Polaris Inc. (NYSE:PII) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Robert Mack: The other piece of that, too, is with the commercial business, keep in mind that the growth in the commercial business, which will be very strong in ’23 and has been — was in ’22 as well. That business doesn’t impact dealer inventory because it goes straight from the factory to the customer. And so you won’t see that show up in dealer inventory, but it does obviously show in revenue.

Michael Speetzen: And the majority of that business was already sitting in backlog. So there’s a high degree of confidence behind that.

James Hardiman: Just to clarify, I shouldn’t be sort of taking — it sort of seems like the first half sets up really favorably because you’ve still got that $150 million that should sort of be an add-on to your sales but then the back half of the year kind of feels like a $600 million headwind you’re telling me I shouldn’t think about it that way.

Robert Mack: No, I wouldn’t. To Mike’s point, I think that the timing of refilling the $150 million is going to depend on retail, and it’s all really RANGER at this point, so — or mostly RANGER. So as we continue to have strong shipments in Ranger, we think we’ll drive better share, which will make it harder to refill that inventory. So some of that or much of that could push to the second half some of the chunk of the commercial business is second half diluted again, we feel really good about that. And then we’ve got all the new product in the second half. So I don’t — I wouldn’t view it as that headwind is all in the second half.

Michael Speetzen: Yes. And I think, James, when you’re trying to do that math, you also have to consider we had retail declining in Q3, Q4 of last year. And if you assume retail is flattish. That obviously needs to focus into your calculus.

James Hardiman: Got it. One more quickie for me. Pricing and mix, it sounds like from your anecdotal commentary that you still think there’s a tailwind there. I guess how do we think about wholesale units versus wholesale dollars within the context of your guide? Are you getting a meaningful sort of ASP benefit as you sort of bridge those numbers?

Robert Mack: So there’s not — I mean, we expect pricing to be relatively flat. There’s been a fair amount of price taken in the industry over the last few years. So we’re not going into the year with expectations of ongoing price increases. So we think that will be relatively flat. A lot of the benefit really comes from mix and what we’re seeing, and I think this is really across the industry, the industry really has changed. The mix has moved much more towards multi-passenger and premium units. And that continued in ’22. We expect it to continue in ’23. That’s where the customer is going. I think you kind of got to look at this a bit like the SUV and truck market where consumers have — nobody buys a — really a 2-door truck anymore, right, everybody buys a crew and be buying fully optioned out. And that’s the same thing we see across the product lines is that move to premium and multipath,and that drives a lot of the ASP benefit.

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