Turtle Beach Corporation

Welcome to the Turtle Beach second quarter 2022 conference call. My name is Abigail and I will be your operator for today's call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question and answer session. During the question and answer session, if you have a question, please press star 1 1 on your touchtone telephone. Delivering today's prepared remarks are Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Juergen Stark and Chief Financial Officer John Hansen. Following their prepared remarks, the management team will open the call up for any questions. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the call over to Alex Thompson. Alex, you may begin.

Thank you, Abigail. On today's call, we will be referring to the press release filed this afternoon that details the company's second quarter 2022 results, which can be downloaded from the investor relations page at corp.turtlebeach.com. where you'll also find the latest earnings presentation that supplements the information discussed on today's call. Finally, a recording of the call will be available on the investor section of the company's website later today. Please be aware that some of the comments made during this call may include forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws. Statements about the company's beliefs and expectations containing words such as may, will, could, believe, expect, anticipate, and similar expressions constitute forward-looking statements. These statements involve risks and uncertainties regarding the company's operations and future results that could cause Turtle Beach Corporation's results to differ materially from management's current expectations. While the company believes that its expectations are based upon reasonable assumptions, numerous factors may affect actual results and may cause results to differ materially, so the company encourages you to review the safe harbor statements and risk factors contained in today's press release and in its filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including, without limitation, its annual report on Form 10-K and other periodic reports, which identify specific risk factors that also may cause actual results or events to differ materially from those described in our forward-looking statements. The company does not undertake to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements after this conference call. The company also notes that on this call it will be discussing non-GAAP financial information. The company is providing that information as a supplement to information prepared in accordance with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States or GAAP. You can find a reconciliation of these metrics to the company's reported GAAP results in the reconciliation tables provided in today's earnings release and presentation. And now I'll turn the call over to Juergen Stark, the company's chairman and chief executive officer. Juergen?

Juergen Stark Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us. In the second quarter, we continued to launch and announce innovative new products, maintained our leadership and council gaming headsets, and further advanced our diversified product portfolio. While we executed on the business functions within our control, like many other consumer products companies, our second quarter results were impacted by the difficult macroeconomic conditions, which has slowed discretionary spending across gaming and many other categories. This slump in consumer spending also caused retailers to reduce purchases above and beyond the drops in demand for gaming gear and more than we expected. In addition, high gaming accessory inventories have led to increased promotional activities as retailers and competitors look to bring down inventory levels. In this challenging environment, we delivered net revenue of $41.3 million and an adjusted EBITDA loss of $12.7 million for our second quarter 2022. As a reminder, we had a near record second quarter of 2021, given the extraordinarily strong gaming market fueled by the pandemic and stimulus checks. Recall too that high freight costs, despite recent reductions, continue to flow through the P&L as we sell through inventory that incurred those costs. According to NPD, most major gaming categories of spend experienced declines. U.S. retail sales in our core category, council headsets, were down over 30% in Q2. PC gaming accessories fared a bit better, but were also down over 20%. Major European countries were down even more than the U.S., likely as a result of the strong dollar incrementally impacting consumers in Europe. As we have in the past, we quickly recognized the swings in demand in our markets and took concrete steps to navigate these higher than expected headwinds. As part of our mitigation efforts, we implemented hiring constraints several months ago and completed select reductions in our workforce. We have also taken actions to reduce other costs where possible and are continuing our diligent focus on managing expenses. Recurring Q2 OPEX is down 17% from last year's Q2, and we expect these actions will reduce second half OPEX by around 5 million. Of course, we are continuing to invest into great new products and portfolio expansion that has enabled our sustained leadership and council headsets and generated significant new revenues over the past years, consistent with our long-term growth strategy. We believe we are poised to come out of the market downturn even stronger, and although the challenging macroeconomic environment may continue for some time, we are confident that the gaming market will rebound, and when it does, we are likely to see pent-up demand and retail restocking that will create a period of stronger-than-normal growth. We then expect to see a resumption of the growth rates that have made gaming one of the best retail consumer markets for many years. I thought one NPD gaming analyst put it very well, noting that, quote, in the short term, these factors mean declines, uncertainty, and turbulence, but in the long term, the growth prospects in the video game industry remain as strong as they have ever been. Gaming has historically performed well in turbulent economic conditions, and gaming fundamentals remain strong. Millions of consumers have become gamers in the past two years. In fact, according to Newzoo, the number of new gamers added globally from 2019 to 2021 totals nearly 400 million, which is staggering. To that end, June research from Bank of America shows 26% of consumers surveyed have added gaming as a new hobby since the pandemic, and 60% have increased their engagement in gaming over the past year. Steam is showing a 12% increase in concurrent users for July year over year. NewZoo is forecasting a 5% increase in gamers for 2022 and continued growth in global gamers to over 3.5 billion by 2025, up 16% from 2021. Interestingly, a recent NewZoo survey of active console gamers showed an increase in intent to purchase a headset in the next six months from 46% last year to 51% this year. Historical trends would indicate that council headsets have an upgrade and replacement pattern that has been reliable, which should result in pent-up demand when consumer sentiment turns positively. Accordingly, we believe that the current decline in consumer demand for gaming accessories is temporary and will eventually rebound based on those continued strong underlying fundamentals. The retail inventory reductions that currently exacerbate the impact of the demand downturn do exactly the opposite when demand swings up. And freight costs have already started coming down, so those margin benefits will flow into the P&L in future quarters. So while we are focused on managing through the current environment, we continue to execute on our strategy to position us well for the future. We believe this is working well and will be in a good place when the market recovers. Looking at the console gaming headset market, we continue to lead the category by far as the number one U.S. console gaming headset manufacturer for 12 years running. In the U.S. per NPD, three of the top five best-selling Xbox headsets and five of the top 10 best-selling PlayStation headsets by dollars in the first half of 2022 were Turtle Beach headsets. We continue to produce the best and broadest line of console gaming headsets in the category, which is reflected by our clear leadership. We launched new models of our premium wireless gaming headset series with the multi-platform Stealth 700 Gen 2 Max for Xbox, which IGN recently named best Xbox series X and S gaming headset in their latest Best Gaming Headsets 2022 story. Our new line of wireless console headsets have captured significant share at the premium 150 to 199 price tier, which contributed to a nice jump in share in June for us overall. We have additional new console headsets coming soon, including at premium price points. Our Rocket line of PC gaming accessories also continues to expand. The new Burst Pro Air wireless PC gaming mouse is a symmetrical, wireless, lightweight, and visually stunning mouse. T3 recently gave this mouse a platinum award, calling it masterful gaming mouse. In addition, Rocket announced the Kone XP Air, the stellar wireless version of the recently released Kone XP. The wired version of this mouse was released earlier this year, was praised by GamesRadar for its incredibly comfortable design. The expanded Rocket portfolio also saw a nice increase in sell-through recently, including a very positive impact from our new inline display at Best Buy. The interactive display at Best Buy is a very exciting step in the development of our Rocket brand and portfolio. We're also excited about our lineup of gamepad controllers. We announced in our launching the all-new design for Xbox Turtle Beach React R controller, plus a new Arctic Camo colorway for the Recon controller. The React R controller is an even more affordable, high-quality controller with controls for game and chat volume balance, mic mute, and Turtle Beach's exclusive superhuman hearing sound setting for a competitive advantage. The portfolio of controllers will continue to expand in the back half of the year, including mobile and cloud controllers, as well as exciting additions in our flight simulation category later this year and in 2023. Our category expansion efforts continue to go well. Non-council headset revenues were 25% of our revenues for Q2 and continue to steadily increase as we expand our presence in PC gaming accessories, council controllers, and simulation products. We also proudly launched our Play With Purpose program, which advances our ESG initiatives and sets goals that are and will continue to be a core part of Turtle Beach business. Lastly, before I turn it over to John to discuss the financials, I'd like to briefly comment on the strategic alternatives process that we announced in May. I would refer you to the press release we issued today for additional details. But to summarize, the Strategic Committee of the Board with its financial advisor, Bank of America, ran a fulsome process which included outreach to a large number of potential strategic and financial buyers and received indications of interest to acquire the company from multiple parties. Not surprisingly, the uncertainty caused by the current macroeconomic conditions resulted in even those parties determining not to proceed further. Therefore, the Strategic Committee has determined to conclude the proactive outreach to potential buyers. Nevertheless, the Strategic Committee will continue to evaluate strategic opportunities consistent with the Strategic Committee's charter. Now over to John to cover the financials in more detail. John?

Hey, thanks, Juergen, and good afternoon, everyone. For the second quarter, we reported net revenue of $41.3 million compared to a near record $78.6 million in the year-ago period, where strong demand for the company's products were driven by stay-at-home orders, government stimulus payments, and a strong gaming accessories market in 2021. As Juergen mentioned, our Q2 2022 results reflect the challenging macroeconomic environment that we and others are facing. Gross margin in the second quarter was 19.1% compared to 36.5% in the year-ago period due to the higher than normal promotional levels, business mix, higher freight costs, volume-driven fixed costs, deleveraging, and higher warehouse costs to ensure product supply. Specifically, high freight costs from late 2021 and early 2022 continue to roll to the P&L until those inventories are sold through. As Juergen mentioned, freight costs have already started coming down, which will benefit the P&L later this year and into 2023. Operating expenses in the second quarter were $29.3 million compared to $28.3 million in the year-ago period, including $6.8 million of non-recurring costs, which are primarily proxy contests and related costs, which the company is continuing to incur. Excluding these costs, operating expenses were reduced by roughly 17% year-over-year. Excluding non-recurring items, we expect operating expenses for the full year 2022 to be lower by over 10% year-over-year due to the actions we've taken to lower costs, as Juergen mentioned. Our second quarter adjusted EBITDA loss was $12.1 million compared to adjusted EBITDA of $5 million in the year-ago period. The year-over-year variance is primarily driven by the items I've covered above. Adjusted net loss for the second quarter of 2022 was $12.7 million or $0.77 per diluted share compared to adjusted net income of $2.6 million or $0.14 per diluted share in the year-ago period. We expect our effective tax rate for the full year to be approximately 25%. Now turning to the balance sheet, at June 30, 2022, we had $10.9 million of cash and $15.7 million of borrowings outstanding on our revolving credit line. Inventories at June 30, 2022, were $120.7 million compared to $81.9 million a year ago. The higher inventory balance is a reflection of lower than expected consumer demand and retail channel inventory levels. higher in-transit inventory due to longer ocean shipping times, and the company's prioritization to maintain product availability amidst global supply chain and logistical challenges. We do expect to convert a significant portion of this inventory into cash over the next two to three quarters. Now I'll turn the call back over to Juergen for some additional comments.

Juergen? Thanks, John. Given our belief that the current gaming market weakness is driven by consumer sentiment amidst strong underlying gaming fundamentals, it's difficult to predict when this will turn around. Assuming the gaming market remains muted through 2022, we expect our full year revenues to be in the range of $250 to $275 million. A soft market is likely to require continued higher promotional activity across our markets. That, combined with high freight costs as well as lower operating leverage, has put our expected gross margins in the mid-20s and will result in an expected EBITDA loss of $5 million to $15 million. As I've discussed, we believe the market conditions are temporary, exacerbated by retail or inventory actions that will reverse when demand swings up, and high freight costs that are now trending down. Therefore, we see a better second half, including year-over-year growth in Q4, driven by our expanded product portfolio. And we expect rapid improvement, including growth and a return to profitability in 2023. Our key focus and highest priority is to execute well through these difficult consumer economic conditions. We are confident the strong underlying fundamentals that have made gaming such a great market are intact, and will drive an upturn in the market once consumer sentiment on discretionary spending normalizes. So while we are diligently managing spend given the current environment, including the proactive cost reduction actions I've discussed, we are continuing to execute on a clearly defined plan to leverage the strong trends in the gaming market and capitalize on the opportunities ahead. We remain confident that the gaming sector remains the market to be in with a total addressable market over $195 billion this year that is expected to reach north of $225 billion in 2025. Our diverse portfolio and proven strong consumer demand for our products have expanded our markets by over $7 billion and positioned us well for future success. Our long-term strategy remains the same. First, continue to lead the Council Gaming headset market where we have maintained market share of 40% or more in the US for 12 consecutive years. This success is driven by great products, valuable and patented innovations, a go-to brand, and strong execution. I'm very excited about our new premium wireless models with the Xbox models taking share at premium price points and the PlayStation models on the way. Second, continue to expand in our PC gaming portfolio of headsets keyboards, and mice and grow our share in that 3.6 billion PC accessories market. We launched several stunning additions to the Rocket product portfolio and have additional exciting new products coming this year. And we are encouraged by the results we are seeing with our new Best Buy interactive display. Third, drive continued growth in the gamepad controller, gaming simulation accessories, and microphone categories that we entered in 2021. We just expanded our controller line and have cloud and mobile gaming controllers coming in addition to several additions to our flight simulation portfolio. These products further expand the markets we serve and will fully leverage the core competencies of the company. And fourth, we continue to identify and selectively evaluate other growth opportunities. Our business expansion across product categories in geographies is performing well and we continue to look for organic growth and acquisition opportunities to expand our addressable markets and drive growth in line with our 10 to 20% long-term annual growth target. Our successful efforts to maintain our strong leadership and council headsets while significantly expanding our product portfolio and the market segments we generate revenues in have positioned us very well for the future. both in terms of participating with the long-term tailwinds in gaming and also continuing to grow revenues and earnings over time. I again want to extend my thanks to the entire Turtle Beach team. Their diligent focus, execution, and ingenuity drives us ahead. Thank you to the collective Turtle Beach team. With that, let's turn to our Q&A, sticking to the quarter, and business.

Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. If you have a question, please press star 1 1 on your touchtone telephone. If you are using a speakerphone, you may need to pick up the handset first before pressing the numbers. Once again, if you have a question, please press star 1 1 on your touchtone telephone.

Standby while we compile the Q&A roster. And our first question comes from the line of Mark Agento with Lake Street Capital Markets.

When you guys are thinking about kind of the gross margins, you know, typically we've seen when you've transitioned from, you know, current gen to next gen consoles, there's been some You have some pricing, some sales, some promotional activity that typically weighs on gross margins. Given that we're kind of not in a transition, but just a highly inventoried environment, what type of promotional activity do you guys anticipate seeing during the next holiday period? And how should we think about that relative to your gross margin guidance?

Sure. So to reiterate, we expect gross margins this year to be in the mid-20s. That's reflective of higher-than-normal promotional activity, which we expect to see in the second half. Competitors have been very, very promotional, and we've been a bit more conservative, but we do plan for reasons of protecting our market position to lean in a bit more in the second half. plus high freight costs that I mentioned are coming down over time. That impact on gross margins is significant, by the way. But the rates have come down, and as the lower rates, as that inventory starts to sell through, that'll benefit the gross margins later this year and going into 2020. And then obviously this year is impacted by lower operating leverage with the lower revenues per quarter.

That's helpful. And then just shifting to kind of FX impact, what are your guys' thoughts on the amount of FX impact we should anticipate seeing here? I know it's hard to quantify this given it's a moving target, but on a relative, we'll call it a constant currency basis, how does that impact your thoughts on revenue guidance?

Yeah, so thanks, Mark. Hey, it's John. It's been pretty minimal impact on us significant portion of our business is in U.S. dollars today, so it's not had the type of impact the city has on others. Roughly several million, right?

That's good to hear. Not as much impact as you would expect. And then just pivoting in terms of the, I think you had mentioned 25% of sales came from non-consul headsets in the quarter. You know, what you thinking about long-term goal there I know it's obviously you want to grow that the PC business but in a year like this when consoles might be a little more constrained you know how much more aggressive are you going to be on the PC side of the house thanks sure it may be one other comment on gross margins you know this year they're reflective of the current environment we do expect a rapid recovery and

and look to return to our target mid-30s gross margins over time. On the non-council headset revenues, as I mentioned, we ended last year at around 20%. Year-to-date and Q2, by the way, have been around 25%. We expect to be over 30 by Q4, and Q4 in our guidance actually reflects growth in revenues in Q4, mostly driven by the expansion in non-council headset categories, with also some supplemental good performance in the wireless headsets in Q4. So in terms of a long-term target, our goal is to continue to expand the diversification of the business. And we would look for the 30% plus that we'll end the year with to continue to increase over time. not just driven by PC, by the way, but controllers, flight simulation, ultimately other simulation categories and other new categories over time. Thanks, guys. Thanks, Mark. Thanks, Mark.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Jack Vanderaarde with Maxim Group. Your line is open.

Great. Appreciate the update, guys. I hope you can hear me okay. Thanks for taking my question. Yep. Juergen, maybe just a quick question, kind of a follow-up on the non-console aspect of the business. You have 25% of the second quarter revenue, which is essentially $10 million of sales. Just to be clear, I imagine this kind of makes that prior $100 million plus target of non-console sales tough to get to this year. One, is that true? And then also, how much of the guidance revision for the year was related to non-council versus council sales?

Sure, Jack. Nice to have you on. So the non-council headset, the $100 million, given the surrounding market conditions, we won't have a shot at hitting that. The consumer sentiment that's down right now is really affecting everything across the board. So while the non-council headset business continues to contribute nicely and increases as a percent of our revenue, as I mentioned, a realistic target for this year is probably closer to 75 to 80%. Sorry, 75 to 80 million. 75 to 80 million. Okay, understood. That's helpful.

That's good to hear, actually. And then just maybe a follow-up to one of your comments and your prepared remarks. I think you mentioned, and maybe it's from NPD data, but console headsets as a whole, you know, for the market sales were down, I think you said 30%. Was that on a month basis or was that a year-to-date basis? Because then, you know, I guess that relative to that, it sounds like you guys put up good numbers relative to declining market, just challenging market.

Is that true? Yeah, the 30% for council is for Q2 US NPD. And PC accessories, gaming accessories, as I mentioned, did a little bit better at down around 20% for Q2.

Okay, gotcha. Okay, I'll hop back into Q. That's it for me. Thank you.

Okay, thanks, Jack.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Franco Granda with DA Davidson. Your line is open.

Hi, good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for taking a couple questions here. So I just wanted to first ask a sort of big picture question. It seems like the market is moving towards peripherals and components that could be used across platforms, you know, mobile, console, and PCs. What is your view on what releasing hardware with multi-platform support could do to the overall time over time?

That's a great question, Franco. And you said due to the overall TAM over time?

That's correct.

Right. It's a great question, actually. And the wireless headsets we launched are multi-platform. There is clearly a growing segment of consumers that are playing on PC devices and councils, and many, by the way, that are playing on multiple councils. So the multiplatform focus has driven both the updates and upgrades to our wireless models, as well as, frankly, the strategy we started in 2019 to enter the PC category, because PC headsets are being used on council and vice versa now. And to be successful in PC headsets, you really need the keyboards and mice alongside that for the ecosystem. Um, you know, we, we think that TAM overall will continue to grow. As I mentioned, um, new zoo are the forecasting that we, that we utilize and they, they can continue to expect strong growth in, in the global gaming markets over time. And we think that will play true for the individual TAMs as well as collectively.

Okay. That makes sense. And then kind of touching back on the topic of defending market share. You spoke about ramping up promotional activity in the second half. Can you speak to what that will look like in terms of discounted ASPs versus increased marketing efforts through your conventional channels?

It's across the board, Franco, and it contrasts with periods like 2018 and 2020 when the market suddenly goes up. there are multiple benefits that accrue through to the P&L and kind of disproportionately to EBITDA for everybody in the category. One of those is lower than normal promotional levels. That means less sales, but it also means not buying shippers at the front of stores and doing things that you would normally do because demand is going through the roof and you might even be supply constrained in those boom periods. Well, in a period like this year, where competitors and retailers have high inventories, everybody's been active in running promotions in all forms, discounting as well as, again, paying for additional shippers and promotional activity with retailers. And we've participated as well, but we've tended to be a bit more conservative in going into the second half, as has been now fully reflected in both the revenue guidance range and the gross margins, which get impacted by the promotional level, those that are guidance there reflects us competing more actively in what we believe will be above normal promotional environment for the rest of the year.

All right. Thanks, Jorgen, for your time.

Thank you. As a reminder, if you have a question, please press star 1 1 on your touch tone telephone. We have no further questions at this time. Now I'll turn the call back over to Juergen Stark for closing comments. Juergen.

Thank you. We look forward to speaking with our investors and analysts again following Q3. We appreciate your interest in the company and your support as fellow shareholders. Thank you.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. This concludes today's conference. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.