Hayward Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:HAYW) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Kevin Holleran: Yes. I mean, what we primarily saw in the great financial crisis as I understand, was really our new construction took the biggest impact at that point in time. I think to be pragmatic, looking into 2023 with some of the inflationary concerns, I think it’s wise for us to kind of look at that 50% or so, that is very resilient and just say that as we get into the fourth quarter of this year, I think people have the ability to maybe defer some of the maintenance or maybe not fully upgrade to the current version and maybe do more of a like-for-like depending upon what their discretionary income looks like at that point in time. So I don’t think that there’s anything bigger at play, Nigel, than just trying to be a bit cautious with what might happen with this 50% of the — of our revenue flow.

Nigel Coe: understand that. And then my follow-on question, again, digging a bit deeper into the inventory dynamics. So it looks like about 10 points of headwinds baked in for inventory in North America, that’s about $100 million, I think, of headwind. Curious if you would expect to see the bulk of that to hit in 1Q and then perhaps a little less than 2Q? And then maybe just to frame kind of what impact you saw in the second half of last year?

Kevin Holleran: Yes. So the second half of 2022, I would say, obviously, in the Q2 call is when we identified the need to take days on hand out as we were starting to end the 2022 season. Our objective was to get days on hand by the end of the year back to pre-pandemic levels, which was — 2019 would be that marker, and we did that. We accomplished that in the — by the end of December, kind of getting back to those days on hand, months on hand in the channel. As the second half played out and as we look to finalize our 2023 guide, I would say some of the discretionary outlook for 2023 continue to soften as I previously spoke around remodels and new construction and whatnot. So with that view, having done good work in the second half of 2022, I think that there’s a couple of things contributing to a desire to have less inventory.

Overall, if there’s less retail activity, less inventory is required in the channel to service that. I think, secondly, us and most OEMs are back to normal lead times. So we’re able to provide a more just in time now that the supply chain disruptions are largely behind us. And then thirdly, I would say, obviously, inventory carrying costs are more expensive today than they were during the pandemic. So for all those reasons, that’s really what we accomplished in the second half of 2022, which I would say was a success and the need for additional work to be done in the start of 2023, Nigel.

Operator: The next question comes from Rob Wertheimer of Melius Research.

Rob Wertheimer: I had kind of a similar question to what Nigel just asked, but on the upgrade and remodel side. Can you contextualize the kind of rough outlook you gave for ’23 versus prior recessions? And as a follow-on to that, is that a forecast at this point? Or do you already have enough channel commentary and install a commentary or whatever to have kind of the real look at it at this point in the year?