Malibu Boats, Inc. (NASDAQ:MBUU) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Jack Springer: That’s a great question, Brandon, and I think — and it’s something we’ve looked at a lot. It’s only in, what I would call that entry level consumer I think you do see a little bit of that. You have a scenario in that sterndrive market where their waves have improved. Are they a 7, 8, 9, 10? No. But for that entry level, customer they don’t necessarily need that 7, 8, 9, 10. And so they’re looking at maybe other boats that do other things. And I think for the entire ski-wake industry, I think is that really puts us on a market we need to figure out how to combat that if we want that entry level consumer. And we have some plans in place that I’ll probably be talking about next quarter that we think that will certainly impact that.

Brandon Rolle: And then just on the promotional support, obviously, great success with that Labor Day event being moved up. Do you feel like that’s the right level of promotional activity moving forward, or is there a potential for more support maybe on the wholesale side for dealers moving forward?

Jack Springer: It’s going to be dictated by the market, really. And we think that we have planned sufficient programs in place and a couple of different brands is probably a little bit more than we’ve done even prior to COVID. But we think it’s the right level. And again, there’s no more than a 50, 75 basis point decrease to the EBITDA line. And so we’ll monitor it based on how the market goes. We think we have the right level but we’ll just see. But we’ll also make adjustments if we need to.

Brandon Rolle: And just one last question just on the first quarter guidance for fiscal year ’24. I think you had said there was an EBITDA headwind. I missed how much of a headwind there would be in the first quarter, if you could repeat that?

Jack Springer: We say about double the annual decrease, so call it, 500 to 700 bps.

Operator: The next question comes from Fred Wightman with Wolfe Research.

Fred Wightman: I just wanted to follow up on the comments about supplier pricing. It sounded like that caught you a little bit flat-footed. Just wondering maybe if you could quantify that and if those discussions are yielding any explanation for the disconnect?

Jack Springer: I mean I wouldn’t say flat footed. I think we were surprised by it. I would probably prognosticate that all of the OEMs were a little bit surprised at the pricing all the way from engines to smaller parts. They held higher. We felt like we would see more of a decrease or more of a movement back to where it was a couple of years ago and did not see that to the extent that we wanted to, did not necessarily take that in pricing all the way through. We felt like we needed to control pricing from our standpoint and not pass that along to the consumer. To your question, have we been seeing it come down? Yes, we’ve been working hard and in some cases, frankly, we’ve changed suppliers. I mean I think that all of us, both dealers and OEMs have to be very careful in this environment, especially with interest rates and our suppliers need to be becoming more logical in their pricing, and we all need to be taking pricing down where we can.

Fred Wightman: And then just on some of the inventory stats that you guys gave, helpful to have that sort of broken out freshwater versus saltwater but sort of a two part question. One, how do you sort of think those compared to what you’re seeing in the rest of the industry? I wasn’t sure if those were Malibu only or if that was sort of an industry comment? And then two, if you think that dealer inventory levels, should we be indexing those off of ’19, do you think that they sort of need to come down versus ’19, how do you sort of think about that?