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Malibu Boats, Inc. (MBUU)

Q4 2015 Earnings Call· Wed, Sep 9, 2015

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning and welcome to Malibu Boats Conference Call to discuss Fourth Quarter Fiscal 2015 Results. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session and instructions will follow at that time. Please be advised that reproduction of this call in whole or in part is not permitted without written authorization of Malibu Boats and as a reminder, this call is being recorded. On the call today from Management are Mr. Jack Springer, Chief Executive Officer and Mr. Wayne Wilson, Chief Financial Officer. I'll turn the call over to Mr. Wilson to get started. Please go ahead, sir.

Wayne Wilson

Management

Thank you and good morning, everyone. Ritchie Anderson, the company’s Chief Operating Officer is also on the call today. Jack will provide commentary on the business, and then I will discuss our fourth quarter financials and initial outlook for fiscal 2016. We will then open the call for questions. A press release covering the company’s fourth quarter and fiscal 2015 results was issued this morning and a copy of that press release can be found in the Investor Relations section of the company’s website. I also want to remind everyone that Management’s remarks on this call may contain certain forward-looking statements including predictions, expectations, estimates, or other information that might be considered forward-looking and that actual results could differ materially from those projected on today’s call. You should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of today, and the company undertakes no obligation to update them for any new information or future events. Factors that might affect future results are discussed in our filings with the SEC and we encourage you to review our SEC filings for a more detailed description of these risk factors. Please also note that we will be referring to certain non-GAAP financial measures on today’s call such as adjusted EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA margin, and adjusted fully distributed net income. Reconciliations of these non-GAAP financial measures to GAAP financial measures are included in our earnings release. Now, let me turn the call over to Jack Springer.

Jack Springer

Management

Thank you, Wayne. I would like to welcome everyone to our call. Thank you for joining. Malibu had a solid quarter and results that were again in line with our overall expectations, which makes it the sixth straight quarter since becoming public that we've met or exceeded the expectation. The United States, our largest market by far, continues to see a rebound and experienced sustained growth. However, there remains a large degree of upside in growth before we began to reach the peak volume levels of 2006. Continued strength in the U.S. and Australian markets offset currency related weaknesses in many of our international markets for the quarter. Overall, the U.S. market performed consistent with our expectations, and currency hindered markets such as Canada, South America, and Europe were weak as expected. Australia was slightly stronger than expected. This makes sense because we sell our product to all international markets in U.S. dollar currency, while Australia receives a benefit of lower cost by manufacturing in-country versus boats that are imported. The strength in Australia led to some upside in unit volume for the quarter and we shipped more boats than we originally projected. Wayne will go through the numbers in more detail, but the bottom line is we continue to execute very well against our global growth initiatives and delivered another quarter of good results, despite challenges in the global market. Our fiscal fourth quarter is an exciting and very busy period for Malibu. During this quarter, Malibu fulfilled the last of the boat show season orders as well as early summer demand. This is also the time that we begin to transition the business to the next model year through our strategy and planning processes. Part of our planning process involves rigorously analyzing channel inventories. We've continued to see…

Wayne Wilson

Management

Thanks Jack. Net sales in the fourth quarter increased 13.7% to $60.7 million. Unit volume increased 13.1% to 904 units and included 85 units from Australia. The majority of our unit upside in the quarter came from Australia in the sale of used demo boats. Both Malibu and Axis performed well in the quarter and the mix between the two was in line with expectations at 295 Axis boats and 609 Malibu Boats. This put the full-year Malibu mix at just over 68% in line with our expectations. Consolidated net sales per unit increased 0.5% to $67,164 and was driven by year-over-year growth in prices at our U.S. business. This was partially offset by the inclusion of Australia in the quarter, which contributes a lower average selling price because of the elimination of previously recognized revenue in our U.S. segment. In our U.S. business net seals per unit increased 4.3% to $69,700 per unit and was in line with our plan. Gross profit in the quarter increased 10.9% to $16.3 million and gross margin decreased 70 basis points to 26.8%. The decrease in gross margin was driven by the inclusion of our Australian business, which saw temporary margin pressure from the timing mismatch of our price increases versus U.S. dollar denominated input cost and our U.S. business gross margin expanded 28 basis points in the quarter on a year-over-year basis. Selling and marketing expense increased 2.3% to $1.7 million in the fourth quarter. As a percentage of sales, selling and marketing decreased 30 basis points to 2.8%. General and administrative expenses, excluding amortization, decreased 89%. The decrease was primarily attributable to a $22 million change in non-operating charges related to litigation and operating related expenses. Excluding the non-operating charges, G&A expenses increased 2.6% to $3.7 million. The increase was primarily…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Tim Conder of Wells Fargo Securities. Your line is open.

Tim Conder

Analyst

Thank you. And John I apologize in advance for the background noise on the road here, but -- and I apologize if you addressed this Jack, in your preamble, but any color that you can give us on the royalty income that you are currently receiving one. And then any color that you can give us as far as geographic areas in the U.S. where you’ve seen some regained strength where you're maybe seeing still a little bit of pressure as it relates to year-to-date rains or lack thereof and then just in general some of the -- may be a timing of seasonality in the various geographic markets. Thank you.

Wayne Wilson

Management

This is Wayne. On the royalty side, we aren’t disclosing what that stream looks like. It has the potential to impact margin on year-over-year basis in the low-double digits from a margin perspective, but we aren’t giving specifics as to what that settlement looks like or the royalty stream.

Jack Springer

Management

Tim, this is Jack. On your geographic question, I think it’s pretty consistent with what we have seen. All of the geographies are performing about where they have. There has been a little bit of softness in the East. One thing I did mention that we did see, call it in the upper Midwest as they had a very heavy rain season, and so I think that diminished a little bit of demand in the June timeframe. From a West perspective that is a market that is coming back toward its peak and it is slow, but it is coming back in the spot. All that we hear about droughts we have not seen the impact on sales at retail nor wholesale. I believe that over the timeframe of the next few months, certainly with all the rains that Texas has received in May, it was a little bit of a problem to begin with because of the flooding. But with the fall rains, we think that Texas is going to be very well set up to continue to grow, and then California the second largest state is also potentially set up to grow if the El Niño rains come through, but we've not really seen a big impact in California or the Western State.

Tim Conder

Analyst

Okay. Thank you gentleman.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] And I am showing no further questions. I’d like to turn the call back to Jack Springer for closing remarks.

Jack Springer

Management

Thank you very much. In closing I want to thank you again for joining our call. Obviously, we're very excited about the new models and the features from the 2016 boating season. As the best operators in the performance sports boat business by far, we believe we're very well positioned to continue our trajectory of profitable growth. Despite the currency headwinds in the international markets, we think the continued integration and development of Australia, the launch of four new boats, and the heavier mix of Malibu product will further develop -- and the further development of our vertically integrated platforms will bode well for the business going forward as long as our domestic U.S. market does not impact it in some way. Again, we thank you for joining the call. Good day.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating in today’s conference. This does conclude today's program. You may all disconnect. Everyone have a great day.