Funko, Inc. (NASDAQ:FNKO) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Steve Nave: Yes, Steve. So that’s a good question, and to clarify something for everybody. So the new warehouse management system that we’re talking about deploying this summer is what I would call a warehouse management system light. It’s not necessarily the permanent solution, but it’s something that we know we can deploy very quickly with very little incremental cost, relatively speaking. It may be that as we complete our analysis around what the right permanent solution is that would be tied to a full ERP launch, it may be that we go in a different direction again. Although I expect what we’re going to find with the lighter system that I just mentioned is we’re going to end up with about 70% to 80% of the feature and functionality that we would have gotten with a full-blown top shelf warehouse management system.

It’s such a leap forward for our business to have the 70% to 80% that it’s going to produce amazing benefits in terms of our ability to operate efficiently, but it may not be the full term solution going forward. Now the one benefit that I will say of taking this bifurcated approach to the deployments is we won’t be dependent on the actual ERP to get the systems implemented. And that also means that when we implement the new ERP, we don’t, at the same time, have to implement a new top shelf warehouse management system if we decide to go down that path. We can still keep it bifurcated through the ERP, let that burn in, figure out the tweaks and the issues that every system implementation has and then go back and upgrade our warehouse management system if we decide that that’s worth the juice is worth the squeeze.

Stephen Laszczyk: Thanks, that’s helpful. And then maybe separately, could you talk some more about the assumptions behind your 2023 outlook, maybe just in terms of your outlook for the economy, the health in pacing of the consumer and what you’re hearing out of the retail channels in terms of the back half orders picking up, that would be helpful.

Brian Mariotti: Yes, I’ll take that one. Yes, look, I — yes, absolutely. So look, we have obviously, visibility to our order book through all the way through Q3. And we also know there’s a lot of great content in 2023 compared to 2022. We’re seeing, say, like I said earlier, falling if some of the bigger customers in terms of liking back to their normal levels or bring on a week-to-week basis for us. So between the combination of all 3, I mean, we think we’re in a really good position to start building momentum towards the second half of the year. And then as we do that, obviously, the implementation of the Parachute and the FOB fulfillment increasing dramatically in Asia and just better systems in places like Steve said, every angle that we’re looking at in terms of getting better and fulfilling, getting faster, fulfilling and reducing our cost to fulfill should all be taking place and hold in the Q3 and Q4.

So ultimately based on the super positive POS for the brand and specialty always been a big part of our overall business with the lack of concentration we have. We see this thing continuing to build back to what we think are really good levels in the second half of the year.

Stephen Laszczyk: Great. Thank you.

Brian Mariotti: Thank you Steve.

Operator: The final question on the line comes from Andrew Uerkwitz of Jefferies. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Andrew Uerkwitz: Great. Thank you. I appreciate the time. Just two quick ones. The first one is with all these moving pieces and kind of a stronger back half, could you share with us kind of a little bit of color around what you think like exit rate gross margins or exit rate operating margins would be as we exit this year and get a lot of these issues behind us?