Fox Factory Holding Corp. (NASDAQ:FOXF) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Mike Dennison: Thanks, Jim.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question will come from Anna Glaessgen with Jefferies. Your line is open.

Anna Glaessgen: Great. Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. First, I want to touch on any considerations of the margin evolution when you’re specked on a new auto trends, for example, in the first year, are you brought in listing start-up costs? I mean margins ramp in each subsequent year. So for example, you have a lot of new trends layering in the model over this past year and the next year, anything to consider there?

Mike Dennison: That’s a good question, Anna. What you see in the launch of a new automotive product is you see kind of the inefficiency of the line that’s getting ramped up and people willing to build the product. You guys usually have some lower quality levels. So you’re doing the rework on product as it’s coming off the line. Really, we feel like we’re very mature in product launches, probably 4 to 6 months going on the product after we launched it. So we launched a lot of products in 2022 that are kind of in core production mode now in €˜23. And that’s helping us also with the improvement in Gainesville as we bring those lines, the maturity and get the efficiencies that we made.

Anna Glaessgen: And then building on that, are there any, is there any sort of escalator built into the contract with the OEMs, the Raptor is going for 5 years? Is there any step change within that?

Mike Dennison: Well, most €“ our contracts with OEMs typically don’t have any kind of cost reduction expectation and requirements in. So as a general note, we don’t get into specifics of any one contract. That is a general way of thinking about it, those efficiency gains that we get are ours to benefit from.

Anna Glaessgen: Great. That’s super helpful. And then one of your comments, you said being a little bit more conservative in spending and hiring. Is it fair to read into that and say that you guys feel pretty good about the current labor that you have and particularly at Gainesville, where it was tight, especially over COVID?

Mike Dennison: Yes. We’re adjusting our labor force in Taiwan as a reflection of kind of the seasonality that I mentioned in my comments and just kind of what we’re seeing in the first quarter or two. In Gainesville is going to be the other side of that story, where we’re adding people fairly consistently and significantly. And we think that workforce is going to continue to grow throughout this year and we having pretty, pretty good luck finding the right people to come work for us.

Anna Glaessgen: Okay, great. Thanks.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question will come from Alex Perry with Bank of America. Your line is open.

Alex Perry: Hi, I just wanted to follow-up on SSG a bit more. It’s a pretty wide range in terms of the guidance. So could you maybe just give us some color on sort of what could drive upside or downside to the range? Does the high end of the range imply that the bloat you’re seeing in the supply chain gets better or is it assuming sort of better end market demand? Maybe just some color on the SSG guide?