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

We feel good about the inventory that we have in our facilities and in our stores. Again, when you think about that composition of product that we’re bringing in early, it’s high-turn product, top SKUs that we know we need for full season and where last year we talked a lot about, kind of getting behind the curve and replenishment cycle, we have more inventory available to distribute out to whether e-commerce, customers or to our retail locations to serve those consumers as season really gets kicked off. And again, consistent with prior years, I can’t tell you the day or the week that season will really kick off, but it will be typically in the month of May. So, I feel good with the position we have in inventory today.

Jonathan Matuszewski: That’s super helpful. And then just a follow-up question on Trichlor, Mike, I think you mentioned you weren’t seeing any evidence of price deflation, I think we’ve seen some online retailers maybe cutting price in January. I’m not sure if that’s just a seasonal, kind of promotion that they typically do, but any commentary on that would be helpful. Thanks.

Mike Egeck: Yes, there’s a little bit of import €“ to actually call it questionable import running through Amazon at the moment, but it’s quite small and it’s literally small buckets. And there was something similar last year for a short period of time and then it disappeared. And I think we’re probably in a similar situation. There’s always some competition around the edges, but in terms of our retail price competitors and our scale digital competitors, I think the Trichlor pricing is acting pretty rationally.

Jonathan Matuszewski: That’s great. Thanks for clearing that up.

Operator: Our next question is from Peter Benedict with Baird. Please proceed.

Peter Benedict: Hi, Mike, Steve, just a couple of questions. First, just on the sector supply chain. Maybe what €“ just help us. What’s still not operating efficiently? And you’re bringing a lot of inventory in. I’m just curious, what areas of the business are you still, kind of concerned about or maybe aren’t operating, I guess, fluidly at this point? That’s my first question.

Mike Egeck: Yes. Peter is €“ you’ll remember in Q3 and Q4 last year, we had some challenges with specialty chemicals in particular. And we said, we would address that in two ways. We buy more earlier, which we’ve done. And we’d also diversify our vendors there, which we’ve done as well. So, if I was to point to one area that would be probably predominant. In terms of equipment, the equipment vendors have done a nice job getting themselves back on schedule, fairly recent. And we have taken in a lot of equipment inventory purposely so that we won’t be looking necessarily to reorder in season. We , trying to buy it upfront, which I think we’ve successfully done with all except maybe one vendor. And then in Trichlor, that’s really us, and we control most of that supply chain now, particularly with our €“ particularly with our investment in stellar for tableting.

So, we feel good about where we are with Trichlor, but we’ve also bulked up the inventory there as well, with the idea that we’re going to preposition a much higher percentage of it into the stores themselves. And the only other area that’s a little €“ that’s been a little bit challenging, but it’s coming along nicely now is , kind of the second largest sanitizer in the industry that was in rather short supply in Q4 and is just really now, in December and January, coming online in the volumes we’d like.

Peter Benedict: All right. That’s very helpful. Thanks Mike. And then just on the loyalty file, I think you said it was up 15%, I think that’s an improvement in the rate of growth relative to what was running, kind of last year, maybe talk about what’s driving that and the €“ maybe the complexion of who you’re bringing the trial?