Hayward Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:HAYW) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Hayward Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:HAYW) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript May 4, 2024

Hayward Holdings, Inc. isn’t one of the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds at the end of the third quarter (see the details here).

Operator: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Hayward Holdings First Quarter 2024 Earnings Call. My name is Lester and I will be your operator for today. [Operator Instructions] Please note that this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the call over to Kevin Maczka, Vice President of Investor Relations. Mr. Maczka, you may begin.

Kevin Maczka: Thank you, and good morning, everyone. We issued our first quarter 2024 earnings press release this morning, which has been posted to the Investor Relations section of our website at investor.hayward.com. Here, you can also find an earnings slide presentation that we will reference during this call. I’m joined today by Kevin Holleran, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Eifion Jones, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I would like to remind everyone that during this call, the company may make certain statements that are considered forward looking in nature, including management’s outlook for 2024 and future periods. Such statements are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties, including those discussed in our most recent Form 10-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, that could cause actual results to differ materially.

The company does not undertake any duty to update such forward-looking statements. Additionally, during today’s call, the company will discuss non-GAAP measures. Reconciliations of historical non-GAAP measures discussed on this call to the comparable GAAP measures can be found in our earnings release and the appendix to the slide presentation. I would now like to turn the call over to Kevin Holleran.

Kevin Holleran: Thanks Kevin, and good morning, everyone. It’s my pleasure to welcome all of you to Hayward’s first quarter earnings call. I’ll start on Slide 4 of our earnings presentation with today’s key messages. I’m pleased to report first quarter results in line with expectations. We executed well during the quarter, delivering robust profitability and improved cash flow. Net sales increased 1% year-over-year through modest contributions from both price and volume. Gross margins expanded 260 basis points to 49.2%. This matches the record we achieved in the fourth quarter last year at lower sequential sales volumes and represents the fifth consecutive quarter of year-over-year gross margin expansion. Cash flow also improved year-over-year during a seasonally soft period.

I’m proud of the performance of the entire Hayward team during the quarter. Strong profitability and cash flow enabled us to reinvest in the business to drive growth and productivity. As an innovation leader in the industry, we are introducing a number of exciting new products this year. I’ll share details on another launch in a moment. Subsequent to quarter-end, we completed a voluntary early debt repayment, reflecting confidence in our outlook for business performance and cash flow generation. Eifion will provide details later in the presentation. Finally, we are maintaining our full year guidance. For full year 2024, we continued to expect a return to sales and earnings growth, with net sales increasing approximately 2% to 7% and adjusted EBITDA increasing approximately 3% to 11%.

Turning now to Slide 5, highlighting the results of the quarter. Net sales in the first quarter increased 1% year-over-year to $213 million, consistent with expectations. By segment, net sales increased 7% in North America and declined 17% in Europe & Rest of World. Incoming orders were healthy in Europe during the quarter, but volumes were impacted in part by delays related to consolidating our manufacturing operations in Europe. The footprint actions are complete and production has ramped up to expected levels in the second quarter. We’re focused on driving growth in the commercial segment of the market and commercial pool sales in North America increased double digits for the quarter, continuing the multiyear trend. As I mentioned, gross profit margins expanded 260 basis points year-over-year to 49.2% in the first quarter, matching the quarterly record.

Adjusted EBITDA margin in the first quarter was 21.2% and adjusted EPS was $0.08. Turning now to Slide 6 for a business update. End demand for Hayward products was consistent with our expectations in the quarter with our largest market, the U.S., performing solidly, but the overall near-term demand environment remains uncertain. Non-discretionary aftermarket is resilient, but demand for discretionary new construction, upgrade and remodel has been impacted by current economic conditions and higher interest rates. As we approach the peak pool season, we expect more normal seasonal demand trends with improvements sequentially in the second quarter. In recent quarters, our channel partners were rebalancing the level of inventory relative to the current economic outlook, normalized OEM lead times and higher cost of capital.

As we commented previously, inventory levels have normalized and the post pandemic reset is largely behind us, but the channel is taking a prudent approach, continuously recalibrating the level of inventory on hand to be appropriately positioned to support their expected customer demand. Historically, the pool industry has been very disciplined on price and we previously implemented annual price increases for 2024 to maintain price cost neutrality. We continued to expect positive net price realization of approximately 2% for the year, with the actual contribution modestly below this level in the first quarter as expected due to the mix of customer early buy sales on discounted terms. We initiated a plan last year to consolidate facilities in Europe to get closer to key customers, better leverage a modern facility in Spain and support margins.

As I mentioned, this project is now complete and we are achieving full production rates in the second quarter. In April, we announced the appointment of Eric Sejourne as Chief Global Operations Officer, succeeding John Collins, who was appointed Chief Commercial Officer. Operational excellence has historically been a competitive advantage for Hayward, and Eric brings more than 30 years of experience in global operations, lean manufacturing and supply chain leadership to advance Hayward strategies for a world-class end-to-end supply chain. Finally, we were honored to receive the 2024 ENERGY STAR Partner of the Year Award from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, our fourth consecutive year of ENERGY STAR recognition. This is a testament to our commitment to innovation and sustainability as we strive to produce the most energy efficient solutions for our customers.

Turning now to Slide 7 on the fourth quarter call, we highlighted some key new product technologies being introduced in early 2024. Building on that momentum today, I’ll share more exciting news as we showcase two new robotic cleaners to our automatic cleaner line. The pool cleaner R110 and R130 robot models target the in-ground residential market, complementing our TigerShark series of robots. With advanced features such as smart navigation, interchangeable filters, and on the R130 model, active scrubbing of all pool surfaces, these units represent the best in both quality and speed of cleaning for the whole pool. Both units feature an easy-to-use programmable user interface for convenience and simplicity. Over the past seven years, the U.S. robotic cleaner market has grown at a double-digit CAGR, outpacing other automatic cleaner technologies such as suction and pressure.

These pool cleaner models represent an initial step in a longer roadmap for robotic cleaners. We look forward to sharing more information about our plans for this important product category and other new product technologies later this year. With that, I’d like to turn the call over to Eifion, who’ll discuss our financial results in more detail.

Eifion Jones: Thank you, Kevin, and good morning. I’ll start on Slide 8. All comparisons will be made on a year-over-year basis. As Kevin stated, we are pleased with our first quarter financial performance. Net sales were in line with expectations for the quarter and we delivered outstanding gross margin expansion. The year-over-year increase in our cash balance at the end of the first quarter and strong collections expected in the second quarter have given us the confidence and flexibility to deploy cash for early debt repayments. Looking at the results in more detail, net sales for the first quarter increased 1% to $213 million, driven by modest increases in both net price and volume. Gross profit in the first quarter of $105 million and gross profit margin increased 260 basis points to 49.2%.

This is a strong result primarily driven by continuous improvement and efficiency gains in our manufacturing operations. Adjusted EBITDA was $45 million in the first quarter and adjusted EBITDA margin was 21.2%. Our effective tax rate was 24% in the first quarter compared to 9% in the prior-year period. The change was primarily due to the timing of discrete items. Adjusted EPS in the quarter was $0.08. Now I’ll discuss our reportable segment results. Beginning on Slide 9, North American net sales for the first quarter increased 7% to $173 million, driven by largely higher volumes. Net sales increased 5% in the U.S. and 21% in Canada. The Canadian market has been significantly impacted by economic conditions and high financing costs with increased sales in the quarter due to timing of deliveries.

Gross profit margin increased 320 basis points year-over-year and 70 basis points sequentially to a robust 51.8%, representing the fifth consecutive quarter of year-over-year margin expansion. Adjusted segment income margin was 26.1%. Turning to Europe and Rest of World, the net sales for the first quarter decreased 17% to $39 million due to lower volumes. Net sales declined 12% in Europe and 27% in Rest of World. As Kevin noted, our footprint consolidation program in Europe resulted in the delay of certain customer deliveries. Gross profit margin was 37.6% and adjusted segment income margin was 16.1%. Turning to Slide 10 for a review of our balance sheet and cash flow highlights. Net debt to adjusted EBITDA was 4 times at the end of the first quarter.

We continued to prioritize deleveraging and expect to be back within our targeted range of 2 times to 3 times this year. Total liquidity at the end of the quarter was $463 million, including cash and equivalents of $116 million, plus availability under our credit facilities of $347 million. We have no near-term maturities on our debt. The debt matures in 2028 and the undrawn ABL matures in 2026. This attractive maturity schedule provides financial flexibility as we execute our strategic plans. Our borrowing rate benefits from the $600 million of debt currently tied to fixed interest rate swap agreements, maturing in 2025 through 2027, limiting our cash interest rate on term facilities to 6.7% in the first quarter. Our average interest rate earned on global cash deposits for the quarter was 5.1%.

Overall, we’re pleased with the quality of our balance sheet. The business has strong free cash flow generation attributes driven by high-quality earnings. As a reminder, cash flows are seasonal and the company typically uses cash in the first quarter and has strong cash generation in the second quarter related to payment collection of early buy receivables. Cash flow used in operations was $77 million in the first quarter, compared to $91 million in the year-ago period. This improvement reflects continuous improvement in working capital management, primarily reduced inventory levels, total inventories declined by $54 million or 20% year-over-year. CapEx was $6 million in the first quarter and consequently free cash flow was a use of $83 million.

We continued to expect free cash flow conversion of greater than 100% of net income with full year 2024 free cash flow of approximately $160 million. Given the year-over-year increase in our cash balance and our confidence in strong seasonal cash collections in the second quarter, we completed a voluntary early debt repayment subsequent to the quarter-end. Specifically, we used cash on hand to repay the full outstanding balance on our incremental Term Loan B of approximately $123 million. We expect this to result in annualized interest expense savings of approximately $10 million or $4 million net of interest income. Expected net savings for fiscal year 2024 are approximately $3 million, reflecting the partial year impact. Turning now to capital allocation on Slide 11.

As we’ve highlighted before, we maintained a disciplined financial policy and take a balanced approach, emphasizing strategic growth investments and shareholder returns, while maintaining prudent financial leverage. In the near term, we are prioritizing growth CapEx investments and debt repayments. We also continued to consider strategic acquisition opportunities to complement our product offering, the geographic footprint in which we serve and commercial relationships, in addition to opportunistic sharing purchases. Turning now to Slide 12 for our outlook. Our outlook for 2024 is unchanged. We continued to anticipate a return to sales and earnings growth for the full year, driven by solid execution across the organization, positive price realization and increased technology adoption.

Our guidance range contemplates uncertainty in global macro conditions and consumer spending trends, coupled with our current expectation regarding channel inventory levels. For the full fiscal year 2024, Hayward continues to expect net sales to increase approximately 2% to 7%, equivalent to a range of $1.01 billion to $1.06 billion, with adjusted EBITDA of $255 million to $275 million. We anticipate full year free cash flow of approximately $160 million. Our interest expense expectation is reduced by $3 million to $67 million as a result of the early debt repayment. The effective tax rate forecast remains approximately 25% for the remainder of the year and our CapEx spending forecast is also unchanged at approximately $35 million. Looking out beyond 2024, we remain very positive about the long-term health and growth profile of the pool industry, particularly the strength of the aftermarket.

We are confident in our ability to successfully execute our strategic growth plans. And with that, I’ll now turn the call back to Kevin.

Kevin Holleran: Thanks, Eifion. I’ll pick back up on Slide 13. Before we close, let me reiterate the key takeaways from today’s presentation. We delivered first quarter results consistent with expectations and reaffirmed our outlook for the year. Our team continues to execute, delivering strong gross margin expansion and improved cash flow, allowing us to fund our growth strategies and fully repay our incremental term loan early. We’re leading an innovation bringing new solutions to market to improve the pool ownership experience. I’m confident that we have the right strategy and talent in place to drive compelling financial results and shareholder value creation. With that, we’re now ready to open the line for questions.

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Q&A Session

Operator: [Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from Andrew Carter from Stifel. Your line is now open. Excuse me. Your first question comes from Andrew Carter from Stifel. Your line is now open.

Andrew Carter: Yes, sorry about that. I can’t figure out the mute function on my phone. So I wanted to ask to dig in a little bit about the gross margin. Here, you were up 260 basis points in the quarter. Your guidance maintained implies that slows to 125 basis points. I guess, as you look at the full year gross margin, is there upside? And then kind of focus on the bifurcated performance. Europe was down quite a bit in the quarter. I know you called out some one-time issues. Could you call out the margin headwind there and just kind of the puts and takes for the remainder of the year? Thanks.

Eifion Jones: Hi, Andrew, it’s Eifion. Yes, thanks for the question. Look, we’re very pleased with the gross margin. We achieved 49.2% in Q4 and we’ve matched that record now as we’ve stepped into the first quarter of 2024. We’ve talked about this before. We have four main pillars of margin expansion. One is operating leverage and we continued to maximize the output across our manufacturing footprint. We’ve done a lot of work over the last four years to progressively collapse certain facilities and convert that to production volume into the remaining four walls of our global manufacturing footprint. We’re obviously seeing now the full benefits in 2024 of the price cost neutrality program that we achieved in ’23. We’re back to basics in our lean manufacturing practices.

We have, as Hayward, a hallmark of practicing lean over many, many decades. We’re back to seeing that. The price cost management is, as I mentioned, a strong attribute of this organization and, the industry has a very disciplined and sticky pricing mechanism. Pricing was initiated October 1st. Obviously there’s a higher blend of early buy in Q4 and Q1, but we should see price continue to develop as we step through the balance of the year. And as Kevin mentioned, we continue to introduce really informative new products, which typically come with a higher pricing and higher margin attributes on the value-based pricing model. As it relates to the Europe situation, look, I mean, we recognize there’s a delta between the North American and the European market.

Obviously, there’s a lack of scale in Europe in comparison to North America. We continued to tackle that issue. We have consolidated our manufacturing footprint in Spain and we have growth plans, which will ultimately yield, we believe, leverage across that manufacturing cost installed base. It remains a fragmented market. It’s a different competitive landscape and a different type of technology adoption across the European spectrum. So there are some reasons why we see the differentials. All we believe are capable of being improved over the course of time and we’re tackling that. As it relates to the balance of the year, do we believe there’s upside to the margin? We talked about this in the full year call earlier this year. We do believe that we’ll achieve approximately 150 basis points improvement year-over-year.

We’ve done a nice step forward in Q1 of this year and we do expect as leverage returns across the business that we will get margin expansion. So we feel very, very good about our margin opportunities in the business.

Andrew Carter: Thank you. And second question, just wanted to drill in on readout in the quarter, how that trended? And I know that there was a lot of – there was a weather impact pool called out in the first quarter, kind of the South. How did that kind of – how has that kind of trended into April? And just kind of remind us what your kind of full-year expectations are for readout, particularly North America?

Kevin Holleran: Yes, Andrew, – our guidance, which remains unchanged, obviously, was really built around 2% pricing increase. I’ll start there. But from market standpoint, we’re really calling in both U.S. and Rest of World. The aftermarket, to remain flat. But really, the more discretionary aspects, whether that’s new build, upgrade, or remodel that to feel some pressure this year. From a discretionary standpoint, U.S., we’re calling down 10% from a volume standpoint, and more than that in all international markets, closer to down 20%. So as that flows through from a volume standpoint, that’d be down 6% to 7% or so after the 2% price. Obviously, the channel destock experienced last year should now reverse for us. And we feel that is about a 10% tailwind here in 2024 with a modest FX headwind.

That kind of adding that up gets you to, midpoint guidance, there between that 2% and 7%. As for the start of Q2, obviously that’s the start of the season. As spring rolls in all markets, there was some weather, that impacted Q1 very, very warm nationally, but some rain, which obviously prohibits or inhibits using of the pool in the year round markets and also hurts construction, but weather seems to be improving here in April, and order flow, as expected, is picking up for us as we’re in the season. So, we’ve said this on prior calls. With the destock really behind us, we’re now back to that more historic, matching our shipments into the channel with what their sales out is. And that’s a much healthier position to be in. And we see that playing out through Q2 and through the pool season here in 2024.

Andrew Carter: Thanks. I’ll pass on.

Operator: Your next question comes from Ryan Merkel from William Blair. Your line is now open.

Ryan Merkel: Hi, good morning, everyone, and congrats on a good start to the year. I had a question on sales, and I guess, one on pricing. I think following up to sort of that last question, Kevin, how are you thinking about the outlook for new pools and renovation in ’24? Any new thoughts as we enter the season here?

Kevin Holleran: No, there really isn’t new thoughts, Ryan. I think we’re, from what we’re seeing, we’re sticking to that – to that, original guides, or the assumption in the original guide, around that down 10% and down closer to 20% in the international markets. We track permits very closely. You may as well covering the industry. And we saw, frankly, something a little worse than that in Q1. But based upon input that we are hearing from some of our dealers, we think that that may improve as the year plays out. So we’re – again, in the U.S. where we have the best permit data, we are holding to that down 10%. There is some discussion that some of the remodel, which has largely been pushed to the right over the last several years, as builders prioritized new construction, folks weren’t able to get the work done.