Acushnet Holdings Corp. (NYSE:GOLF) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Casey Alexander: Okay. That’s helpful. That’s an approximation is just fine. Secondly, in relation to footwear, I mean, how much of this is demand driven versus an increase in the competitive element. When we’ve seen a number of start-ups that have come into the business that — and I think we’ve seen this before, it’s almost cyclical that a bunch of start-ups come in with a fanfare with some capital behind them, grab some market share for a period of time. But over time, they tend to sort of fade away. Is that kind of what we’re talking about here? Or it has been more sand-driven correction?

David Maher: No. Casey, you’re right on. I think it’s 2 parts. It’s — it may be 3 parts. Part 1 is we are seeing an influx of new competitors. Part 2 is there’s the reality of what’s happened to supply chains and forecasting maybe a bit overzealous, so you’ve got a supply bubble to an extent, which we would peg at about 20% higher than is appropriate for the footwear category. That results in price compression. There’s a bit of a demand story here as well as the demand is down a little bit from a year ago. And some of that as prices have fallen a bit. So you’re right. It starts with supply. It starts with a lot of new competitors. I did make the point earlier to contextualize this our footwear business is still about 30% bigger than it was in 2019.

That’s just the state of the footwear business, and you’ve seen this before. I do think we march through it. This is not the first time we’ve seen this — we’ve seen it function this way but the starting point is excess supply.

Sean Sullivan: Casey, this is Sean. Just to go back and clarify. It’s 286,000 shares of stock since June 9. So that will be in the queue when it’s filed today.

Operator: Our next question is from Michael Swartz of Truist Securities.

Unidentified Analyst: This is Lucas on for Mike. I was wondering if you could comment on the Datatech data for June. There was some pullback in ball share and I was wondering if you could just give some color on that.

David Maher: Yes. We don’t really get too focused on 30-day blocks of time, I would point to the year and the strong success we’re having in golf balls in particular. I think your question is ball driven. As I’ve said, our shipments are up 20% and our inventories are lower than we’d like. So we’re very happy with the state of the golf ball business. There was a unique component earlier in the year where we ran our loyalty rewarded promotion buy 3 get 1 that hit mostly April and May. So overall, we’re really pleased with the state of our golf ball business. We do acknowledge that there are pockets out there where Pro V1 inventory levels are less than we would like. And maybe that’s contributing to what we’re seeing. But overall, very strong year on the ball front. We think we’re gaining share. Certainly, our sales are very strong. And again, lean inventories support just a robust sell-through environment.

Operator: Our next question is from Noah Zatzkin from KeyBanc.

Noah Zatzkin: Just a high-level 1 for me. Obviously, continue to hear and see so much about a softer consumer and macro pressure elsewhere. And obviously, you guys have been resilient and the game of golf has been resilient. So maybe just some color on what gives you confidence in raising the guide here as well as any comments on how you’re feeling about the health of the core golf consumer would be helpful.