Leslie’s, Inc. (NASDAQ:LESL) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Mike Egeck: Yes. I think of the interest to see, I think chemicals, right, that sales opportunity has probably passed. I think it remains to be seen on equipment because with the weather being as challenging it was, it impacted store traffic, site traffic. And pools were not on people’s mind. So, I think there’s an opportunity to recover that. And again, super small quarter, upsized weather impact, we’re being very careful not to draw any trends for the full-year from it. And we didn’t see anything despite those two factors that would tell us we need to.

Steve Weddell: Yes. I’d add to it, Garik, that I think the loss sanitization days in the calendar fourth quarter were de minimis right? So, I think Mike’s right, it’s more along the lines of traffic. And could that have deferred some purchases around standardizers, but lot sanitization days, just not meaningful.

Garik Shmois: Okay, great. Thanks for that. Best of luck.

Operator: Our next question is from Peter Keith with Piper Sandler. Please proceed.

Peter Keith: Hi, good afternoon everyone. I want to follow up a little bit on the prior question around Trichlor. Mike had noted there’s a lot of Trichlor inventory in the industry. So, we’ll see what happens with pricing. I guess, in the event there is some price cuts when we get close to Memorial Day. How would that impact your product margins? Are you guys already, kind of brought up on a lot of the Trichlor inventory and sort of stuck with your cost? How should we think about that flow-through if deflation comes to be?

Mike Egeck: Yes. I believe our costs are set for Trichlor. So, if we €“ and I would say the industry costs are set. So, if we see price deflation from this point, retail price deflation, that would be an impact on margins. It’s also the reason we don’t think we’re going to see it in the industry. I don’t believe there is a need for any price deflation. And in our mind, inventory, demand, supply, both domestic and import, has all kind of settled in at a specific price and a specific volume, and we consider the category healthy at the moment.

Peter Keith: Okay. And then maybe just on that same topic, there seems to be some concern or some speculation that you and others in the industry are sitting on elevated chemical or Trichlor margins versus historic margins, where are you relative to like a 2019 level? Are you in-line or above on Trichlor or what does that margin profile look like?

Mike Egeck: Yes. Peter, I’m sorry, I’m going to have to pull the competitive information on that one. We have grown margins throughout the quarters. So, as David brought up earlier on a question, we’re closer to 2019 currently overall, but we expect to end the year in a better position than we were in 2019. And so margins are up overall for the business. And I would say our Trichlor margins are higher, but to go into specifics, I’m going to have to decline that one.

Peter Keith: Okay. Fair enough. I appreciate that. Thanks for the insights.

Operator: Our next question is from Andrew Carter with Stifel. Please proceed.

Andrew Carter: Thank you very much. Good evening. What I wanted to ask is, you mentioned the smaller pack sizes are something you’re seeing as a potential sign of consumer weaknesses. I guess how do you compare those €“ that percentage of the volume versus, say, before the big Trichlor disruption where there was a 35-pound bucket of tabs and people thought they couldn’t get anything, they’d grab it? Second thing I’d ask is wouldn’t the smaller pack size be accretive to you from a product margin standpoint? And finally, depending on how you extrapolate that, is it an easy switch if you’re over-inventoried at the store of big pack sizes to make that correction given pack sizes or are you stuck with it? Anything you can help out with there? Thanks.