AMMO, Inc. (NASDAQ:POWW) Q3 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Page 2 of 2

Mark Smith: Perfect. And then it looked like the proprietary ammo had a little better sales during the quarter than I’d expected. Was that just some of the new branding and shipping, some of maybe stuff in new boxes or things that looked a little better in the quarter?

Jared Smith: It’s a little bit of the rebranding. We’re really hitting our stride on the rebranding just now. Shipments are going out on the black and yellow boxes that have a better presence. I would tell you that I think it’s a big part of market recovery. The sales team really hit its stride in Q4, we’ve got a really strong team that is out. And I think people are starting to recognize the AMMO, Inc. brand again. The pricing out there is healthier than it was in Q2 and Q3 or in Q1 and Q2.

Mark Smith: Okay. Next question for me is just looking at ammo margin here, still tough, but I’m curious if you can dive into it a little bit more, how much of that was maybe, we’ll call it, one-time-ish in nature with the press still being down versus just kind of headwinds that are out there in the industry. In particular, for loaded ammo, what are you seeing for powder propellant and any other kind of costs that are hurting margin right now?

Jared Smith: There is certainly a constraint for propellant. I think the market is going to see that constraint more and more as the year goes on. I think that’s going to impact some of the smaller players more than the bigger players. As we look into kind of the one-time plays, I mean, once again, as I said earlier, we’re still at less than 30% capacity of our rifle production, and there is a massive capacity still sitting there as we bring it on, more and more capacity day by day. So that’s really where our margin creation comes from. And then I think the inventory levels out there in the U.S. market are relatively healthy despite it being an election year. I think people are coming off of this kind of post 2022-2023 slump. We came out of shot show and talking to all the retailers and dealers out there, everybody’s pretty confident about what we’re seeing in the market.

Mark Smith: Okay, the last question for me, this new contract is certainly a positive, curious across the board for your business, kind of how you feel about contract business. You’ve got, I think, you call it, your signature on target happy and happy rounds. Just curious any update on kind of your outlook on military or global contract business?

Jared Smith: It’s really, really solid and we’ve held off on taking large contracts, because we wanted real internal proof of performance before we go sign on to any larger deals. I mean, there’s no lack of ability for us to go out and get multi-year contracts, but we really wanted to perform first. And I think some of our clients are waiting for us to perform first before they start sending in more orders. They know it’s a new factory. They know we can produce premium rifle cases and cartridges. But once again, they want to see the proof before they bet the entire future of their supply lines honor. And so I think we’re gaining that confidence back day by day. And we’ll start taking those larger contracts, such as this 12.7 x 108 contract that we just took.

Mark Smith: Okay, great. Thank you.

Jared Smith: Thank you, Mark.

Operator: This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Mr. Jared Smith for any closing remarks. Please go ahead.

Jared Smith: I want to thank you all for participating on today’s call and your interest in AMMO, Inc. We look forward to sharing our progress when we report our fiscal fourth quarter and full fiscal year 2024 results in June. Thanks and have a great day.

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

Follow Ammo Inc.

Page 2 of 2