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XPEL, Inc. (XPEL)

Q2 2016 Earnings Call· Tue, Aug 30, 2016

$46.04

-0.99%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Greetings, and welcome to the XPEL Technologies Second Quarter 2016 Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host Mr. John Nesbett. Thank you. You may begin.

John Nesbett

Analyst

Good morning, and welcome to our conference call to discuss XPEL Technologies financial results for the 2016 second quarter. On the call today we have, Ryan Pape, XPEL’s President and Chief Executive Officer; and Barry Wood, XPEL's Chief Financial Officer to provide an overview of the business and operations and review the Company's financial results. Immediately after the prepared comments, we will take questions from our call participants. Let me take a moment to read the Safe Harbor statement. During the course of this call, we’ll make certain forward-looking statements regarding XPEL Technology Corp’s and its business, which may include, but are not limited to anticipated use of proceeds from capital transactions, expansion into new markets, and execution of the Company’s growth strategy. Often but not always, forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of words such as planned, is expected, expects, scheduled, intends, contemplates, anticipates, believes, propose or variations including negative variations of such words and phrases or state that certain actions, events or results may, could, would, might, or will, taken, and occur or be achieved. Such statements are based on current expectations of the management of XPEL. The forward-looking statements and circumstances discussed in this call may not occur by certain specified dates or at all, and could differ materially as a result of known and unknown risk factors and uncertainties affecting the Company performance and acceptance of the Company’s products, economic factors, competition, the equity markets generally and many other factors beyond the control of XPEL. Although XPEL has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual actions, events or results to differ materially from those described in forward-looking statements, there may be other factors that could cause the actions, events or results to differ from those anticipated, estimated or intended. No forward-looking statement can be guaranteed. Except as required by applicable securities laws, forward-looking statements speak only as of the date of which they are made and XPEL undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. Okay with that, I will now turn the call over to Ryan Pape. Go ahead, Ryan.

Ryan Pape

Analyst

Thanks John. Good morning and welcome to our second quarter earnings conference call. Overall, we’re pleased with the continued momentum we’re seeing in the business. The second quarter yielded our largest quarter revenue in our history. Barry will take a deeper dive into the numbers a bit later. But on a constant currency basis, overall revenues increased 22.3% for the quarter versus the prior, and 30.3% year-to-date versus the prior year-to-date, while net income grew 42.5% quarter-over-quarter, and 32.7% on a year-to-date basis. So these results, we think reflect the execution of our core get close to the customer strategy, strategy includes our products, services and support closer to the end-user, which allows us to more effectively control the delivery model for our products and services and helps enhance our brand and strategy. Also, allows us to efficiently leverage the distribution channel to drive margin, and a great example of how this works is the rollout of our Window Tint product line last year. The line nicely complements our industry-leading paint protection film and by effectively leveraging our distribution channel, the Window Tint has grown to be over 6% of our revenue mix, and we think that’s substantial and has an incremental product that helps us drive margin, because it’s established with our existing overhead. Furthermore, strategic partnerships such as our partnership with Tint World, which we announced last quarter shows how expanding the product portfolio will create a more compelling mix that enables us to close certain customers. Domestically, we continue to see very strong demand for our products and services, a leading indicator of this that we talk about a lot is demand for our training classes. These continue to be booked solid through the end of the year as far out as we schedule. So that’s critical…

Barry Wood

Analyst

Thanks, Ryan. Good morning everyone. First let me say what a great ride it has been thus far during my short time here. As Ryan stated, the team here is very passionate about what they do and you can just feel the passion as you walk through the halls here at XPEL. It's a great environment to work in and I am very excited to be part of this team. Before I jump into the numbers let me first say, that we will state certain key measurements on a constant currency basis, meaning we factor out the noise if you will of foreign currency fluctuations. We believe comparing numbers on a constant currency basis provides for a better visibility into our operations and our constant currency numbers are a non-IFRS measure as most of you probably know, and reflect the current period's results as if we were using prior comparative period’s exchange rates. So for the quarter, revenues increased 21% to 13.7 million and 22.3% to 13.8 million on a constant currency basis. On a year-to-date basis revenues increased 28.5% to 25 million and on a constant currency basis 30.3% to 25.3 million. As Ryan mentioned earlier, we continue to see strong demand for our products and services. The majority of our growth came from PPF and Tint product lines, while domestic and international growth rates were both consistently strong despite some continued softness in Western Canada. Gross margin for the quarter declined to 27.5% versus 29.7% in the prior year, while year-to-date gross margins declined 28.2% versus 31.9% in the prior year period. But as mentioned during our first quarter call, effective at the beginning of this year we began allocating more personnel costs to COGS to better reflect the increased dedication of certain employees to the installation business.…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And at this time, we will be conducting a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from [Grice Thomas] with El Dorado Asset Management. Please state your question.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Can you provide some more insight into how things are progressing in Canada?

Ryan Pape

Analyst

Sure. Canada has always been a really strong market for us and after the acquisition of Parasol in 2015 just really helped to cement our position. We’re seeing as Barry mentioned, we’re seeing some weakness in Western Canada, primarily in the Alberta market, which is historically very strong, but it's obviously hit hard in the oil patch. However, that’s really been not entirely offset for us with growth on the Eastern half of the country, where we do very well and are very strong. So, we continue to work really hard in the market and expand our team there, but we think Canada in many respects is a model for us what we’d like to do in other countries.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Adam Goldstein, Private Investor. Please state your question.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Hello. I’ve got a few questions. The first one is about legal costs. I believe Barry said it was $300,000 year-to-date. Can we assume there is going to be the same kind of run rate throughout the course of the litigation, so $300,000 per every six months?

Ryan Pape

Analyst

I think it’s going to sort of ebb and flow depending on the tempo on which things progress. But I don’t think that would be an incorrect assumption, I do think for a period of time, we will see cost accelerate, but not disproportionally different than what we’re seeing now.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Okay. And how about in terms of the deceleration in the growth are, do you think that was purely due to the supply chain issues you discussed or are you seeing some kind of a spec on the business from the litigation itself?

Ryan Pape

Analyst

Yes. Good question. No, I think, it’s entirely the result of the issue of supply chain throughout ending June and then into July, we had a substantial backlog of orders to deliver on that we were just waiting on right product mix to fulfill. So overall no, we continue to say that buy and large not really an impact on the business from the lawsuit. I’m sure there is some that we don’t know about or that we can’t quantify, but in a measurable way no, we do not see any impact.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Well, that’s fabulous news, because that was one of -- as an investor in the company that was one of my biggest fears, so that’s very good news. My last question is on the foreign currency translation. I’m a little bit confused about how you guys are handling this change to the constant currency basis. When you’re making that adjustment, is that only for the revenue that’s earned in the local currency? Or is that also, I guess, I’m a little confused about whether your price your products in U.S. dollars or in foreign currency?

Barry Wood

Analyst

Yes hi Adam, thanks, this is Barry. So the way -- what we do when we’re adjusting on a constant currency, we’re basically taking the exchange rates that were in effect in the prior period. And then adjusting current year numbers, current year foreign numbers based on those exchange rates and then factoring that into the growth. So, basically we’re trying to do is just show you what the world would look like as, summing that nothing had changed from a foreign currency perspective.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Well, I can understand how that works if the product is being priced in the foreign currency. So for instance, let’s say the product was priced in Canadian dollars then it’s easy to see how you change the foreign currency translation as this it was the same as last year. But if the product is being priced in U.S. dollars, there really is no translations and...?

Barry Wood

Analyst

Yes. No you’re absolutely correct Adam. So our U.S. business operates in U.S. dollars. So there is no impact to that constant currency calculation from the U.S. business. Whereas our Canadian business and our business in the UK operate in Canadian dollars and pound and euros respectively, so it's only those business units that are affecting the constant currency numbers, the U.S. sales would not be.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Okay, and will that be case also for the Netherlands once that starts taking effect?

Barry Wood

Analyst

Yes Adam it will, we'll have the same issue there.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Andy Preikschat with Edgebrook Partners. Please state your question.

Andy Preikschat

Analyst · Edgebrook Partners. Please state your question.

For the last quarter you spoke about potentially U.S. price increase in late summer, I am wondering did that happen?

Barry Wood

Analyst · Edgebrook Partners. Please state your question.

That had not happened yet. With what we saw with delays on some of our orders in June, we pushed it off just not wanting to do that at the same time, we're not hitting 100% bill rate at the time we want, so we still anticipate that occurring, but we have definitely delayed it by least 60 days from our original target. So that would take us into fourth quarter probably before we look at actually putting that into effect.

Andy Preikschat

Analyst · Edgebrook Partners. Please state your question.

Okay, I am wondering a little bit more on the supplier issue, can you elaborate on how exactly you've fixed the supplier issue because I believe you single source quite a bit including the polyurethane?

Barry Wood

Analyst · Edgebrook Partners. Please state your question.

Sure, well the main issue that we experienced in the second quarter was, we're actually making changes to the product to improve it, and specifically we've talked about some of it before, but we've got a multistep plan on what we want do with the product and this is sort of the first step that is supposed to be just an incremental step up and kind of set the stage for changes we want to do in the future. And principally these changes were changes with adhesive and changes with the processes to improve the overall appearance of the product. So what those changes necessitated were actually changes to production processes and changes to some of the adhesive use and what not. And so as processes just as they are being scaled up, you run into inevitable problems that don't always work themselves out when you're doing smaller runs and scale up. So it's just something that had to be worked through and slowdown a little bit to address the root problems and get them tweaked and then scale the production back up and while that happens you see a less inventory that you’d like.

Andy Preikschat

Analyst · Edgebrook Partners. Please state your question.

Okay, is there any way to quantify what the Company sales would roughly have been if you had not had the supplier problem?

Barry Wood

Analyst · Edgebrook Partners. Please state your question.

Internally, we obviously looked at that, but it's sort of challenging to come out with a number because there is always a lot of assumptions and there is clearly whenever you can't fill an order at the time the customer wants, you're on the risk of losing the order. But you also have sort of the time shifting effect where the customer will take the product, but just take it on a delayed basis. So we saw June and July really impacted the growth over the prior year, and we think that on a going forward basis in August and into September, we'll see that recover and we would expect we had a good august and we would expect to have a really strong September coming out of that and fully clearing any backlog that we have.

Andy Preikschat

Analyst · Edgebrook Partners. Please state your question.

Okay great and last question, can you share more about the growth you're seeing in the UK and Europe in terms of planned installer growth?

Barry Wood

Analyst · Edgebrook Partners. Please state your question.

Yes, UK has been really a great market for us I mean the growth rate we’ve seen on a year-over-year is huge, obviously starting form a very small base that we have historically. I think we said it before, but it feels like to us that Europe is where the U.S. was five or six years ago, it’s just everything is kind of set back in time. And so we think that that’s really favorable to us. And what we’re finding is that the closer we get to the customers there in the UK operation and now in the Netherlands operation by bringing on established distributor of ours that knows us and knows the product, and that we know to help lead that in Continent of Europe, we get tapped into so many more potential customers and potential really good relationships because we’re there. And you can’t reach them from afar and we don’t think you can reach them by sort of abdicating that development obligation to a third-party, or third-party distributor. So, we’re very bullish on that just because of the penetration rate is so low as it is and there is so many other strategic opportunities for us that come out of Europe just given our over-indexing in terms of penetration rate into the luxury car market and there is ultimately so many synergies that come out in terms of leveraging our pattern design activities and being closer to the stores to where those cars may show up first. So it's just -- we look at it just kind of a win-win on all sides.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Jason Hirschman, Private Investor. Please state your question.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

I have few questions for you this morning and thank you very much for breaking out the segment revenue, I think starting with the annual report and also starting with Q1. And that’s actually the source for my first question. Because I was noticing that the Canadian pretax margins let’s say in Q1 were around 15% and the way I compute them now in Q2 there are around 3.7% and what was a pretax margins. So I am wondering if you can perhaps provide a little color around that. Why there is such a big variation from one quarter to another quarter given that the -- probably the currency was fairly even from that -- for those two quarters?

Barry Wood

Analyst

Yes hi Jason, this is Barry. So, we’ve started to do a little bit of transfer pricing work in Canada so there maybe some effect from that. The other thing in the second quarter also, our supply issue is also obviously affecting Canada also. So there may be some impacts from that. But we would expect as we continue to dive more into the transfer pricing issues we’ll start to normalize on those margins a little bit as we go forward.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Okay. And just if you could provide a little bit more color perhaps on the, your European acquisition and Netherlands, may we presume that the principals of that business are staying on is that the intent?

Ryan Pape

Analyst

Yes hi Jason, good to hear from you, it’s Ryan. Yes, absolutely. So Connectin was a business that was founded three or four years ago, principally just to sell XPEL products. So, they’ve been fully invested in XPEL from the start and no one believed in everything that we’re about. So I think it's really safe to assume it’s still a very small business obviously, but for us it's purely strategic in the sense that we know we have the right team and both with the Company history and subject matter and just so we’ve been able to see how they operate. And so absolutely they are and in this instance, we wouldn’t be doing it otherwise.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Okay. And just to -- I know you’ve already answered a few questions on the supply disruption, but it sounds like probably in the fourth quarter, that the things are going to get back to normal. And in fact, you may even recapture some of those sales that got delayed. Is that a fair assumption?

Ryan Pape

Analyst

Yes. That’s our expectation at this point based on everything we see is it -- we expect to be kind of operating fully normally in the fourth quarter. I mean, obviously you got to get there before you know. But that’s what we expect and we’re already feel like we’re on the other side of it and are climbing back up to where we need to be.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Right. And just finally, just one final little question that about Window Tint since it has reached over 6% of sales, it’s been pretty impressive there. Is it fair to say that the gross margins, the Window Tint are consistent with the gross margins for the PPF? I believe you may have said that? I don’t know.

Ryan Pape

Analyst

Yes. So in the limit, we expect comparable gross margins, I think what we’ve seen so far as the rollout has gone, as we’ve acquired a couple of fairly high volume accounts in terms of redistributors, which are on the lower end of the anticipated margin scale for Tint. So I think we’re slightly under the average for PPF today. But we don’t expect it to stay like that, we expect it to meet or exceed on a go forward basis just as we kind of round up the customer mix.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Okay. And just as this one small little last question. Is this change to the [indiscernible] the film may presume that there is no real changes to your expected gross margin that the -- or a price increase set for that, is it just an ongoing…?

Ryan Pape

Analyst

Yes, correct, yes this is not a change that we would differentiate the product in such a manner to sell it differently or to adjust the price on that basis alone. That’s correct.

Operator

Operator

Our last question comes from the line of James Barnby with Donville Kent Asset Management. Please state your question.

James Barnby

Analyst

I’m just wondering if you could give us a little more details on how we should think about that Connectin acquisition. I’m assuming, it’s not the same magnitude as Parasol, but we just like to kind of hear about kind of where it fits. Is it a Parasol or is it closer to your UK acquisition and then if you could outline kind of your plans for financing that as well? Thank you.

Ryan Pape

Analyst

Sure, sure. No, compared to Parasol, the business is much-much smaller. So while there is -- once you do the inter-company eliminations it’s slightly accretive to revenue, I mean it’s relatively minor. This is really about looking at what one of our distributors is doing. And with our support and our team’s support and our engagement that we can really help accelerate what’s happening. So it is really entirely about getting a presence in the market, getting the right team onboard and to serve as the basis for building a much larger business. So from that standpoint, our purchase price and what not was not a material amount of money, so there is no concerns on financing it and it’s purely strategic for us.

Operator

Operator

That does conclude our Q&A session. At this time, I will turn it back to management for closing remarks.

Ryan Pape

Analyst

I want to thank everybody for participation with the call and we look forward to talking to you again next quarter. Thank you.