Smith & Wesson Brands, Inc. (NASDAQ:SWBI) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Mark Smith: Yes, I think you are digging a little bit there, but I’ll give you a little bit of color. It’s — as I said earlier, I mean, we’re managing the business for the long term, and we do believe that the Smith & Wesson brand and our reputation does allow us to kind of play in that mid upper tier. And so, yes, I mean, the new products we’re launching, the intent with the new products that we’re launching is that we can command full margin for a brand-new product. And we anticipate those products will come in kind of where our ASPs are sitting today and shouldn’t materially impact the most hopefully help us to be able to maintain them. But that said, the new products, the detail of it is you’re going to span the spectrum between kind of our lower end and all the way up into our high-end products, so as much color as I can give you is that they’re not really going to materially impact our ASPs, one way or the other.

Mark Smith: Okay. The next one, just kind of shifting a little bit, can you just give any more update on relocation as far as timing and costs and anything — is it still going according to plan? Or have we seen anything shift?

Mark Smith: No, yes, appreciate the question. Everything is going very well. And yes, according to plan on a timing basis. As we’ve talked about in previous calls, just with the inflationary impacts across the economy, it is a little bit towards the north end of our range of what we expected, but we are still within our contingencies, and we still anticipate to be able to do it within our budget, although albeit towards the north end. And from a timing perspective, it’s going very well. So, the building is right on track, and our personnel out there were actually — we’ve got over 60 employees already working out of the area mostly front office personnel working out of the Tennessee, a temporary location there. So, the move from a personnel perspective is going very well as well.

Mark Smith: Okay. And then another kind of big picture question. Just cash — the balance sheet has changed a fair amount. We’ve seen the inventory come up, cash position come down, still debt free. But just looking at expectation that you’ll still have some negative free cash flow here this next quarter, has anything changed as far as capital allocation or plans of investment?

Mark Smith: I’ll let Deana get into the detail in a second. But just generally, from capital allocation, nothing has changed in terms of our priorities. I think we said right from the get-go three years ago when we were talking about the spin that our capital allocation priorities would be reinvestment back in our business and then return excess cash back to stockholders, and that remains the priority. So right now, obviously, we’re investing back in our business with the facility in Tennessee, which continues to be a fairly significant cash strain, but as planned and anticipated. And once we’re done with that, we don’t see anything major on the horizon in terms of the cash expenses needed for the business, and we’ll be back into returning cash to the stockholders.

Deana McPherson: Yes. And you’ll see that our capital spending is higher than it normally is, just in the quarter ever in mind for the full year. Without that, we would have been $30 million to $40 million higher in cash. So we did plan for it. We expect to spend the cash. We went into this knowing that, that was an excellent use of cash for the long-term viability of the business. And unfortunately, that means I don’t get to hold the cash that I want to hold. But once we get back to the grand opening of the new facility, that should cover everything that we need to do in the short term, and we’ll get back to looking at how can we make more investment to our investors.

Mark Smith: And then the last one for me, just big picture again. Regulatory environment, we’ve seen the first kind of piece of legislation or change here in a long time. Can you just give an update on where you guys stand and then in recent legislation nationwide, not state by state, any change that, that had on your business?

Mark Smith: Yes. We — as we always kind of answered this question, Mark, we make lawful products and we abide by all the laws and whether it’s local, state or federal, and we will always continue to do that. It’s one of the things we pride ourselves on is compliance with regulations and running an ethical business. And so that said, the state regulations, we have seen them kind of — they come and go ebb and flow, and there’s, I guess, a lot of noise, if you want to call it there. The Oregon legislation obviously is causing a temporary big spike in that area for folks looking to exercise the second amount of rights while they feel they still can. We’ll continue to react to those as they come up in terms of the long-term macro impact to the business.

We’ve just kind of seen — I mean you look at some of the states that have the most restrictive laws on the second amendment. There are some of our top NICS states. So, those consumers are still willing to exercise their rights even with the respective loss to the impact to our business, it’s fairly minimal.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Rommel Dionisio of Aegis.

Rommel Dionisio: You guys launched the M&P 12, the shotgun about a year ago. And about a year — now that we’re about a year into it, Mark, I wonder if you could just go through your thoughts on the category how the law just gone a year into it. And I guess you didn’t enter this broad new category of just one model, one SKU that being the long-term plan I would just love to hear your thoughts in terms of how that launch has gone and how you view the category and the response to your product and your plans going forward to the extent that you can disclose.

Mark Smith: Sure. Thanks for the question, Rommel. Yes, the long gun category and shotguns in general, yes, some opportunity for us, some white space for us in the Company. The M&P 12 that we launched was really more addressed towards a little bit of a niche in that market, which is bullpump shotguns, and it is more of a — one of the higher end bullpump shotguns. And again, as I said earlier, and we believe definitely commands that higher end price due to the quality and brand reputation that we have. That is, unfortunately, in the recent downturn has been one of those categories, the higher end, more tactical specialty shotguns has been one of those categories that’s been kind of more hard hit. The shotgun category still anecdotally here, it’s still moving very well, but it’s at the low end a lot of hunting shotguns and pumps, et cetera.