquisition growth. There is a certain amount, small amount that mobile products year-over-year declines in the European region. So there is some decline there. But the vast majority of that increase in International is going to be acquisition growth. Brian P. Drab - William Blair & Co. LLC: Okay. Can you just remind me how much of the Domestic segment actually is C&I?

York A. Ragen - Generac Holdings, Inc.

Management

I guess we haven't broken that out. Brian P. Drab - William Blair & Co. LLC: Okay.

York A. Ragen - Generac Holdings, Inc.

Management

I guess you've got the slice by Domestic and International. And then you got the slice by product class. We haven't necessarily... Brian P. Drab - William Blair & Co. LLC: Okay.

York A. Ragen - Generac Holdings, Inc.

Management

...provided the matrix on that. Brian P. Drab - William Blair & Co. LLC: Okay. And then I was wondering if you could, given the renewal of the share repurchase authorization, just a quick update on capital allocation plan. It's been about a year and a half since the Analyst Day. And is there any change to the amounts that you're expecting for share repurchase versus acquisitions and debt paydown, et cetera?

York A. Ragen - Generac Holdings, Inc.

Management

Yeah, Brian, it's York again. So I guess the discussion of uses of cash and priority capital allocations is really a very – that discussion hasn't changed really since we've gone public. And we've got our stated priorities in terms of how we want to allocate capital. And debt paydown is something that we look at. We have a targeted leverage range of 2 times to 3 times. We're elevated now at 3.9 times. But we know, given where EBITDA has troughed here, we believe that that can return pretty quickly here as end markets recover. So not concerned about that leverage being that elevated. We are cognizant of that leverage and we don't want that to get too much higher. But we believe that that leverage ratio will moderate here as end markets return and get back to that 2 times to 3 times. So then you've got an M&A pipeline. We've demonstrated that we can execute on that M&A pipeline. We still are integrating Pramac here, so we want to be measured there. So then after that pipeline is return of capital to shareholders. And as we've demonstrated that share buybacks at these levels are an attractive use of that cash. And I think that we'll be opportunistic when we execute on that.

Aaron P. Jagdfeld - Generac Holdings, Inc.

Management

And Brian, it gives us the opportunity to be – it gives us an added flexibility to evaluate a wider range of options then when we do have excess capital, as York said, after stepping through the priorities here. And as we mentioned, EBITDA – this would be our trough quarter on EBITDA given our guidance here. So we're optimistic we'll begin to delever that, if nothing more, then through improvements in the EBITDA run rate on an LTM basis. So that doesn't worry us where we're at from a leverage standpoint. But again, the buyback is really just another tool for us.

York A. Ragen - Generac Holdings, Inc.

Management

Yeah. And we do have excess cash flow sweeps that are built into our term loans. So we have to be cognizant of that in our uses of cash as well.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is from Jerry Revich with Goldman Sachs. Your line is open. Jerry Revich - Goldman Sachs & Co.: Hi, good morning.

Aaron P. Jagdfeld - Generac Holdings, Inc.

Management

Good morning, Jerry.

York A. Ragen - Generac Holdings, Inc.

Management

Good morning, Jerry. Jerry Revich - Goldman Sachs & Co.: Aaron, are you willing to share the numbers with us on how much the in-home consultations are up through October just to help us understand the cadence of how the next couple of quarters might look and just to put the storm impact in context versus the company as a whole?

Aaron P. Jagdfeld - Generac Holdings, Inc.

Management

Yeah. We won't give specific percentages, Jerry. But what I can tell you is just kind of from a just data standpoint – we track this. Obviously, it's an important leading indicator and we've been tracking it over the last three years. And typically, what you'll see is there is a seasonality to this. In years where we haven't had major events in the fall, we actually do still see a nice improvement or have seen in the last few years where we got PowerPlay in place. We've seen a nice improvement in IHCs kind of in the back half of the third quarter as we enter the fourth quarter. And that's – I think the result has been you've seen improvement in our home standby run rates in Q4. Really, and that's the result of the Northeast still kind of coming off of those events, those serial events that happened. As we've called out, the Northeast has actually been pretty soft this year in terms of activation. And so we weren't necessarily seeing that same seasonality play out with IHCs. It was lower, as you would expect, as activations were lower there as well. What we have seen is that's now turned around. We've seen the IHCs pick up materially here again. It's just later than we would have seen it in maybe the last couple of years. And that really is a result of – based on regionally where we're looking at the IHCs, it's really a result of these outage events and the increased awareness. Oddly enough, we actually have seen the Northeast respond as well. So what we oftentimes see is there is a spillover effect. When you get a major event in whatever part of the country you get; the last area that was affected…

Aaron P. Jagdfeld - Generac Holdings, Inc.

Management

Yeah, so the first part of the question. Pramac doesn't have much of a UK presence, just a little bit. It's actually smaller than Tower Light's UK business. So in terms of the currency impact, they're not as material or on a – it's material to Tower Light's business as a business, but it's not incredibly material to our results overall, I guess, would be a way to put it. And certainly with Pramac, it's even smaller because they don't have as big of a footprint there. Unfortunately, we don't believe there's going to be a great opportunity to recover the pricing. These are large national rental customers. Some of those prices are contracted. There is some wiggle room to move pricing. Thankfully, there aren't a large number of local manufacturers in the UK. But that notwithstanding, it is still a competitive environment and we have to respond to that as such. So unfortunately, we don't think – we certainly aren't going to recover all of that in pricing. There may be a little bit of that. Where we're really going to get the opportunity to try and work on improving margins in the UK is through consolidation of operations. We have an operation in the UK for Pramac and we have an operation in the UK for Tower Light. We're currently in the investigative stage of consolidation of those operating footprints so that we can try and reduce our overall cost structure in the UK. But again, I think our bigger issue, our bigger challenge is really on the pricing side and that probably is not something that we see resolving itself very easily.

York A. Ragen - Generac Holdings, Inc.

Management

And it's reflected in our guidance.

Aaron P. Jagdfeld - Generac Holdings, Inc.

Management

And it's reflected in our guidance appropriately in that fashion.

Operator

Operator

And our next question is from Ross Gilardi with Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Your line is open.

Ross P. Gilardi - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Analyst · Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Your line is open

Hello, good morning. Thanks, guys.

Aaron P. Jagdfeld - Generac Holdings, Inc.

Management

Good morning, Ross.

York A. Ragen - Generac Holdings, Inc.

Management

Good morning.

Ross P. Gilardi - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Analyst · Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Your line is open

Hey, I just wanted to ask you about telecom, like how that's trending like up or down year-on-year. I don't think you mentioned it in your formal remarks. And how do you think this AT&T-Time Warner thing impacts that business. I know like over the last couple of years when the DirecTV acquisition was pending, it seemed like you felt that that had a softening impact on the market. And I'm wondering if that – obviously, this is going to be a long drawn out process, but if that weighs on capital spending in that market?

Aaron P. Jagdfeld - Generac Holdings, Inc.

Management

Yeah. I think, obviously, it's a great question, Ross. And we watch that market very closely. It's been an important market overall for us as a vertical in C&I. And we've been a longstanding supplier to that market. We had more encouraging conversations earlier in the year. But those conversations – I think as M&A activity for many of our major channel partners there has increased with Verizon, it's Yahoo; with AT&T, it's been DirecTV and now the Time Warner deal. And just historically for us, anytime we see those channel partners use their capital for M&A; it tends to come – at least in our markets, it tends to manifest itself in kind of muted demand for telecom. And that is really what we've reflected in our guidance here. We really haven't reflected any material uptick in it. We were kind of already seeing that. And I think the AT&T announcement with Time Warner only kind of doubles-down on that. I think what is a little more interesting to me is just maybe the signal all of those deals are sending in terms of just the network infrastructure spend by any of the wireless companies. I just find it interesting that since the net neutrality rules have come into play here, that – I guess is there a broader macro theme here of deemphasizing the investment in the networks and the investment in hard assets as I guess in reality, you're basically building a highway for somebody else to drive a car on. And does that give their shareholders the best return? I thought it was interesting Google Fiber kind of made their announcement yesterday or this morning kind of pulling back. And I think they found it a lot more costly to go into the markets and to do what they wanted to do. But is that also somewhat tied to net neutrality? They didn't call it that. But you just wonder where is the investment in hard assets for the pipe for all these things, whether it be wireless or whether it be fiber, where is that going longer term in terms of investment. So we'll continue to watch it. I think the good news is there is a lot of sites out there that still don't have backup power. So the opportunity set for us is pretty large. And power quality continues to degrade and that's something that we'll keep an eye on the market. But you do see some kind of signs on the horizon here with the M&A activity and some of the other kind of macro themes here. It makes one pause in terms of what that may mean for kind of capital spending by these types of customers today and into the near term.

Ross P. Gilardi - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Analyst · Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Your line is open

Got it. Thanks, Aaron. And then just lastly, I wanted to ask you about the big-box retailers. You mentioned that your product placements, I think, at all-time highs with the retailers. But just wondering how sell-through has been, retail sell-through, aside from like the increased power outage activity. It just seems like some of the vendors to the big-box retailers are reporting softer numbers over the last couple of days in different categories than yours. But have you seen that at all generally outside of the weather-impacted areas or has it just been pretty steady state?

Aaron P. Jagdfeld - Generac Holdings, Inc.

Management

Yeah. To be honest, we haven't really talked too much about sell-through. We see sell-through activity from our channel partners. And I can tell you there's nothing I've seen in the last several weeks – now I haven't looked at it in the last couple of days, which I think was your reference point. But in the last several weeks, the sell-through activity is as we would expect. In the regions that were impacted by the outages, that was elevated certainly during the outages and immediately thereafter. And we haven't seen anything there that would lead us to a different conclusion about kind of either our feelings about the impact. Remember, as important of a channel as retail is – and it is an important channel, great partners and we've had longstanding relationships there – our dealer channel is really the channel that, for home standby anyway, because this is a home improvement project. It's an installed product. It's a considered sale, highly considered sale, highly researched sale, a big ticket item. The dealer channel is the larger channel there and over the last decade has grown faster than retailers. The retailers still serve a really important part though of the awareness around these product categories. A lot of times people will see the product for the first time at a retail shelf. And they may start to get interested in the category through that interaction. So our point of purchase displays are really important. And obviously, the training and other things that we do with those retailers is really critical. But to be frank, the dealer channel – most people want a turnkey solution and some of our retailers are already paired up with our dealer channel. We have retail install programs that have been successful. In those programs, we've seen nice improvement of those numbers over the last several weeks as you would expect in the regions that were impacted. But we haven't seen anything – and I can't speak to anything in the last few days to be honest, Ross. But we'll continue to keep an eye on kind of sell-through and understand how that might impact the business going forward.

Operator

Operator

And your next question is from Christopher Glynn with Oppenheimer. Your line is open. Christopher Glynn - Oppenheimer & Co., Inc. (Broker): Thanks. Good morning.

York A. Ragen - Generac Holdings, Inc.

Management

Good morning, Chris.

Aaron P. Jagdfeld - Generac Holdings, Inc.

Management

Good morning, Chris. Christopher Glynn - Oppenheimer & Co., Inc. (Broker): Hey. So on the comments about the modest increase in outages; obviously, the hurricane was in October. But is that a dynamic where there's no individual call-out, it's more of just a little bit of a wave through the various geographies?

Aaron P. Jagdfeld - Generac Holdings, Inc.

Management

Yeah. And part of it – we've run some campaigns, some pretty effective promotional campaigns coupled with the outage events, in our estimation, have been very successful. And it's one of the reasons why the outperformance in Q3 certainly, as we kind of got to the back half of September, even before kind of Matthew. But we've seen an event like Matthew being an overall awareness event. We've also seen some localized outages up in the Northwest coming off of some of the storms that have been hitting the Northwest Territory here over the last couple of weeks. All of those things are driving to improve, I think, the overall IHC environment, the in-home consultation environment as we've called out. A lot of our leading indicators are pointing, what we believe, in a very good direction. And I'd also say inventory levels have played a part. We talked about field inventory. As we entered the third quarter, field inventory was a little bit elevated. And so there was a bit of a destocking that occurred during the third quarter. And in spite of that, we outperformed our expectations, a lot of that again the promotions coupled with kind of the elevated outage event. But as we entered the fourth quarter, we look at kind of inventory levels today in the field as being very much in line year-over-year. And I think that's an important point to make because we don't anticipate and our guidance doesn't contemplate any kind of restocking or destocking events that need to take place in any measurable way certainly in the fourth quarter. So I think that that is an important part of the guide as we go from Q3 to Q4. Christopher Glynn - Oppenheimer & Co., Inc. (Broker): Okay. And then regarding the fourth quarter revenue lift and sort of allocating that; obviously, we could take the segment guidance and triangulate. But I just wanted to take a little different angle. The midpoint of your full-year guidance puts roughly a $40 million higher fourth quarter than the third. Just wanted to ask about the components of that. Is that pretty much all standby or is there some little bit of seasonality and C&I contributing to that?

York A. Ragen - Generac Holdings, Inc.

Management

Going from Q3 to Q4 is the question, Chris? That's your question? Christopher Glynn - Oppenheimer & Co., Inc. (Broker): Yeah, and the midpoint has it, call it, $40 million higher than the third quarter.

York A. Ragen - Generac Holdings, Inc.

Management

Yeah, it's predominantly that resi volume and I think the outage activity, the concept that Aaron just talked about in terms of not having the field inventory, being more balanced coming into the Q4. So most of that $40 million that you're talking about is going to be on the resi side.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our next question is from John Quealy with Canaccord. Your line is open.

John Salvatore Quealy - Canaccord Genuity, Inc.

Analyst · Canaccord. Your line is open

Yeah. Hey, good morning, guys. Thanks for squeezing me in. So big picture. I know I talked about this, I don't know, a while ago. Aaron, your thoughts on battery storage. Tesla not really doing much, as it seems, with Powerwall. LG Chem announced some stuff in the Gulf Coast. Talk about that and if cost still is an issue. But would you guys think about it if it got commercial traction and the economics were there? Thanks, guys.

Aaron P. Jagdfeld - Generac Holdings, Inc.

Management

Yeah, thanks, John. And obviously, I think what's really important in battery storage – and you've seen I think the Tesla Powerwall. I think they pulled the product down that they had put out there as a backup solution. I think it's an interesting storage device for people who have alternative power sources at the home or business, solar being the primary there. Having an intermittent storage device to work on the rate arbitrages that exist during the middle of the day or the peak times during the day is important. But as a backup, as a purely backup solution, you don't know how long an outage is going to occur. And that's really what – our product is fundamentally different. We serve a different market there. And I think a couple of things would have to happen. Certainly, the economics of batteries would have to improve dramatically. But the amount of storage that you'd need – again, Hurricane Matthew is a great example. There were people down in Hurricane Matthew – in the impacted zones that were out of power for four days. There's no battery today on the market – you'd have to have a lot of batteries to get you past four days. So to spend that kind of money on a solution just doesn't make sense. So let's fast forward, John, and assume for a second that the economics become workable at some point in the future. If they did, I think what's really important – and I try to stress this with not only external constituents but internally here at the company. What we do with a home standby generator – I'd love to tell you that there's a ton of proprietary technology there. I think what we do on a scale basis is unique.…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And I'm not showing any further questions. So I'll now turn the call back over to Aaron Jagdfeld, President and CEO, for closing remarks.

Aaron P. Jagdfeld - Generac Holdings, Inc.

Management

Great. We want to thank everybody for joining us this morning. We look forward to our fourth quarter and full-year 2016 earnings release which we anticipate will be sometime in mid-February of 2017. With that, we'll bid you a good day. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude the program and you may now disconnect. Everyone, have a great day.