Clarus Corporation (NASDAQ:CLAR) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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And so overall, I would say that we should still expect to see a promotional environment for the rest of this year. But I think everyone is very focused on similar to what we are and what we’ve already communicated as far as just coming into 2024 with a very clean balance sheet and just getting a lot of this gyration behind us that we’ve all been experiencing for the last four or so quarters.

Randal Konik: Super helpful. Thanks guys.

Operator: One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Joe Altobello with Raymond James. Your line is open.

Joseph Altobello: Thanks. Hey, guys. Good afternoon. I guess, first question on the promotional environment. Obviously, you got pretty intense during the second quarter. Maybe help us understand when that started — it sounds like it got worse as the quarter progressed, and maybe what you’re seeing here in July and August doesn’t sound like it’s easing up at all.

Aaron Kuehne: Yes. So we started to see it — so if we break it down by segment, we first started to see in the Outdoor space an acceleration of the promotional environment towards the tail end of Q1, but really in Q2 and especially in tail end of May and all of June, and even as we headed into the first part of July. And what’s driving that is that there was a great deal of effort to try to hold back and just to keep everything in check and maintain the health of the ecosystem that we participate in, but also people are very interested in cleaning up their balance sheets and getting a lot of the overhang behind us. And so, as a result, as we start to come out of the spring/summer season, that’s where we started to really see the promotional environment accelerated an uptick in terms of intensity, which is to be expected just because once again, we’re a year into this and people just want to be done with it, get it behind us and get clean as fast as possible, especially as you head into a new season.

On the Precision Sports side of things, we saw the promotional environment really focused on the commodity type calibers, especially nine mill, 223 started to feed into the 300 Blackout type ranges. But as product has become more and more available, that’s where we’ve also seen a stiffer point of view or competition when it comes to the promotional environment, and that is something that has really ramped up as we headed into what we call the summer swamp, and so call it in May and June, but that is still ongoing. It’s something that we expect we’ll continue to see at least through August and September, as we head into the hunt season. On the Adventure side of things, the promotional environment has been ongoing really since February or March, as people have come out of, as I say, in the back half of last year and came into the spring season.

It was negatively impacted by the elongated winter, just the wet conditions that were taking place. So people started to feel a little bit more pressure to get a bit more promotional earlier than what they typically would. The nice thing is those promotions are working, and they are accelerating the destocking activities. And so I would say that it’s been layered in, depending on the different segments, and also the progress that we’ve seen has been slightly different depending on the segment as well, but it is something that we anticipate seeing through the course of the next two quarters, but it really is an effort for everyone to just get the balance sheets clean and get everything recalibrated and normalized as we head into 2024.

Joseph Altobello: Got it. And that’s very helpful, Aaron. Thank you. And maybe just a follow-up on that. Is there a way to quantify how much destocking across the three segments is costing you in terms of sales this year? And maybe kind of to follow up on that, how confident are you that we’re going to be clean by the end of this year?

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