Superior Group of Companies, Inc. (NASDAQ:SGC) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Tim Moore: Sure, I know that that makes sense. Great prospects there. And it looks really good, probably a year or two out on revenues. My next questions, about, have you seen for BAMKO, as the order size stabilized recently year-to-date, or are you seeing, maybe not stabilized because the technology customers are pulling back, but you’re seeing possibly share wallet at your existing clients of BAMKO?

Michael Benstock: What I can tell you is we’re not losing any customers. But a lot of our customers have pulled back on how much they are ordering, and to correct conclusion that if they have fewer employees, and they’re buying employee gifting, or whatever, they’re buying less. So, our order size has come down. On the other side of that, when you get into these periods of time and uncertainty, you see a lot more RFP activity than you normally would see, because everybody’s doing their price checking out in the marketplace. So, we are responding to a great deal of RFPs right now. We have a big team who was just on RFPs. And the success of a few of them. A few wins, there could make a very big difference in our year.

Tim Moore: And I actually have a question from Mike. How much Mike do you think you estimate the excess or buffer inventory might be I’m trying to wrap my head around or maybe triangulate your free cash flow potential for this year. And it seems like you’d have a good tailwind for working capital. If you get those inventory levels more normalized by June. Have you ever kind of calculated the number on that?

Mike Koempel: I’m sorry, Tim, from an inventory perspective, and we’ve I think mentioned this in the prior call, it’s going to take us the better part of 2023 to really get inventories down to a level, to our targeted levels. And obviously, when you take into account bringing inventories down, because of the elevated levels we’ve had, but at the same time fueling some of the growth of the business, we would be targeting inventories by the end of the year to be down about mid-single digits. Again, that would be a combination of bringing healthcare down but then also fueling some of the growth in the business that we’re seeing across the other segments. So certainly, bringing the inventory down will help drive an improvement in free cash flow and working capital which has been our focus. We feel as Michael mentioned his prepared remarks with the reserves that we’ve taken in reducing some of the pricing. We can achieve that target and that’s our goal for the year.

Tim Moore: That makes sense. And just my last question is, is there any seasonal dip in the gross margin in December quarter? You mentioned which is helpful what the gross margin would have been 34% or so backing up the inventory. And I know you had to write down December quarter of the year before. I was just wondering if there is ever any kind of seasonal spending drop or marketing drop at the end of the year by BAMKO customers. What do you think maybe more of the drop this year was tied to some of those technology customers and layoffs?

Mike Koempel: Yes. There is not typically much seasonality, Tim, in the business. Obviously, as I called out, the big impact to us here in Q4 was the inventory charge. But typically, across the businesses, there is not too much of an impact. As Michael called out, specifically in the fourth quarter. And within the Branded Products segment, there was a lapping of some of the charges that were taken in Q4 of last year, which gave Branded Products an improvement. And then I would have just had also within Branded Products, there is a margin rate improvement that we have seen just in the quarter, as some of the lower margin customers have been eliminated. But again, I wouldn’t characterize that, as a seasonal just more of the timing of when those actions took place.

Tim Moore: Fair enough. That’s it for my questions and thanks for answering them.