Solo Brands, Inc. (NYSE:DTC) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Somer Webb: Yes, yeah. I think we’re on track. I think you’re going see us make the steps. We said it was going to take two to three years. And you’re going to see steps in ’23 and in ’24. But we still have line of sight to the 20% and we do expect that within two to three years. So yeah, I think from the freight easing, from where we’re going from a standpoint, even as we get to the back half of the year, as we look at gross margin from a standpoint of raw materials and cost of goods, but also really getting the leverage getting the leverage, you mentioned that marketing spend that hit its peak kind of midyear last year, we’ve started to see that normalized. But yeah, we see line of sight to 20% and we expect to be back there in two to three years.

Megan Alexander: Awesome. Thank you very much.

Operator: Our next question is from Brian McNamara from Canaccord Genuity. Brian, your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Brian McNamara: Good morning, guys. Congrats on the strong results. Can you provide some more color on the wholesale strength in Q4? And how should we think about wholesale growth in 2023? If you hit the midpoint of your sales guidance at a 25% proportion of decline implies a pretty significant growth. Are you getting deeper with current partners expanding with new partners, or both? Does Costco play a much bigger role here?

John Merris : Thanks, Brian. Good morning. Good, good questions. So overall, I’d say that it’s more of an emphasis around going deeper with existing partners. Costco is an existing partner. So definitely going deeper with Costco is an exciting opportunity for us. But we’re going to continue to be thoughtful and careful in the way that that looks. So is just not certainly not a — all of our eggs are in a single, a single partner’s basket and that includes Costco. So we’re forecasting and have line of sight to healthy growth with Costco specifically, as well as with the rest of the partners that we already have in the tail. So excited about the opportunities ahead of us across all wholesale. But yes, we are expecting really nice growth in ’23 based on our line of sight right now with our retail partners.

And again, I just mentioned, but we’ll say again, relatively flat D2C business year-over-year with nice, healthy, healthy growth on the wholesale side, and then some nice growth in international that kind of round out the overall forecast for the business for us.

Brian McNamara: Great. And then secondly, I mean, clearly, the whole separate motion is a lot higher than many of us had envisioned even one to two years ago. Can you talk about what drove the decision to increase the penetration there further? Is it helping build brand awareness? Is it the similar profitability profile? Is it something else? Thanks.

John Merris : Yeah, it’s really two things. I think I think the first one is as we started leaning in just even in slight ways, this last year, it became very clear as we were doing our data work that we were bringing new sets of eyeballs through our retail partners. And we really liked that. So we liked that we were able to attract a customer base that we weren’t reaching with our online D2C business. And then secondly, the financial profile of our wholesale business compared to D2C and especially what’s happened overall with the cost of just digital marketing in general, and how that’s become basically assumed the same profile from a profit standpoint, has made it easy for us to start leaning into and saying , if we can drive a new customer through wholesale and generate the same level of profits that we do through D2C, then this is definitely something we should be looking at, especially if they’re bringing us new sets of eyeballs or new customers that we’re not reaching online.