Acushnet Holdings Corp. (NYSE:GOLF) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

So we tend to think of weather as being flat, so rounds being flat with the understanding you’re going to be wrong in one direction or another. And then getting into our businesses, right, if I look at it through its parts and pieces, we’ve got enthusiasm and excitement around new Pro V1 launch that brings great energy to the ball business and brand. We’re enthused about our driver success with TSR starting in the fourth quarter and heading into its first Spring season. And we look at our gear and our FootJoy business, and we look internally at our products in our pipeline, and we have cause for optimism. To maybe the root of your question, right, the caution, if there is any, and there always is, the caution is always around the consumer and where goes the consumer in 2023.

But where we stand today, the factors I just walked through are effectively the baseline and foundation for our guide. As to segment, I’ll pass it over to Tom for his thoughts.

Tom Pacheco: Well, Daniel, what we’ve said as it relates to segment is we do anticipate growth on a constant currency basis across all of our segments. So it is across the board. From an earnings perspective, there are lots of puts and takes that we all know about. We’ve seen — we’re seeing a reduction both in freight rates and the utilization of airfreight, but there are also some headwinds, particularly from input cost and currency and potentially the return of some promotional activity. So all in all, we anticipate that our gross margins will be up slightly across all of our segments and that our OpEx is going to grow a little bit faster than sales.

Daniel Imbro: Got it. Thank you guys for the color. Maybe to follow-up on that last point, Tom thinking about the promotional cadence, which part of the business do you expect to see that show up most in? Is it equipment? Is it apparel? And then maybe related, you guys launched your TSR, it went really well at Fall. But obviously, your peers now have launched competitive product, and it’s a pretty full channel. Based on what you’re hearing out of the industry, is inventory heavy with any one OEM? Is there a risk of any OEM getting promotional on the club side this year? Can you just expound on that would be great.

David Maher: Yes. I’ll touch on that, Daniel. So to your first question, balls for us, we’re feeling like we’re finally caught up from an inventory standpoint. So we think that category is not oversupplied. Therefore, unlikely it would get overly promotional. Our club business, in some respects, beats to its own drum. We’re so custom fitting oriented that we’re confident that we’re not going to get caught up in excess inventories. I think we may have said this on the last call, the categories that might be the most susceptible to promotional activity would be footwear and apparel. And really that traces back to they were industry-wide, the most disrupted last year in the second quarter in the first and second quarters because of the supply chain disruption.

So you had a lot of Spring products that simply came in late and didn’t get out the door. So those categories we’ve been watching carefully. And again, I think if you’re looking for where is the highest likelihood of promotional activity, that’s where you’d see it apparel and footwear. Now again, in the context of where that sits historically, I would say below historical, below historical normal levels but certainly above what we’ve seen in the last couple of years. As to your second question about competition, we like where we are. Again, I mentioned we’ve got a Pro V1 launch here, a lot of great energy and enthusiasm there. The driver realities you mentioned, that’s an annual occurrence, right? We go when our competitors go, when they go.