Austin Singleton: Jack, let me jump in, then you can backstop it a little bit. I think, Joe, one of the things that the exercises that we kind of went through is we wanted to go back and look at ‘17, ‘18, ‘19 as individual years and seasonality by month and quarters and then also took an average of those three and kind of applied that to where we are today for the first quarter. And it’s — it was a really good exercise and it gave us a lot of confidence on where we sit today. There’s a lot of things out there in front of us that we can’t control on the macro that could change some things. But when you look at just how it used to be, and then what we’re seeing as far as like the transition to bigger boats in the winter months, because those are a longer build time, just the way the customers buying patterns and not the urgency in the September, October, November to order smaller boats, they’re waiting to the boat shows, it just — it feels just like it was ‘17, ‘18 and ‘19.
And I mean, we had great years at those times. Now, I do agree that we’ve shifted the EBITDA contribution to some of these higher margin businesses. So that changes it a little bit. But if you just kind of really look at the seasonality of new boat sales, which is still the predominant driver of our EBITDA and you go back and you look at it pre-COVID, take all the COVID noise out of that, it’s a pretty compelling story where we sit today. And I think that’s something that’s got us optimistic, feeling pretty good. Boat shows have helped a little bit. But then, we got to really be careful and watch really tight, inventory and all this stuff as we move forward, because there’s some things out there that could stump us that we can’t control. So going back to what we kind of say all the time, we’re controlling the things we can control and we’re watching it really tough.
And if this shifts, we’re going to make big adjustments. But right now, if you look at what the seasonality was pre-COVID and take all that COVID noise out of it, it kind of feels like we’re back to this new normal of this something very similar to what we saw pre-COVID. Jack, I probably rambled too much, but you can add to that.
Jack Ezzell: No, you pretty much stole all my thunder. I think the only thing I would add to when you work through the math of it, I think as I look out at consensus guidance, right, I think we got the front half of the year just a little too heavy and the back half of the year a little light. And when you think about that, right, you go kind of over the last several years with COVID, right, and scarcity of inventory, the first half of the year we accelerated so much, we shifted so many sales into that beginning part of the year. And we were selling pontoon boats and ski boats in the December quarter when that customer wasn’t even really using the boat. Normally that was a spring and early summer boat buyer. And so now I think we’re seeing those sales transition back and that’s our expectation.
But like Austin said, we’re cautiously optimistic that if those sales don’t come in the back half, or as we’re going through the boat show season lining up orders, we’ll adjust. But as of right now, we’re constantly optimistic.
Joe Altobello: Okay, great. Thank you, guys.
Operator: The next question comes from Michael Swartz with Truist Securities. Please go ahead. Go ahead Mr. Swartz, your line is open.
Michael Swartz: Hey sorry about that, forgot there was a mute button. Just trying to understand, with regard to the guidance, I would assume there’s some sensitivity to the path of interest rates, both on consumer demand, your flooring expense, F&I revenue. So maybe just help us understand, what exactly are you embedding in your guidance as it pertains to the path of interest rates over the next 12 — six to 12 months?
Austin Singleton: Jack, I don’t think we embedded a whole lot of [indiscernible] interest rates.
Jack Ezzell: I wouldn’t say we embedded any material changes. I would say in our models, right, we get some yield curves from a couple different banks, including Truist, and we kind of synthesize those together, and we drop them in the model. So we’re not baking in some additional shift or curve or a significant reduction, if that’s what you’re getting at. I think as far as retail goes, we are baking in that — the pressure we’ve seen on the F&I line where we’re just not able to make the spreads we’ve made in the past. So that’s probably the biggest, I’ll say it’s more of a negative impact versus a positive. Should rates ease a little bit, maybe that gets better. But again it’s, as you know, it’s a highly profitable business, and it has certainly can impact the model, but it’s just a small piece.
Michael Swartz: Got you. That’s helpful. And maybe just expanding, I think, Anthony, you had some commentary around the boat shows, and I think, we kind of look at the boat shows and compare them to a year ago and maybe if we can go back to pre-COVID, maybe back to the 2019 level, not so much concerned about what you’re seeing demand-wise there, but just the level of promotional intensity maybe versus back then, and I’m sure the answer’s a little different pertaining to model year ‘23 or model year ‘24, but is there any way you can just frame what discounting looks like this year versus maybe a normal year?
