WD-40 Company (NASDAQ:WDFC) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Sara Hyzer: So we do believe the price has been the primary driver in the margin recovery to date. And at this point, we are moving into really optimizing our supply chain and those strategic drivers to move from where we are today to get back up to the 55% are going to take some time to execute on and then see results in the business. So we do not believe we’ll be at 55% next fiscal year, but I do believe we will be making strides and step changes to get closer to that 55%. So we’re not going to — it’s hard to pinpoint a time when we’re looking out beyond the year. So I’m not going to commit to a date yet, but we will be making progress next year. And I think you’re looking at longer than a year to get there.

Steven Brass: And Daniel, if I can just add to that, this is Steve. Yes, if you look at it by trading block, it helps as well, right? So if you look at where our Asia Pacific trading block is, we’re at 56% now. So we’re already back up above that 55% target. So that’s a strong increase of the load that they had in Q4 of last year of 500 basis points, I believe. EMEA has recovered very strongly, 700 basis points of their low in Q4 as Sara, kind of, highlighted. And so they’re at 52% at the end of Q3. So it’s really about the Americas and the real kind of drag in the Americas is the fact that we have these high inventory levels, which were purchased at higher cost prices between six and nine months ago, and so we’re waiting for that to flow through. And so that’s going to be a big kind of kicker to gross margin as is reverting to our more strategic gross margin strategy of premiumization, international expansion, WD-40 Specialist, et cetera.

Daniel Rizzo: Got it. That’s very helpful. And then — so Asia was fairly strong. I know in the past, there’s been some order timing that, kind of, made the quarter stand out. I was wondering if there was any benefit in Asia Pacific from order timing in the third quarter?

Steven Brass: Well, yes, there was. So we had this strange, kind of, going on between last year with a lockdown in Shanghai, where we had a very poor third quarter. So the comparable kind of quarter performance this year looks better than it was because of the poor prior year. I know it was a strong performance all the same. So yes, there’s — that factor between Q3 and Q4 in Asia in terms of that whole lockdown dynamic when some of the business last year moved into Q4, right?

Daniel Rizzo: Okay, that’s helpful. And then I just noticed that there was some inventory — a little bit of inventory write-down in the quarter. I don’t know, is that something that’s kind of ongoing or is that just a small thing that’s kind of more usual?

Sara Hyzer: So that’s just a small thing. I wouldn’t expect that to continue as we continue to expand our filler network, we do go through testing to bring those fillers online. And as you can imagine, sometimes you’re going through testing and you need to work through the kinks in order to get the product to come out and pass all the quality test. So there was just a little bit of write-down associated with the final tests that we’re running through our — one of our third-party fillers in the Americas.

Daniel Rizzo: Okay, alright. Thank you very much.

Sara Hyzer: You’re welcome.

Steve Brass: Thank you.

Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude our allotted time for questions. We thank you for your participation on today’s conference call and ask that you to please disconnect your line.

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