Polaris Inc. (NYSE:PII) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

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Tristan Thomas-Martin: Okay. Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. And our final question today comes from Robin Farley with UBS. Please go ahead.

Michael Speetzen: Robin?

Operator: Robin, your line is open. Are you unmute perhaps?

Robin Farley: Yes, thanks. So you mentioned your expectation that you’re about gaining share through the year. But you also talked about how other OEMs have some more work to do that maybe some other. I don’t know if that was specific to ORV, but you mentioned that others may have more work to do in terms of clearing inventory. So I guess, I mean, wouldn’t that sort of suggest that it will be tough to grow share, not that share loss to another OEM that’s clearing inventory is meaningful or long term. But wouldn’t that make it difficult to grow share, if you’re sort of saying others have more inventory clearing to do than Polaris has?

Michael Speetzen: Yes. I mean it’s not helpful. And there certainly are pockets. I mean, when we talk about share, the internal discussion is far more in-depth by model, by trim line, things like that. So there are areas that it has presented a far bigger challenge. We’re not going to go crazy trying to protect when we’re battling someone who’s clearing inventory that’s a year or more old. The good news is that, that eventually comes to an end, and we’ll be on a better foot as we move forward. And as the last question indicated, we’re making real-time adjustments between price and promo to make sure that we’re reflecting where the market is. And given the innovation that we have around our products and the competitive nature, I’d stack us up number one relative to anybody coming after us.

So I feel great. I look at the new products, that new RANGER is going to be highly desired. The new Scout is going to be highly desired. We’re just now getting momentum around XPEDITION and XD. And then certainly, as some of the rec markets come back around RZR with the new products that we introduced over the past several years with the XP and the Pro R, we feel really good about the position that we’ve got there. Within our Marine business, we’ve refreshed a ton of the Godfrey line. We’ve refreshed and are refreshing a lot of the Hurricane models. We went after the low end of the Bennington and obviously, we’re going to continue forward on that. So we’ll have a lot of new models from our Marine segment. So I feel really good about where we’re at, and we’ll manage those competitive dynamics and make sure that we’re staying disciplined around dealer inventory.

Robin Farley: Great. And just one follow-up on you think about restocking and kind of what floor share will look like after everybody has gone through this inventory clearing, which it sounds like if you’re expecting retail for the industry to be down modestly for the year. It sounds like maybe Q2 will be the last kind of big clearing. And when you think about the others restocking, some dealers talk about some OEMs that are not as penetrated, right, in terms of dealer penetration. They can still charge close to MSRP. And so they can make money on even though it’s a lower-priced product than a Polaris product. And I guess how do you think about competing for floor share when dealers are restocking if they’re saying they can make more on a different OEM price point but not have to kind of compete with other dealers carrying that same brand. Is there anything that you can sort of do to combat that dynamic?

Michael Speetzen: I mean I’m sure there’s some pockets of that, but I wouldn’t say that’s a large scale. I think you sit down and you spend time like we do, talking with our dealers, I mean, it’s evident. We are such a big part of the majority of our dealers. And that’s important from a profitability standpoint. And they know and they’ve seen what’s happened when they carry some of these smaller brands and you get into difficult times and they don’t have as sophisticated inventory management. Any margins that they were making on those quickly get eroded because they carry too much inventory and they’re paying all the interest costs. So I think the good dealers that take a long-term view, understand that and really drive to make sure that we’ve got a strong relationship with them.

And I think the dealer cultivation we do, whether it’s in Indian or Off-Road or our Marine business is really setting the bar high, and I have a lot of confidence that we’ll continue to build those relationships.

Robert Mack: Yes. And we’ve continued to evolve. For most dealers, we are far and away the largest dollar profit contributor to their dealerships, our NorthStar Rewards program that we use to manage our dealers. There’s a lot of criteria in that around floor space and how they need to present our brands. And there’s real money tied to it and the dealers understand that, and we manage it. So I feel like we’re in a good position to deal with that type of situation, Robin.

Robin Farley: Okay. Great. Thank you.

Robert Mack: Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. And this concludes today’s question-and-answer session and today’s conference call. We thank you all for attending today’s presentation. You may now disconnect your lines, and have a wonderful day.

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