Superior Group of Companies, Inc. (NASDAQ:SGC) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Mike Koempel: Hi, Kevin, this is Mike. Would be happy to answer your questions. From a margin perspective, as we’ve disclosed for this quarter and in prior quarters, obviously, we have taken significant inventory write downs this year. In the aggregate over $13 million and in 2022, we do not anticipate lapping those types of charges in 2023. So, we certainly do expect the margin rate to improve particularly within our healthcare business. In addition to that, we are seeing some easing of what we refer to as supply chain costs, which would certainly increase significantly through the pandemic. That cost has started to come down, not necessarily to pre-pandemic levels, but it has come down. And as we sell through our inventory with those higher rates, we will begin to see the benefits of some of that lower cost in our inventory again more so in the back half of this year.

So, I think we see again margin rate improving primarily in that business. And from an interest standpoint, you can see already partially in the third quarter and in the fourth quarter a significant increase in interest expense, we anticipate that continuing. So, in our modeling, we are expecting interest expense to still remain up significantly over 2022, again expecting that rates will continue to be high. And while we will focus on bringing our debt down as quickly as possible, based upon our average debt balances outstanding, we would expect that expense to still be fairly significantly to 2022.

Kevin Steinke : Okay. Thank you. And then lastly, Mike, you mentioned potentially having to amend the credit agreement leverage ratio embedded in there. Just what sort of line of sight do you have to potentially having to amend that or confidence in being able to do that if you need to?

Mike Koempel: Sure. As I mentioned in the script, when you look at the combination of our fourth quarter charge. And again, the calendarization of our 2023 forecast, we view this really as creating short-term compression from a covenant perspective. And so that’s why we took obviously the proactive approach of reaching out to our lending agent. With that said, Kevin, obviously, I can’t speak for the lending group, but we are certainly looking forward to working with them on a mutually beneficial outcome over the coming weeks.

Kevin Steinke : Okay. Thanks. I’ll turn it over to get back in the queue.

Operator: The next question will come from Tim Moore with Ef Hutton. Please go ahead. Please go ahead.

Tim Moore: Thanks. And thanks for providing sales and EPS guidance for this year. It’s definitely nice to see the SG&A operating leverage in the December quarter. I have my own sales guidance question scenario similar to what was just asked. If I look at the sales guidance range, it seems to be a 1% to 3% increase, despite having about $7 million possibly of sales from the first four months of this year from the Guardian acquisition before that lapse, it’s anniversary on May 1st. So, when I kind of back into May, if it looks like 0% to about 1.6% organic sales growth for this year, when you factor in the Guardian. Do you think that could be a little bit too conservative in light of maybe some pricing power and probably the likely natural rebound in healthcare in the second half of this year?

And if Michael, doesn’t mind speaking a little bit more towards, what type of scenario could maybe trigger upside beyond that top end $595 million guidance? Because wondering if it’s really the swing factor, would you say the biggest swing factor might be in the branded side in BAMKO?