Flexsteel Industries Inc (FLXS) 2023 Q1 法說會逐字稿

Good morning, and welcome to the Flexsteel Industries First Quarter and Fiscal Year 2023 Earnings Conference Call. All participants would be on listen only mode. If you need assistance, please call conference specialist by pressing the starkey followed by 0. After today's presentation, there'll be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question you may press star then 1 on your touchtone phone, to withdraw your question press star then 2. Please note that this event is being recorded. Now I'd like to turn the conference over to Mr. Alejandro, Chief Financial Officer for Flexsteel Industries. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, and welcome to today's call to discuss Flexsteel Industries' First Quarter Fiscal Year 2023 financial results. Our earnings release, which we issued after market close yesterday, Monday, October 24, is available on the Investor Relations section of our website at www.flexsteel.com, under News and Events. I am here today with Jerry Dittmer, President and CEO; and Derek Schmidt, Chief Operating Officer. On today's call, we will provide prepared remarks, and then we will open the call to your questions. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that the comments on today's call will include forward-looking statements, which can be identified using words such as estimate, anticipate, expect and similar phrases. Forward-looking statements, by their nature, involve estimates, projections, goals, forecasts and assumptions and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results or outcomes to differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking statements. Such risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, those that are described in our most recent annual report on Form 10-K as updated by our subsequent quarterly reports on Form 10-Q and other SEC filings as applicable. These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date of this conference call and should not be relied upon as predictions of future events. Additionally, we may refer to non-GAAP measures, which are intended to supplement, but not substitute for the most directly comparable GAAP measures. The press release available on the website contains the financial and other quantitative information to be discussed today as well as the reconciliation of the GAAP to non-GAAP measures. And with that, I will turn the call over to Jerry Dittmer. Jerry?

Good morning, and thank you for joining us today. Our performance in the first quarter was solid given the challenging conditions we faced, including slowing consumer demand, competitive pricing pressures attempting to relieve a glut of retail inventory as well as macroeconomic headwinds driving continuing inflationary pressures and challenges. I am encouraged by the fact that we were well prepared for these challenges and were able to deliver sales for the quarter of $95.7 million, which was above the range of our guidance of $80 million to $90 million. While we saw an expected slowdown in sales, we continue to prudently manage our spending and deliver on our cost efficiency initiatives to deliver an operating income of $0.4 million for the quarter or 0.4% of revenue, which is also above our guidance range of -3.5% to 0%. Near-term challenges will continue to create choppiness in our short-term results. However, we remain committed to delivering long-term profitability. During our fourth quarter call, I went into details on the challenges our industry is facing and will not reiterate those today. The organization is focused on navigating these challenges and delivering on our strategic initiatives that will deliver long-term success. Now I'll turn the call over to Derek to discuss our strategic initiatives and operational priorities before Alejandro takes you through further details of our financial results. I'll be back at the end of the call with some closing comments on what we see ahead.

Thank you, Jerry, and good morning, everyone. We remain on offense. As Jerry noted, business conditions are challenging and will likely remain that way for at least the next 6 to 9 months, but we're committed to profitably growing by gaining share from competitors in existing markets and targeting new markets of growth where we can deliver differentiated value to our customers. As we discussed during the fourth quarter call, our growth strategy for new business has 3 legs: new sales distribution, new product categories and new consumer segments. We have well-defined initiatives and plans for each of these areas, and we are executing to those plans. I'm encouraged by our progress to start the year and excited about the long-term sales potential of these initiatives. Let me share a few highlights. Beginning with new sales distribution, we've made a breakthrough with a major big box retailer who is or will sell a meaningful number of Flexsteel branded products this year that span all 3 of our major product categories: motion furniture, stationary furniture and case goods. Our brand fits well with their consumers, and given early sales success, we think they could become a top 10 customer this fiscal year. We are investing in the relationship and new support capabilities to ensure this becomes a long-term, sustainable and profitable partnership. Next is new consumer segments. We recently launched our new brand, Charisma, designed to serve customers, especially younger generations seeking good quality, stylish furniture at affordable popular prices. While these solutions are value oriented, we've utilized our engineering prowess and manufacturing capabilities to reach these lower price points without making compromises and quality and comfort that we see in so many of our competitive offerings. Customer feedback has been great. We have a healthy backlog of orders already. The initial lineup started production last week at our (inaudible) facility and consists of larger scale comfortable sofas and sectionals, that are popular with younger consumers right now. We'll continue to expand the Charisma portfolio with new products every 6 to 12 months, including diverse sizes and styles of furniture that are on trend for this targeted consumer demographic. Last is new product categories. We remain on track for a third quarter launch of our new (inaudible)cliner sleep solution recliner and Flex, our small parcel contemporary modular furniture solution built to flex with people's ever-changing lives. We recently unveiled these products to customers and received excellent feedback. In summary, we are thrilled with our progress on these growth initiatives. Market conditions and sales results might be choppy near term, but we are making meaningful advancements in our strategic vision for the company, which will position us for long-term success. Lastly, we continue to deliver strong results from our cost savings initiatives. In the near term, these savings are almost entirely being used to fund price reductions to respond to the pricing pressures Jerry noted earlier and keep us competitive in the market and retain our retail placements. These pricing pressures will eventually alleviate as inventory levels return to normal and transportation costs stabilize, so the momentum we are building on cost savings efforts should translate into higher gross margins. With that, I'll turn it over to Alejandro to give you additional details on the financial performance for the first quarter and outlook for the second quarter of fiscal year '23.

Thank you, Derek. Good morning, everyone. For the first quarter, net sales were $95.7 million, down approximately $42 million or 30.5% compared to $137.7 million in the prior year period. While down from the prior year, our sales results were better than our $80 million to $90 million guidance range provided during our fourth quarter earnings call. Compared to pre-pandemic sales from the first quarter of fiscal 2020, home furnishing product sales were up $6.5 million or 7.3%. A profit perspective, in the first quarter, the company delivered operating income of $0.4 million or 0.4% of sales, which was better than our guidance range of -3.5% to 0% for the quarter. We recorded net income of $0.3 million and earnings per diluted share of $0.05. Adjusted net income for the quarter, which excluded onetime charges related to the unanimously rejected unsolicited bid received in August was $0.5 million, and adjusted income per diluted share was $0.09. Gross margin as a percent of net sales in the first quarter was 16%. The decline from the prior year quarter was largely driven by volume decline, deleveraging our fixed costs, competitive pricing pressures due to slowing demand and continued inflation in domestic transportation charges, partially offset by our cost savings initiatives and lower ancillary charges. Operating income was supported by a $4.2 million reduction of SG&A expense, mainly through reduced compensation expense and control of other SG&A spending. Moving to the balance sheet and statement of cash flow. The company ended the quarter with a cash balance of $4 million and working capital of $116.1 million, which represents a reduction of $9.3 million during the quarter, primarily driven by a $19.8 million decrease in inventory. The result of the strong working capital management was solid operating cash flow of $13.0 million during the quarter. As previously communicated, debt reduction is a key priority. And in the quarter, we reduced our outstanding borrowings by approximately 20% or $7.7 million. Looking forward, guidance for second quarter sales is between $87 million and $97 million. While our first quarter results were better than guidance, we feel that based on the glove of retail inventory, our customers will continue to pull back on orders for in-stock products, giving us reason to believe the second quarter will be at a similar or declining level to that of the first quarter. Based on our ongoing discussions with customers and distribution partners, we remain cautiously optimistic that retail inventories should normalize in the first half of calendar year 2023. The result of this continued demand slowdown, though, will be a near-term drag on our Q2 sales. However, we do expect demand to stabilize and our growth initiatives to begin to realize benefit leading to quarter-over-quarter growth in the second half of the year. Regarding profitability, competitive pricing pressures, along with continued slumping demand will adversely impact our profitability. Our near-term focus will be to continue to pragmatically adjust our costs in line with lower sales levels. However, we continue to ensure our ability to profitably grow long term. As such, we are projecting operating income as a percentage of sales in the range of -1.5% to 1.5% for the second quarter, with the largest drivers of variability in the range being consumer demand and competitive pricing pressures. We expect gross margins in the range of 14.5% to 16.5% in the second quarter, weighed down by fixed cost deleverage from lower sales and pricing pressures, partially offset by our cost savings initiatives. If sales improve, as expected during the fiscal year, gross margins should improve to the mid- to upper teens in the second half. We intend to prudently control SG&A costs and expect SG&A costs between $14.5 million and $15.5 million in the second quarter, which is slightly higher than the first quarter as we began to prudently invest in our growth initiatives discussed by Derek. Regarding our cash flow outlook, working capital is expected to be a source of cash flow in the second quarter and full year as we plan to steadily decline inventories throughout the year. Near-term priorities for cash remain reducing debt and pragmatically funding high ROI capital expenditures. Opportunistically, we may repurchase shares at a modest spending level if the stock price remains at a significant discount to our view of intrinsic value. We continue to forecast our debt levels at the end of fiscal 2023 in the range of $0 to $12 million. For the second quarter, we expect capital expenditures between $0.5 million and $1.5 million. The effective tax rate for fiscal 2023 is expected to be in the range of 27% to 28%, excluding the impact of any revaluation of deferred tax asset valuation allowances. Now I'll turn the call back over to Jerry to share his perspectives on our outlook.

Thanks. We believe the remainder of fiscal year 2023 will be challenging for our industry. As previously discussed, the slowdown in the economy, continued inflationary pressures and lower consumer demand will continue to put pressure on our profit margins in the near term. However, I am pleased with our well-received new products presented during the fall 2022 High Point market and confident that our team and our long-term priorities will allow us to build upon our solid foundation and deliver long-term profitable growth. In the near term, we remain focused on delivering on our strategic initiatives, controlling costs and generating cash flow to pay down debt and preserve liquidity while opportunistically investing in growth opportunities. With that, we will open the call to your questions. Operator?

Great. Thanks, Nick. In closing, I would again like to thank all our Flexi employees for their outstanding performance and service during the first quarter. We were just wrapping up here. Derek mentioned, we're still in High Point, had a really, really good high point market here this fall. Our showroom looks spectacular. It was really set up great for selling our new Charisma Flex, decliner sleep solutions, our Latitude South haven products all just looked fantastic. And we're really excited about getting back out into the market with all these new things. We've made a lot of good investments in these and are pretty excited about where we think it can take the company.

I also would like to thank you all for participating in today's call. If you have more questions, obviously, feel free to reach out, and we look forward to updating you all on our next call. Thanks, everybody. Have a great day.

Conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.

I'll begin the question-and-answer session. To ask a question you may press star then 1 on your touchtone phone. If you want to speak up on the phone please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question press star then 2. (inaudible) momentarily to assemble the roster. First question comes from Anthony Lebiedzinski from Sidoti & Company. Please go ahead.

Hi Good morning gentlemen and thank you for taking the question. So firstly, revenue was nicely above the top end of your guidance for the quarter. Can you talk about what led to the outperformance in the quarter?

Yes. So Anthony, this is Derek. So we did see exceptional sales lift during Labor Day. So I think broadly speaking, our retailers performed really well. I think we also saw some improvement in retailer inventories during the quarter, which we got a little bit of lift from. But retailers still -- I mean we're just at a high point market here. We've probably seen -- saw about 300 of our customers. Retail inventories are improving, but we probably have another 3, 4 months to go before we get back to normal. But really strong Labor Day. And I think, again, we saw some improvement later in the quarter in terms of retail inventories, which helped us.

Yes. Anthony, this is Jerry. Just going a little bit further, too, is... As Derek said, the Labor Day was really strong. A few weeks after that, of course, we did see it kind of moderate again and slow down a little bit. So now we're really looking towards what November looks like. It's really going to -- we'll really know what the quarter looks like then. And a lot of folks thought that retail inventories would maybe be down by this time. We think most folks still got a good 2, 3, 4 months of inventories left that they need to get through. So a lot will depend on just on the consumer out there in the buyer.

Right. Yes, thanks guys for that. And do you think part of what's going on now is just the return to sort of more normal seasonality of the business? I mean before the pandemic, typically, consumer interest was heightened during holiday periods like Labor Day, like President's Day. So do you think part of what's just going on is just consumers or just going back to those pre-pandemic habits?

Yes, Anthony, you're absolutely correct. What we've seen, we saw it at the 4th of July, we saw it at Labor Day. Our belief is those 6 to 8 big selling times, just like we used to see back in 2019 and before, we've definitely gone back into that pattern.

Got it. Okay. And then you guys talked about the competitive pricing pressures. So can you just maybe elaborate on that? Maybe how much do you think that was impact -- how much that impacted the first quarter? And just maybe just broadly speak about unit volume declines versus pricing for the quarter?

Yes. I'll just take a little bit and then I'll have Jerry come in a little bit. I will tell you that we definitely saw an effect in our margins. Our margin hit a few points because of that. I think once we get through our inventories, then we will see, we're going to see the benefits of the lower ocean freight. We're going to see a lower priced product. We're going to be able to start shipping and taking to our consumers. So we definitely will see some margin improvement. We've really just got to get through these inventories, which they've come down greatly. I mean, our inventories are down $75-plus million from their peak, and we just need to bring them down here a little bit more over the next several months.

Anthony, this is Alejandro, good morning, thanks for your question. Just answering your unit versus sales mix decline. We actually saw a pretty stable 1:1 variance between volume and mix. units and mix because of seeing a higher manufacturing in the quarter versus other categories. So it was actually pretty stable. Derek, I don't know if you want to ask that.

No, I was actually going to highlight the same thing. I think what we're most encouraged by is the strength of our manufactured business. We've been talking about our ability to get down to industry-leading lead times for several quarters now. So we're consistently operating at 3-, 4-week production lead times. If you look at our sales for our manufactured business, we're actually up year-over-year by 7%. So where we've seen the biggest sales hit in the near term is our imported products, which are warehoused which have been adversely impacted not only by higher ocean freights, but more importantly, the retail inventory. But I'm really encouraged, we're really encouraged by the strength of our manufactured business.

Okay. That's great to hear. And then in terms of the comment about the gross margin for the back half of the year that you're guiding to mid- to high teens. So what are the main factors that will drive that improvement? If you could just go over that, that would be great.

Well... Anthony, there's a few things that are going -- that need to be driven into that. One is the deleveraging of our fixed costs. So capacity and volume, we need to grow volume. So as that grows with our initiatives that Derek spoke about, which are manufactured products that we're focusing on, that should help our gross margin. The other thing that's going to impact us is getting through this ocean freight crop and rate and having pricing stabilize. So those are going to be the 2 key factors we see as impacting our margin and allowing us to get to a more stable mid- to high teens.

Certainly... Anthony, I was just going to reiterate. I mean, as Jerry alluded too, we think retailers it's going to take another 2, 3, 4 months for them to work through their inventories. Once the industry is back to normalized inventory levels, we believe that's going to take significant pricing pressure away, which will help us normalize our margin structure.

All right, thank you for that. And then last question here. So certainly very nice progress with your own inventory reductions. So given kind of what you know now, what would be reasonable to assume for inventories by the end of your fiscal year?

Yes. So again, Anthony, I don't ever want to talk in absolute terms of dollars because what we're focused on is velocity in turns. So it's really going to depend on where demand goes and what our Q1 outlook is going to look like for next fiscal year. So -- but we're targeting a reduction of overall working capital for the year of somewhere between $25 million and $35 million versus year-end fiscal year 2022.

All right. Thank you very much, and best of luck.

Great. Thanks, Anthony. Appreciate it. Anthony.

If you have any other question, please press star then 1. Next question is from Jeff Geygan from Global Investment Corp. I'd start with a little bit around your logistics and shipping, and you mentioned that a few times. Can you give us an absolute dollar sense of where you're seeing container rates and the impact on your other shipping costs?

Yes. It's really in 2 big buckets, Jeff. So we have seen what I would call port-to-port. So from Vietnam, China to L.A., Houston, where we're going is very close to where it was pre-pandemic. So those costs have really normalized. The good and the bad of that is we're excited they've come down. They've come down really fast. I mean, literally just in the last several months, the cost from going from the port inbound to our distribution centers into our customers is still really, really high. There's still, obviously, ancillary charges, labor is still high. Fuel diesel has not come down. So those costs are very, very high. And so the 2 together still make our total logistics costs higher, but we've definitely seen a big decrease in the port to port charges.

Great. That's helpful. Would you speak a little bit about your labor availability and labor cost and how that's impacting your P&L?

Yes. I think labor availability in terms of our wares facilities continues to be strong. So we're confident that as we grow our manufactured business, we can ramp up. We'll find the labor to ramp up accordingly. So no issues whatsoever. And then our Dublin facility, we have a strong workforce, strong, stable workforce there. So no labor concerns at this point. Labor costs, still some pressures. In Mexico, we do see a statutory increase every year in the neighborhood of 20% plus. We expect that to continue. But our later costs are still very competitive in that region of the continent.

Yes. Great. With that type of statutory acceleration in labor cost, you must focus a fair amount on productivity. What can you share with us about that?

Yes. Actually, despite the fact that we've seen some slowdown in volume, all of our plants are actually hitting really, really good productivity numbers. We measure labor hours per unit. And I'm pleased to say that all of our facilities are hitting highs over the last kind of 18 months here in the most recent quarter. So as I alluded to earlier, cost savings, we're doing a good job across the board, manufacturing, logistics sourcing in terms of delivering savings. And that's really what's allowing us to take some of these necessary price reductions in the market to make sure that we're competitive and that we're keeping the placements that we work so hard during the pandemic to gain.

Yes. Great to hear. What are you seeing in terms of raw material price increases? And what type of strategies are you using to mitigate those?

Yes. So we've seen interesting with our raw materials, a lot of the raw materials have really started to come back down, and they're not back down to where they were before the pandemic. But the big spike in increases, we have not seen that recently. And a lot of our suppliers, obviously, everybody is working together with us. And we've actually seen those moderate in a good way. It's really the labor costs that we talked about a little bit, definitely the logistics and the fuel. Everything else has moderated some.

Right. How should we think about your sensitivity in terms of gross margin with respect to increasing sales? In other words, at what level of sales would we expect your GM to exceed 20% again?

Yes. So I'll take the first piece and then the other guys take the other one. I think the first piece is we will see the increase, it's really going to have more to do with what we have in inventory, where we have all the -- a lot of the freight costs and stuff in our inventory as we get through that a bump there. And then I think on the other part, as sales go up and with a lot of our new products and new customers and stuff, we should see that start to come up fairly rapidly. But I'm talking about a point or 2. It's not going to all of a sudden skyrocket. This fiscal year, will we see it go above the 20% probably not. But I think we can definitely get up into that high teens. And for next year, obviously, the plan will be to jump over that...

And as Derek going to comment on that as well?

Yes. Maybe your question regarding kind of sales volume. I think Jerry answered it well. We'll see a nice margin improvement here as the pricing pressure starts to alleviate, -- we're feeling really good about our growth initiatives. So we've been at Highpoint market here in North Carolina the last 7 days. We've gotten extraordinary feedback on our new products, which I mentioned earlier in the call, that is really going to be our lever to continue to grow our sales sequentially quarter-over-quarter. So my belief, as we head into the second half and absent a significant economic slowdown, we're really well positioned, I think, to continue to kind of grow the business into fiscal year '24. And if we do that, I think we'll get the sales leverage and be able to deliver that 20% kind of plus gross margin that you inquired about.

Great. Appreciate it. Congrats in what has arguably been a very, very challenging time. It sounds like you took that as an opportunity to really grab market share, introduce new products, new channels, et cetera. So from our perspective, it seems like you're doing all the right things. Good luck.

Thank you. Next question will be from John Deysher of Pinnacle. Please go ahead. Hi, Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. I was just curious about the new Mexicali plant. I think that was set to open in this quarter. And I was just wondering how that's going and were there any learning curve type costs that were embedded in the third quarter result -- in the first quarter results?

Yes, John, we've actually delayed the opening of the Mexicali facility given the slowdown in demand. We still view that facility as a long-term strategic asset. As we've talked about, we have ambitious long-term growth goals. We believe we have the initiatives and the plans in place to deliver on those. And having the capacity in Mexicali long term is going to be instrumental in terms of achieving that growth. However, given the recent slowdown in demand, we have ample capacity in our (inaudible) facility and Dublin facility to adequately support growth. So it's really the timing of when we start up Mexicali is going to be dependent on just the acceleration of our growth initiatives and when we get closer to needing that capacity.

Okay thanks. Do you own the land there? Or does someone else believe -- and has any construction even started on that plant?

It is a lease facility. The building is completely done and ready for occupation once we feel that we need to ramp up the capacity.

Okay. So you're not depreciating it since it's not operating. -- correct?

We are recognizing lease costs on a monthly basis.

Lease costs, okay, but not depreciation on the building itself?

No, we have not installed any equipment.

Good. And the other question is, what is the backlog at the end of the third -- first quarter, please?

Yes. We've seen backlog go back to historic norms, and we're sitting at $56 million of backlog at the end of the quarter -- and our expectation would be that by the end of the year, we'd be sitting somewhere in the mid-50s to low 60s, which again is back to pre-pandemic norms.

I mean the good thing about our backlog where it is at is that we are consistently delivering on 3- to 4-week production lead times for our manufactured business, which we still feel is probably the most competitive in the industry is a key catalyst for why we continue to grow our -- the manufacturing portion of our business.

Okay. Sounds good. best of luck on going forward.

Thank you, John.

Thank you. This concludes our question answer session. I'd like to turn the call back over to Mr. Jerry Dittmer for closing remarks. Please...Go ahead