John Batten
Analyst · Baird. Please proceed with your question
So typically, historically, for anyone, I would say, 60 or under, it's an annual price increase. We're no different than anyone. We have one price increase per year. You'd have to go back to the early '80s to find something similar where you are raising prices multiple times per year. Typically, we like to do it and give everyone advance notice that our -- a two month notice that our price is going to go up July 1. So we would announce that by May 1. We did that this year for a price increase in July. I think, like many people, we thought that, that -- what we announced -- two months ahead of time for July would be enough. But it became obvious in August, September that inflationary pressures had increased past that. So we had announced in, I think it was October time frame that we'd have another price increase in January. But really in that November time frame and into early December, the increase is particularly anything related -- a lot of our -- obviously, steel, whether it's forgings, castings, parts that we outsource, steel prices went up dramatically. So in that October-November time frame, we were getting more increases from parts suppliers that are providing us things that are just 100% metal that are high double digits. And that clearly had -- and it was effective on time of shipments. So it was basically -- we're getting it with a surcharge or a price increase. And you saw the impact of the timing of that in our second quarter. So our surcharge was effective on shipments as of January 1. And I know that, that is a bit of a shock because that's coming on top of another price increase. But the inflationary pressures starting from steel mills to people who are making bearings, clutch plates, supplying us forgings or castings, they're getting steel increases. They have inflationary pressures. They're passing them on to us. We have to pass them on. Honestly, Josh, what we've done -- what we've implemented is basically to get us to that gross margin, I would say, neutral. So our desire is that what we have passed on to our customers gets us back to where we were on those gross margins prior to the, I would say, rapid inflation that we saw in the middle to late 2021. It's imperfect and that's why we're evaluating it. And I will never say never that we won't do something additionally in the fourth quarter sometime in the beginning of the fiscal year -- beginning of next fiscal year. So they're definitely -- Josh, there will definitely be one for the beginning of fiscal 2023. The question is, will it come sooner, because it's one of these things that you -- for the past, whatever, however many years, you would evaluate the cost increases coming in over your fiscal year. And you'd implement depending -- historically in North America, it would be July 1 or October 1. Historically in Europe, it would be January 1. And you'd have one price increase at a year to catch the inflation. That -- right now, that's out the window. We're looking at it quarterly now. And we'll have to make adjustments because the steel mills and our suppliers are keeping their margins in check by passing on increases to us. We need to make sure that those increases are shared everywhere and it's just not us taking the punishment.