Superior Group of Companies, Inc. (NASDAQ:SGC) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Michael Benstock: Our focus is still primarily on bringing our debt levels down. As I mentioned, our target is to get our net leverage ratio down into somewhere between 2 and 2.5. We’ve been there historically and we would like to get back into that position, which then would enable us to consider other uses of capital. So, we’re happy with the progress we have made in six months but we’ve got unfinished business and we remain focused on bringing those debt level down.

Jim Sidoti: Alright. And then last one for me, in the branded products business, it sounds like that has a lot of potential for you to grow. If you can pick up some share there. What are the one or two things you need to do to pick up that share, is it adding people or is it into increased promotional activity, what do you think the key is to growing share in that market?

Michael Benstock: Yes, that’s a great question. Growing share in that market means we have to take business away from 1 of our 22,000 competitors, right? The easiest way to do that is to take their salespeople who come to us with a book of business. And generally within 18 months have moved 80% of their book of business to us, And with the support, we can give them, we can help them grow, even double their business with us versus their prior employers. So, that’s the easiest and least expensive way. The second most favorable way to do it is to really produce a marketing effort, which we have done very, very little marketing in the past, but we are starting to spend some money on marketing to drive people to us, who perhaps have never heard from us before.

And the third, the third probably the way we’ve done it in the past so successfully is we bought some of our smaller competitors and rolled them up under [Vanco] (ph). And that’s been a very successful strategy. Obviously, with our leverage ratio is where it’s at right now, we’re not comfortable doing that. We are talking to people. We continue to speak to them. So that when things ease up from a covenant perspective, we’ll be able to go ahead and actually close deals. I can tell you that because of the way the economy is and because of maybe interest rates being what they are and expectations being lower than they might have been a few years ago. I think the valuations will come in very, very well to our favor when we do go out and do acquisitions again.

But in the meantime, we’re sitting tight and trying to work through our capital requirements very, very carefully, but I would expect sometime next year, that we will be back in M&A movement. I can’t say we’ll close any deals, but we certainly will be a lot more active but there’s never a shortage of opportunities out there. So those are really the three ways.

Operator: The next question is from David Marsh with Singular Research. Please go ahead.

David Marsh : Hey guys, thanks for taking the questions. I could start kind of at the macro, the revenue guidance is a pretty meaningful reduction from what you guys provided last quarter. I guess the question is, do you feel like the numbers that you’ve put out are conservative enough that you’ll be able to hit that range here as we sit here kind of part of the way through the third quarter and really with only about five months left in the year.

Mike Koempel: Yeah, David. I would say we’re obviously we’re comfortable with the range. We’ve been approached that closer to the third quarter, a little bit into the third quarter can get some sense of what’s in the pipeline, across our segments. We felt that the range that we just guided to is a good range. We’re certainly going to work very hard to not just meet that range, but beat that range, but we feel like it’s an appropriate range based on the trends that we’ve seen in the business more recently.