PriceSmart, Inc. (NASDAQ:PSMT) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Jon Braatz: Okay. That’s good. Michael, on the Honduras situation, do you see that potentially morphing into something like we saw in Trinidad, where you begin to restrict the imports there and raise prices to offset the currency issue?

Michael McCleary: Well, yeah, this is kind of new to this quarter. So we’re monitoring it actively. Obviously, you can see it by the numbers that we disclosed about the cash on hand is not near as extreme as it got to at one point in Trinidad, but we did think it was important to call it out. So I think it was somewhere around $15 million versus a peak of about $100 million in Trinidad. But at this point, we’re monitoring it. We haven’t taken any actions to restrict flow of merchandise at this point and we’re just working with the banks and the local officials to continue to monitor this and we’ll see as we go forward.

Jon Braatz: Okay. One last question on the repurchase program, $75 million. I think, domestically, you hold $42 million in cash and I think that was on the 10-Q. Let’s just — for the sake of convenience, let’s say, you were looking to complete this repurchase over the next year. Would that mean you would most likely have to repatriate some money from your markets down south or would you borrow money or would there be enough domestic cash flow to, let’s say, pay the dividend and make any CapEx spending and do the complete repurchase?

Michael McCleary: Let me put it this way. We’re not expecting to enter into any debt or to fund the buyback and/or any tax leakage from moving the funds around between the countries anything significant. So I think we can fund it with the existing cash flows.

Jon Braatz: All right. Thanks, Michael.

Michael McCleary: Thank you, Jon.

Operator: Thank you. Next question comes from Victor Cardenas at Scotiabank. Please go ahead.

Victor Cardenas: Congratulations on the result, Robert and Michael, and thank you for taking my question. I only have a question in regards to the repurchase program and, in particular, with the — just to understand a little bit about the rationale and as opposed to using other alternatives like a special dividend and any other sort of guidance regarding the timing and the size of the repurchase? I think that you mentioned that in Q4, the program maybe starting to make the first repurchases. But looking into understanding the rationale as to for other alternatives and also some soft guidance on the sizes of the repurchase if I may?

Robert Price: As I think I mentioned, we’ve never, in the history of PriceSmart, entered into a repurchase program. This is the first time. And I think, partly, it’s going to be a learning experience for us, because what we’re hoping to accomplish by this is to provide some opportunity for certain stockholders who might want to go beyond the dividend in terms of cash benefits and sell some of their stock. But the other thing in my mind is, it is certainly a learning experience, because we really don’t know how this is going to work until it’s out there. But the other thing is, we’re a very thinly traded stock. And what’s been the pattern is that we release earnings and then when it’s good, the stock jumps up for a few days, and then it goes back down and then we’re back in this kind of pattern where there isn’t much going on.

And I think that by having the stock repurchase program in place, I think, we can provide a little more stability and put some kind of a little more, well, I guess, it would be stability into the pricing of the stock because — we are an unusual company. I mean, we don’t trade very much and we’re not a US company in terms that nobody can go in and actually see what we’re doing unless you live in one of our countries. And so I think we’re going to learn. I mean, we don’t know what’s going to happen. I think the most important thing, though, we have the cash to do this, number one. And number two is that, looking beyond the repurchase, the real focus has to be on running this company well. And if we run the company well, we will have good results for the shareholders in terms of the stock price and I think that’s where we’re — that’s our bottom line.