American Outdoor Brands, Inc. (NASDAQ:AOUT) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

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Matthew Koranda: Yeah, absolutely. That’s very helpful, Brian. Thank you. And then I guess just maybe one for Andy, and I think maybe this has been asked in different ways in the past. But as you take over the full lease in the Columbia facility. Just curious how we should be thinking about modeling OpEx costs in the back half of the year, since it’s the Jan 1, I think take over?

Andrew Fulmer: Yeah. Great question. It is January 1st, we take that over. That is built into our OpEx assumptions and the framework that we provided with the EBITDAS could be up to 6.5%. I can’t really get more specific than that. I think what you’ll see is as we get closer, when we take that the extra space over and then into the next fiscal year, we’ll be able to share more details.

Matthew Koranda: Okay. Fair enough. And then I guess just last one, I guess it’s somewhat of a traditional question. Lots of different people attack it on these calls, but maybe Brian, could you take a crack at talking about M&A and just the funnel as we see it today? I mean, now that you have the debt, basically wiped clean, share buybacks been exercised with good results. Just curious how we should be thinking about M&A, our appetite there, what the funnel looks like, how folks are thinking about valuation? Are there more catalysts to bring folks to the market? What are you seeing on that front?

Brian Murphy: Yeah. So, I kind of give you a sense for the environment right now. And then what I think is just my own opinion what I think will sort of happen in the next few quarters based on our conversations with people. But certainly, we’ve seen the number of deals come to market by sell-side advisors, investment bankers has come down pretty significantly. And I think that’s for two reasons. One is valuation expectations have lowered. And also, I think that some of those companies, depending on which categories they’re in, have — maybe have now reached a run rate EBITDA that they would like to get sort of credit for going forward. And so they’re looking for sort of multiple stabilization, run rate stabilization, before they come back to market.

With that said, we are seeing fewer deals, but we are continuing to be very, very aggressive in our outbound efforts. So both Andy and I are always picking up the phone reaching out to people that we want to go after that we think would be highly complementary. And so that continues. And so we’ve got a, I’ve all these that were robust. We’ve got a very robust pipeline and a number of people that we’re currently speaking with and we’ll see where those go. Like you said, we’ve got a very clean balance sheet. We have capacity. We’re in a great spot and we’re also not sacrificing our efforts on the share repurchase side. So we’re in about as good as a position as you can be in, I think. when it comes to M&A. And then looking out, I think, look, Q1, Q2 — calendar, Q1, Q2 of next year, I think that we will start to see more deals come back to market.

That’s sort of the sense that I have in speaking with advisors and with companies directly. Because I think they’ll have more line of sight around what run rate, EBITDA performance looks like. And that’s very similar to what you’re hearing from people like us and even other public companies as they sort of look down the barrel of some of these forecasts that provided to us from our retailers and give us that sort of more comfort based on what we know today about replenishment coming back.

Matthew Koranda: Okay. Super helpful. I’ll leave it there guys. Thank you.

Operator: This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Brian Murphy for any closing remarks.

Brian Murphy: Thank you, operator. Please note, we will be participating in two upcoming investor conferences, the Lake Street Conference in New York City on September 14th. And the CL King Best Ideas Virtual Conference on September 18th. We hope to see some of you at those events. In closing, I want to thank our employees across American Outdoor Brands for their great work this quarter and for helping our customers and our consumers make the most out of the moments that matter. Thank you everyone for joining us. We look forward to speaking with you again next quarter.

Operator: The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today’s presentation. You may now disconnect.

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