BRP Inc. (NASDAQ:DOOO) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Page 8 of 10

Jamie Katz : Thank you.

Operator: Your next question comes from Derek Dley from Canaccord. Please go ahead.

Derek Dley : Yeah. Hi, thanks. Just a clarification on you keep mentioning flat industry, but is that volumes you’re referring to? And then on top of that, you’re expecting to get the low-single digit, mid-single digit benefit from pricing?

Sebastien Martel : I’m sorry, I didn’t hear your full your question there.

Derek Dley : Yeah. Sorry. Just on the flat industry expectation that you have. Is that volumes that you’re referring to? And —

Sebastien Martel : Yeah.

Derek Dley : Okay. Okay. Good. And then just coming back to the to the cash flow statement a little bit, the incremental CapEx this year is 750 to 800. Given that the business has gotten bigger, and it seems like you have a material innovation pipeline. Is that level sort of what we should expect it as a new normal for the next few years?

Sebastien Martel : Yes, it should be the new normal.

Derek Dley : Okay, thank you very much.

Sebastien Martel : Thanks.

Operator: Your next question comes from Cameron Doerksen from National Bank Financial. Please go ahead.

Cameron Doerksen : Yeah, thanks. Good morning. I just wanted to follow up on the, I guess the working capital guide. You mentioned the $400 million tailwind. Can you give us any kind of sense as to when we might see some of that unwind? I’m sorry, if that’s more of a second half of the year? Or is that something we might see in the next couple of quarters?

Sebastien Martel : Yeah, good morning. Obviously, as I said, we’ve invested in keeping some unfinished inventory on the books last year and also higher raw material as we wanted to have greater safety stock to adjust for any unforeseen changes in supplier capacity. We will still run with some buffer in H1. And so my expectation is that the benefits of the working capital will happen in the second half of the year, once we work with our suppliers, stabilize their production and adjust their capacity as well to ship obviously, the logistics is improving. So that’s why we’re seeing an H2 benefits happening with that.

Cameron Doerksen : Okay, that’s helpful. And just on, I guess, sort of debt and interest expense. I mean, obviously, you’ve had this big investment in working capital. So you guys have more and more money here to fund that. But I mean, free cash flow profile looks quite strong for at least the next couple of years. I’m just wondering, what can you do, I guess, to reduce debt and by extension, reduce your interest expense, because I think your guidance assumes a fairly healthy increase in net interest expense.

Sebastien Martel : Well, from a balance sheet point of view, first I mean, we are at a healthy point. I mean, our leverage is 1.5 times at the end of the year. So it’s a healthy leverage. Obviously, we’ve experienced higher interest costs coming from the adjustments in the base rate. We have the advantage that some of our debt is hedged. So overall, we’re assuming an average LIBOR of 5.6%. And even if the race was to go up an extra 1%, that probably have an impact I would say $5 million on the P&L. So the priority is not to deleverage at some points, the interest rates will come back down. And obviously, we have strong EBITDA growth, which is allowing us to offset more than the increase in interest expense and depreciation that we’re seeing.

Cameron Doerksen : Right. So from a capital deployment priority, I would — I guess what you’re saying is that maybe NCIB is a higher priority item than deleveraging.

Page 8 of 10