BRP Inc. (NASDAQ:DOOO) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Xian Siew: Hi, guys. Thanks for the questions. I just wanted to ask a little bit more about inventory levels. So you’re expanding capacity and you’re gaining a lot of share. I’m just wondering, is it possible that, I guess, in the future or when the dust settles that you can have structurally higher inventory levels than pre-pandemic? Anyways, and that the pre-COVID, I guess, compare is maybe less relevant as you get the bigger — the business becomes bigger?

Sébastien Martel: Well, from a dollar perspective, yes, because our business has been growing, we’ve been gaining market share. We’re adding new products as well and some products are bigger ticket items as well. If you look at the Switch, you look at the side-by-side. So from a dollar point of view, yes we can have more inventory than in the past, and there’s been inflation and price increase, et cetera. But from a number of days, we were trending and sometimes in the 150, 180 days of inventory in the past and we want to operate with lower levels of inventory. We said 100 days-ish would be a number that we’d like operating with, dealers like operating with. There’s enough product there. So that they can quickly execute on quick retail, but lower the total cost of operations for us and the dealership as well. So that’s the targeted number.

Xian Siew: Okay. Got it. Makes sense. And then maybe just on the NCIB, it sounds like working cap may be a couple of quarters before you really see the big benefit, but just wondering how are you thinking about stepping into the market. Is it when the working cap kind of unwinds or how are you thinking about, I guess, share buybacks?

Sébastien Martel: Well, we’ve always — our priorities has always been investing in the business. CapEx has been one priority where we’re investing quite a bit this year, investing for growth as well. So that obviously required some working cap investments. We did $300 million of buybacks this year, of which $250 million is on SIB. And so — and we’ve also done acquisitions, so investing in the business as well. So our priorities remain growth, and we are a business that generates good free cash flow and increasing the dividend modestly as well is part of our priority. But then with excess cash, returning that capital to shareholders is a good way to provide good returns and that’s something that we’ll continue to investigate, especially in this context where, obviously our expectations for the business is very good, and the valuations currently are at very attractive prices.

Xian Siew: Okay, very helpful. Thanks guys and good luck.

Operator: Next question will be from Mark Petrie at CIBC. Please go ahead.

Mark Petrie: Yes, thanks. Good morning. I was wondering if you could just give a bit more color on the topic of dealer engagement and just sort of how you’re gauging that the impact of that. Obviously, it is difficult to quantify in totality, but any commentary just with regards to sort of floor space or the pace of renovations or updated dealerships, that would be helpful.

José Boisjoli: Yes, good morning Mark. I don’t have any hard fact, but definitely we’re growing at a fast pace. We’re taking more and more floor space in dealership. And at the same time, like you said, you say people, we like to have the BRP space in the dealership space. This is one of the strategy we put together, we want when you enter in a dealership, you have the BRP DNA flavor. But right now, we’re forcing dealers give you an example of the Sea-Doo Switch when we gave to the dealers the switch line, they needed to committed to a certain amount of space of floor to display the product. Then this is a type of thing we’ve done, and we will continue to do. But this is part of our strategy, first to sign the best dealers and second, to continue to gain floor space.

And to be honest, because we have a strong product line because we have a good value proposition, they’re making money, more money with our product than most of our competitors. I would say it’s a good value proposition. It’s a business discussion and it’s not too complicated to convince dealer.

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