South Pacific Resources Ltd (NYSE:SPB) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

David Maura: Look, I think — let’s start with our two bigger businesses, right. We’re trying to become a Global Pet and Home & Garden company. Both of those businesses should be 20% EBITDA margin businesses. They just should. And so we’ve gone through a lot of turmoil with a pandemic. We’ve got a lot — we’ve gone through a lot of inflation. And then obviously, our pricing lags the inflation, which is subduing the margins. And now you’ve got this, I call it, it’s kind of like the last bit of the backlash from COVID-19, where you’ve got this high cost inventory. You just got to move off the bucks. But I think you’ll start to see some clarity around real margin improvement in Q2 and then beyond in those businesses. I think Jeremy’s point was very good in terms of, look, the appliance business is more durable in nature, and it’s just going to take a longer time to kind of work that off and see that margin structure rebound.

And obviously, we’re in sell mode on HHI, and we’re looking forward to winning that DOJ lawsuit there.

Bob Labick: Okay. Super. And I guess last one for me, I’ll jump back in queue. Just obviously, we’re talking a lot about kind of the near-term stuff. Just give us a sense in terms of how you’re looking market share wise and price realization, new product introductions, those kind of things for next year, kind of the more traditional focal points for your outlook for the coming year.

Jeremy Smeltser: Yeah. I would say, in start-up price. So I think as you heard in our prepared remarks, we’re a little more laser-focused in certain areas versus broad-based given the lower level of inflation that we expect in F ’23.And when we say that is because we have to think about the timing of when we’ve actually incurred that inflation, right? Most of the inflation that we will recognize in our P&L, really all of it in fiscal ’23 is actually incurred in Q3 and Q4 and capitalized on the balance sheet at the end of the year. So Europe is a challenge. Transaction FX is a real challenge for both HPC and GPC with the strengthening of the dollar, obviously, eased a bit here in the last couple of weeks, but it’s still a significant year-over-year headwind, partly from translation, but more from transaction.

So we have to continue to get additional price there and look for additional costs, frankly. Our new product introductions, I totally agree with you. In the broader parts of our markets, particularly the North American markets where we’ve had to take so much price over the last couple of years, the real opportunity on margin is around new product introductions were scaling up and how do we move the needle forward on price points with those. And that’s a key part of the strategy, and that will continue. And I think we have a nice set of new product introductions across the businesses that I — I’ve mentioned a few of them in my prepared remarks, but I think we’re pleased with the progress there, though we have more to do in the future, certainly.

David Maura: Yeah. I think, look, let me add to it and just to touch. I was recently — I’ve been traveling a lot into the different factories and facilities as we try to get our fixed cost structure down. And I’m really thrilled to have kind of Dave Gabriel running S&OP and everything we’re doing there in working capital as recently in the Blacksburg facility, and met with the R&D team there. Look, we have just a lot of great stuff coming. I prefer to kind of just push that to Q2 and look forward to talking to you there. But we’ve got a very robust portfolio of brand new products that I think are wildly complementary to our existing portfolio, but I’d rather get closer to them being commercialized and then be able to share that with the investment community. But a lot of good things going on.

Bob Labick: Super. All right. Thank you so much.