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spk01: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Good afternoon, and welcome to the Ammo, Inc. Fiscal First Quarter 2023 Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star, then two. Participants of this call are advised that the audio of this conference call is being broadcast live over the Internet and is also being recorded for playback purposes. I would now like to turn the call over to Matt Blasey of CoreIR, the company's investor relations firm. Please go ahead, sir.
spk05: Good morning, and thank you for participating in today's conference call. Joining me from AMLO's leadership team are Fred Wagenholz, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Rob Wiley, Chief Financial Officer, and Rob Goodmanson, President. During this call, management will be making forward-looking statements, including statements that address AMLO's expectations for future performance or operational results. Forward-looking statements involve risks and other factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from those statements. For more information about these risks, Please refer to the risk factors described in AMO's most recently filed periodic reports on Form 10-K and Form 10-Q, the Form 8-K filed with the SEC today, and the company's press releases that accompanied this call, particularly the cautionary statements in it. Today's conference call includes non-GAAP financial measures that AMO believes to be useful in evaluating its performance. You should not consider this additional information in isolation or as a substitute for results prepared in accordance with GAAP. For a reconciliation of this non-GAAP financial measure to net loss, its most directly comparable GAAP financial measure, please see the reconciliation table located in the company's earnings press release. The content of this call contains time-sensitive information that is accurate only as of today, August 15, 2022. Except as required by law, AMO disclaims any obligation to publicly update or revise any information received. With that, it is now my pleasure to turn the call over to AMO's CEO, Fred Wagenholz.
spk09: Thank you, Matt, and good afternoon to everyone on this call. Since our IPO in 2017, our primary goal has been to create shareholder value and enhance the overall experience for the outdoor sporting and shooting enthusiasts through innovation, best-in-class products, and superior execution. This strategy focus has driven ammo from $2 million in revenue in 2018 to an estimated $300 million in revenue for fiscal 2023. The acquisition and integration of GunBroker.com marketplace platform in fiscal 2022 is an excellent opportunity example of how our management team and board of directors has identified and executed unique opportunities to expand the ammo brand and create new platforms for growth. Along with the recent completion of our new state-of-the-art manufacturing facility in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, we believe that both the ammunition and marketplace divisions are key to our continued growth. Accordingly, the board and management team has determined that the best option for unlocking the most shareholder value is by splitting the divisions into two separately traded public companies. Our online and marketplace business will soon be called Outdoor Online Incorporated. and will be comprised of gunbroker.com and related online businesses. The second entity, Action Outdoors Sports Incorporated, will support our current ammunition business, including Streak, Blackline, Stealth, Blue Line, Ammo Brass, and Hunt Ammunition. We believe this separation will allow investors to better evaluate the business model of each division and create greater shareholder value as we continue to pursue unique and distinct growth opportunities. The creation of Action Outdoor Sports is well-timed as we officially opened our 185,000th square-foot manufacturing facility last month. This state-of-the-art facility will increase our production capacity to approximately 1 billion loaded rounds of ammunition and support the manufacturing and sales of the company's patented Streak visual ammunition, subsonic munition, and specialty rounds for the military and law enforcement. I will remain chairman of the board and will be naming a new CEO soon who will lead Action Outdoor Sports as it leverages its increased capacity and continue to be an active acquirer in the outdoor recreational marketplace. After the spinoff, I will continue as chairman and CEO of outdoor online and retain and operate the GunBroker.com marketplace and related high margins and asset light operations within ammo. This will give investors opportunity to participate directly in the growth of the leading online outdoor and shooting sport auction marketplace. I mentioned on our last call, we believe there are significant opportunities to grow this platform when we begin the rollout of several initiatives to capture the significantly great percentages of the transactional volume from that platform, including credit cards processing, credit products, gift cards, and loyalty programs for both buyers and sellers. We are confident the decision to separate Ammo into two independent public companies will further unlock the shareholder value we have worked hard to create. With most businesses now having management teams and resources focused exclusively on the future growth opportunities, I am confident both companies will continue to grow revenues, enhance margins, and drive even greater shareholder value. I will continue to update shareholders on the progress of these initiatives and anticipate this transaction will be completed in the 2023 calendar year. I would now like to turn the call over to President Rob Goodmanson to provide more detail about the transaction and our operational performances this quarter. Thanks, Fred, and welcome, everyone, to our quarterly earnings call. The question that I'm asked on a regular basis is, what is the state of our industry? This industry has significant legs, and listening to VISTA, Olin and Clarice's earnings calls, they're all saying exactly what we are seeing. The growth of this industry is still vibrant and shows no sign of slowing down. This trend can be seen not only through AMO's growth, but also the growth in our marketplace. We've grown traffic approximately 40% annually since 2019, and we fully expect these tailwinds to last a minimum of 24 months. What started out as COVID has morphed into civil unrest, not just in the US, but globally. As you can see, we had a temporary decrease in our margins for the quarter. Sales continue to be strong and our production is just beginning to ramp up. We have identified the compression and have addressed the issues. Most have been answered. The rest are being addressed through changes in our operations. The run-up on commodity prices they were trading at their highs during the quarter. Thus, our cost of goods increased. The good news is that we've worked through much of that inventory and are replacing it with the same commodities at significantly lower prices. Shipping costs have also increased dramatically, which has been an issue for every company. The new facility has 12 loading docks. Shipping alone took two points off our margins. We were hiring significantly during the quarter and determined it best to hire and train new employees prior to the opening of the building. We lost one point in the hiring and one point in the training, which takes three to six months depending on the position. But we would make that same decision all over again. Some of our production came offline during the first quarter in preparing some of the equipment for the move. All the equipment will be installed in the new state-of-the-art facilities at the end of August, and our production capabilities will have a significant uptick. We fully believe that the economies of scale, the synergies of having the components and equipment in one spot, as well as packout and shipping, engineering all together will significantly drive our margins. Currently, we drive back and forth between three different facilities. This new facility also offers us the ability to put ourselves in the best position to support our military program partners while enhancing the support of our growing international customer base, both commercially and governmental. These were not our only short-term expenses. Our marketplace also has been extremely busy. We hired five people in-house for our marketing team, more customer service reps, three additional engineers, and two software engineers. We continue to build out the back end of our technology to get where we need to be. This is an absolute necessity. Things are progressing nicely. The financial service, credit cards, ACH, loyalty programs, and gift cards will be coming online in October. and carting capabilities will be right behind. I'd like to add that our objective with GunBroker was never to move away from our hugely successful auction business, but to expand our offerings to manufacturers, dealers, FFLs, and distributors to become a complete marketplace. We're achieving more than a half a million sessions on GunBroker per day, 7.4 million registered users and still adding 55,000 new users a month. We see this as a huge home run with enormous potential. Shortly, you'll see a refreshed website that is significantly easier to navigate and more accommodating for both the buyers and the sellers. As Fred had mentioned, we announced our plan to separate two companies, and the Board of Directors voted unanimously to split the ammunition and marketplace businesses into two independent publicly traded companies, which will trade on the NASDAQ market. AMO's management team and Board of Directors completed a detailed analysis and assessment of our operations, business units, and growth opportunities, and determined that this would achieve the goal of unlocking and enhancing shareholder value. We are changing our names, and we have been advised to soften our brands, similar to Vista, which is Federal Arms, Olin, which is Winchester, Claris, which is Sierra Barnes. Ammo shareholders will retain ownership in Action Outdoor Sports while obtaining ownership in Online Outdoor at no additional cost. We anticipate that this transaction will be in the form of a dividend distribution to its shareholders of 100% of the stock in Action Outdoor Sports, which will become a new independently publicly traded company. This distribution is intended to be tax-free, both companies and shareholders, for U.S. federal income tax purposes. Concurrently, AMO will change its name to Outdoor Online and will operate under a new ticker symbol. Action Outdoors will also attain symbol on NASDAQ once we are through the approval process. This transaction will allow us to prioritize and refine capital allocation. With separate business models, short and long-term goals, each company will be in better position to refine and focus capital allocation strategies moving forward and to expand strategic opportunities. Both companies will be better positioned to focus on continuing the work designed to leverage its leading marketplace. While Action Outdoors can continue its well-established track record of M&A and securing the best-in-class partnerships with other manufacturers and reinforce and amplify the ability to attract and retain top market talent. This has been an exciting time, and we look forward to completing the spinoff And finally, moving into our new facility. With that, let me turn this over to Rob Wiley, our CFO. Rob?
spk11: Thank you, Rob. Welcome, everyone. Let me now review our first quarter financials in more detail. Total net revenues for our quarter ended June 30th increased 36.6%, or approximately $16.3 million over the comparable prior year period. This increase was a result of approximately 11.2 million of increased sales in both pistol and rifle ammunition, an increase of approximately 1.8 million of sales of proprietary ammunition, a decrease of approximately 0.6 million of sales from our casing operations, and an increase of approximately 4.2 million of revenue generated from our marketplace, gunbroker.com, which includes auction revenue, payment processing revenue, and shipping income. We expect the sales growth rate of proprietary ammunition to continue to outpace the sales of our standard ammunition. We are focused on continuing to grow top line revenue as we continue to further expand distribution in the commercial markets, introduce new product lines, and continue to initiate sales to U.S. law enforcement, military, and international markets. Our gross margin percentage decreased temporarily to 29.8% in the current quarter, This is primarily attributable to near-term cost of material increases, as well as additional labor and overhead costs in preparation for our new manufacturing facility, which are temporary until we are fully operational, and we expect to be fully operational by the end of our second fiscal quarter. We believe as we add efficiencies through our new production facilities scheduled to come online this fiscal year, and continue to grow sales through new markets and expanded distribution that our gross margins will also increase in the second half of this fiscal year. Our goal in the next 12 to 24 months is to continue to improve our gross margins. This will be accomplished through the following. Increased product sales, specifically of proprietary lines of ammunition, like district visual ammunition, STEL, and the ammunition we have developed in support of our military and government programs. Introduction of new lines of ammunition that historically carry higher margins in the consumer and government sectors. Reduced component costs through operation of our ammunition segment and expansion of strategic relationships with component providers. Expanded use of automation equipment that reduces the total labor required to assemble finished products. And better leverage of our fixed costs through expanded productions to support the sales objectives. Overall, for the quarter, our operating expenses increased by approximately 3.8 million over the prior year period, or 140 basis points as a percentage of sales. This is mainly a result of a full quarter of GunBroker.com operations in comparison to a partial quarter in the prior year period due to the timing of the GunBroker acquisition. We expect to see administrative expenditures decrease as a percentage of sales in the 2023 fiscal year as we leverage our workforce and expand our sales opportunities. Operating expenses include non-cash depreciation and amortization of approximately $3.4 million for the period and also consistent of commissions related to our sales increases and stock compensation expense associated with the issuance of common stock in lieu of cash compensation for employees and board members during the period. Operating expenses include non-cash expenses of approximately $4.6 million. Operating income was $5.1 million for the quarter compared to operating income of $9.7 million in the year earlier. As a percentage of net revenues, operating income was 8.4%. We ended the quarter with net income of approximately $3.2 million compared with a net income of approximately $9.5 million in the prior year period. The decrease was mostly attributable to our decrease in margin and the addition of a tax provision in the current period in comparison to the prior year period in which we had a full valuation allowance. As we increase our margin in upcoming quarters, we expect our net income to increase in comparison to the prior year. Our goal is to continue to improve our operating results as we focus on increasing sales and controlling our operating expenses. Adjusted EBITDA was $14.3 million compared to adjusted EBITDA of $16.3 million in the year earlier period. The decline in adjusted EBITDA was mostly attributable to the temporary decrease in the gross margin of our ammunition segment, as discussed earlier. Please note that adjusted EBITDA is a non-GAAP measure, and you should refer to the reconciliation of our GAAP to non-GAAP results in today's press release for additional details. Adjusted net income for diluted share was $0.09 versus adjusted net income per share of $0.13 in the prior year period. Our net cash provided by operations totaled $4.6 million. This is primarily the result of net income of approximately $3.2 million, which was offset by increases in our inventories of approximately $5.6 million, decreases in our accounts receivable of approximately $4.2 million, and decreases in our accounts payable of approximately $3.0 million. Non-cash expenses for depreciation and amortization totaled $4.3 million, and non-cash expenses for employee stock awards totaled $1.2 million. The critical takeaway for the market from today's earning report is that we are reiterating our guidance for our 2023 fiscal year to revenues in the range of $300 to $310 million, EBITDA in the range of $82 to $85 million, and adjusted EBITDA in the range of $108 to $111 million. And more specifically, given our recent announcement of the transformational spin-off transaction, guidance for our ammunition segment revenues in the range of 230 to 240 million, EBITDA in the range of 35 million to 38 million, and adjusted EBITDA in the range of 57 million to 60 million. And our marketplace segment revenues of 70 million, EBITDA of 47 million, and adjusted EBITDA of 51 million. And with that, I will turn it back to Fred.
spk09: Thank you, Rob. I will now turn the call over to the operator for questions. Thank you.
spk01: Ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to ask a question on today's call, you will need to press star then the number 1 on your telephone. If your question has been answered and you wish to withdraw your request, you may do so by pressing star 2. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before entering your request and speaking on the call. One moment, please, for the first question. Our first question is from Michael Dwyer with Raymond James. Please go ahead.
spk08: Hi, everyone. Congratulations on your spinoff. Just a few questions come to mind here. For the average Ammo Inc. shareholder, why is the spinoff a good for stockholders.
spk11: Thank you for the question, Mike. This is Rob Wiley. We think the spin-off is good for the shareholders because ultimately you will end up with shares in two separately traded public companies, one being our manufacturing company, which will be Action Outdoors Sports, and the other being GunBroker.com, or will be known in the future as Outdoor Online. We think that this will put our shareholders in the best position to increase their long-term value with their companies. And really the past 16 months of data indicated to our management team over here, the board of directors and our advisors, that the market is not really valuing the two companies combined appropriately. So that is some of the reasoning why we decided to move forward with the spinoff of the two companies.
spk08: What are your advisors, your investment bankers, telling you about the timing of the spinoff in terms of this year, next year? When do you think it will occur?
spk11: Thanks, Mike. So in the release this morning, we mentioned that we expect the spinoff to be complete in calendar of 2023. We're hearing from advisors that this process can take, you know, subject to regulatory approvals, excuse me, anywhere from 90 to 120 days to complete.
spk08: So this is a really big deal for you guys, you know, a very large tax-free dividend to existing shareholders. Why should shareholders feel comfortable that you can handle this type of a transaction?
spk09: Mike, this is Fred Wagonoff. You know, going back 20 years ago, you followed me when I had action performance. I started with a card table and three employees, took the company to 200 or 407 million a year in sales, and it was about people. I hired the right people for the right job to build the company. That's what I've done here. You know, if you look at five short years from 2 million to 240 million, We made three key acquisitions, SWK, Jagman, and Gunbroker, completed offerings without an issue, uplisted to the NASDAQ, added to the Russell 2000, designed and operated, opened a 185,000-square-foot world-class facility in record time and budget, and that was all because of people. And do we... Am I looking for a few other key people? For the last probably eight months, I've looked for the CEO that would handle the new Action Outdoor company. I've found that person, and he will be under contract by the time we spin the companies off. and I'm sure he's probably looking at maybe one or two people to bring in to add to the staff. But it's all about people, and we've done it with people. And probably more proud of anything is we have no debt and over $21 million in cash in the bank today. So that's one hell of an accomplishment, in my opinion.
spk08: This is exciting, Fred. Congratulations. Thank you.
spk01: The next question is from Matt Caranda with Roth Capital. Please go ahead.
spk10: Hey, guys. I've got a few here, so just bear with me. On the spin, I think the key question is why now? Why not wait until Manitowoc has been ramped? Maybe just a little bit of detail on sort of why now is the right timing.
spk09: Thanks for your question, Matt. You know, there is the now instead of waiting for the ramp is as we ramp up, the production will increase dramatically. We have an opportunity, I think, to spin it currently at a level where the shareholders are going to view and receive significant value just in that ramp by itself. We have a lot of different opportunities that we see and we need to take advantage of them. So as we split up these two companies and we can start to focus on the short and long-term goals of each of the two different companies, it works significantly better. So there's no time like the present to get this spun, and we need to unlock the shareholder value, create more free cash flow, And this is, you know, we need to do it. We feel we need to start doing this now for the shareholders who stayed with us, and we've done everything we can to unlock this.
spk10: Okay, got it. And then on the ammunition business and the revenue run rate there, I'm just curious – What's holding back production? Because, you know, revenues declined, you know, pretty drastically from the fourth quarter, down $8 million. I'm just curious, did we see a degradation in pricing at all, or is that all just volume that came out of the facility? Maybe just help us understand sort of how much production came offline in the first quarter and then decreased. Are we back online right now as well? Maybe just help us with that first. I have a margin question as well.
spk09: Sure. Let's just go to that first part of your question. The production, we produced what we could produce. We did have some equipment that needs a little more care. It needs to be taken down prior to. So we had to shut down some of our equipment. Again, and you know from our past conversation in the existing facility with only one door for shipping and receiving, shipping got to be a huge issue. And moving to get into your point number two, what we're seeing is we should be totally up and running by the end of the month, which means we've done a couple of different things. A, we're kind of morphing away a little bit. We've seen a little softening in prices, the 9 mil and the 223, which is the bread and butter rounds. And doing it at this time, it allows us the ability to move into the higher margin things with some equipment, the hunting line, some of the large rifle, medium rifle, which will also bring back those margins. significantly, and the demand is still outweighing the supply currently on the specialty unique rounds, whether it be pistol and or rifle hunting.
spk10: Okay, that makes sense. Just to follow up on that, roughly how should we be thinking about blended pricing at the wholesale level? It seems like it maybe took a little bit of a step down, which is understandable just given sort of where retail stocking levels are, but how should we think about price? And then in terms of volume, you say back to, you know, full production by the end of this month, what capacity should we be penciling in? Because I know you're on a ramp here and you're headed to about a billion rounds, but what sort of the annualized capacity that we should be thinking about when we think about full production?
spk09: Well, I would say for the full production, we won't start off at a billion rounds. As things come on and we continue to bring in more machines with the space, and some of the machines that we own that have been put in are still being hooked up. But I think you would see a sizable increase in daily production right now, immediately when the machines are turned on. Ease of shipping, backing out, You know, we've added significant automation for the packouts. All these things are really pluses. To give you a number, let's say if we were running at 400, I would say initially we'd probably start at 550 running rounds and have that just continue to increase. Again, maybe a little more heavily weighted into the specialty rounds. and obviously our streak, which we have the green streak now, which has been in high demand.
spk10: Okay. And then when Manitowoc is fully ramped, I assume we should be sort of ramping into the billion, so 550 is helpful, Rob. The billion kind of comes toward the latter half of fiscal 23, or does it not come until 24? I would say the latter half of 23. Okay. Okay, helpful. And then just I'll do one more, and then I'll jump back in, Kia, and let others have the mic here. But just on the gross margins in the core ammo business, I'm backing into something in sort of the 10% range or so, but maybe just bridge us back to normalized levels. Do we normalize in the back half of the year back into the mid-20% range and then just Get us there with maybe the $1,500 basis point improvement. How much comes from sort of just better utilization of the labor that you guys have hired, kind of pre-hired ahead of the ramp? How much comes from improved shipping costs? You listed commodities, I think, and a couple other things in the prepared remarks. So maybe just if you could bucket it out for us, that would be very helpful.
spk11: Yeah, thanks, Matt. As you mentioned, we did have a decrease in our ammunition segment for the quarter related to our margin. That was mainly due to the increased labor, overhead expenses, materials costs as we transitioned into the new facility, materials costs separately, but we believe we've worked our way through that problem. As we are fully operational in our new facility, which we expect to be by the end of this second quarter here, we expect our margins to return to the normalcy that you had mentioned, the mid-20%. And we feel pretty confident now, and that's why we reiterated our guidance earlier on the call. I think the improvements that you had mentioned, you know, coming from efficiencies, utilization, commodities, you know, that's all of the above that's really going to contribute to the margin increase. So just to reiterate, decrease in margin we feel is temporary and, you know, we'll be confident in our guidance moving forward.
spk10: I'll leave it there, guys. Appreciate it.
spk01: Thank you. The next question is from Mark Smith with Lake Street. Please go ahead.
spk02: Hi, guys. First, can you just talk broadly about the consumer environment, buying trends, especially as it applies to gun broker? Did you see any pullback in spending here in the June quarter?
spk09: No, we haven't actually. Our average ticket size increased from the previous quarter and the previous year. So we're not seeing that at all.
spk02: Okay. As we look at kind of sequential sales here, you know, down year over year, is some of that just seasonality that we just haven't had a year yet to see kind of the seasonality in gun broker being a little lower in these summer months?
spk09: Well, there is some seasonality, and you hit that, I think, Totally correct. It is a more quiet time. It usually picks up starting in September, moving into the hunting season, as will the ammunition side as well.
spk02: Okay. And then as we think about the move to the new plant, can you guys talk about capacity additions as we think about brass? We've heard from peers and others in the industry, brass being kind of a hard piece to find right now, which puts you in a good place. Is there plans to ramp the production of brass casings significantly or any insight you can give us would be great.
spk09: I don't think it would be a secret if I said our plan for our brass was to use it all rather than get it out to other people and competitors. We will always do that. We do have agreements with some other manufacturers So that will always stay constant. And so I think the increase in brass production is going to be utilized internally more than just build it and sell it.
spk02: Okay. And then as we think about kind of one-time impact in the June quarter, and I'm thinking primarily about revenue here, you know, I don't know if you can quantify at all, you know, any – you know, as you began some switchover that maybe hurt, you know, ammunition revenue late in Q1, and then kind of what type of impact we would look at in July and kind of this full transition and the negative impact potentially to revenues in September quarter.
spk11: Yeah, and thanks, Mark. And you're exactly right. We were preparing our facilities to begin the move in July, as we have mentioned earlier, and that did impact the revenue that we were able to ship out in this June quarter ended here. As we are in the process of moving into the new facility, we'll likely see revenues around this level in the September quarter, but that shouldn't impact the overall year in terms of our revenue guidance and what we're expecting out of the new facility with the increases in capacity coming online. And also, as Robin mentioned, it will be much more nimble with operating out of 12 shipping docks as opposed to one that we've been out of. So it'll be a nice change, and we're really excited to be in the new facility here.
spk02: Okay. So good things coming on the ammo side, but there might still be some noise in this quarter that we're currently in just from the switchover. Yeah, I think that's fair to say. Okay. Perfect. Thank you, guys.
spk01: Thank you, Mark. The next question is from Edward Riley with EF Hutton. Please go ahead.
spk06: Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my question. For outdoor online, you mentioned it's going to be comprised of gunbroker.com and related online businesses. I was wondering if the SPIN Co. is going to be pursuing an acquisition strategy, and if so, what type of outdoor recreational brands are you targeting?
spk09: Thanks for the question, Eddie. As you may have picked up from our history, M&A work is not out of the question for us. We do view outdoor online as a vehicle to really become, which it already is, the destination for outdoor sporting goods. But now with the Ability to cart coming online and with the financial service products adding additional Products, I think you're going to see some incredible margins even increase Being able to buy from multiple sellers at one time as far as individuals Brands, you know nothing You know, it could be a There's nothing right on the surface that I would say, oh, I want to buy this brand. I think it would be a little broader. It wouldn't be like a Claris where they're going to pick up and buy the brands. We want it to be a marketplace so we could facilitate the actual sellers more on the marketplace. Thus, all the changes that we're making to the back end and the front end for customer service. We really do not really want to get into, you know, holding inventory and having bricks and mortars. We would rather be the marketplace for any number of different manufacturers. There also could be some opportunities for action outdoor sports, our manufacturing facility. We built the state-of-the-art facility. It's well-equipped. we're always looking for something that might fit into that company also.
spk06: Okay. Will it be focused on firearms, recreational outdoor activity, or are you guys branching into maybe something else potentially?
spk09: Could be something else. It could be something that... Just fits our facility. We built, as I say, a great manufacturing facility, and we've got great people up there running it. We've got a good engineering department. So we always like to look for something that is unique. It's something that we're exclusively building for someone and either has a patent to it or, has some design features that nobody else has.
spk06: Okay, great. And then just housekeeping on the revenue guidance, is this gross revenue or net revenue after excise tax?
spk11: This would be the revenue that would be reported on our statement of operations and our filings. Okay, great. Net revenue. Thanks.
spk06: Okay, great. Thank you. That's up to me.
spk01: The next question is from JD Aboshar with Glass Creek Partners. Please go ahead.
spk07: Congratulations, guys, on both the successful opening of Manitowoc and also the exciting news about the spin-out. Just to follow up on some of the capacity constraint issues that are now going away, how difficult is it to shift the production equipment from, doing the more bold 223 rounds to say something more higher margin like a 308 or 300 Win Mag that obviously has higher ASP and much higher margins and the ability to sort of within a shift move around to sort of take advantage of those better margins.
spk09: Well, I think you just read a piece of our playbook. You know, we're small enough to accomplish that, and the timing happens to be perfect as we're bringing all the machines in, being able to retool, you know, and make an adjustment on which markets we want to really focus on. Maybe narrowing our SKUs so we know consistent every month what we can have and what we can ship to, whether it be a big box store or distributor, you know, versus... You know, we really don't want to get into a commodity-type thing where it seems to be a race to zero. So we'll continue to streak 9mm, and we can streak just about any other caliber. But I think we can really benefit from a margin standpoint on making some of those specialty rounds, especially in the large rifle and mid-sized rifle.
spk07: Excellent, excellent. And I understand a lot of the, you know, you've already touched on margin enhancement just from, you know, de-bottlenecking and the shipping and, you know, having elbow room. But one area you haven't talked about that I know has been on your radar screen is on the projectile side, which is the one, you know, item that you do have to buy out. Can you give us an update there on doing internal projectiles? And are there any patents or barriers that would keep you out of some of the more in-demand variants?
spk09: Well, no. On the projectiles, you know, there's also different ways. There are different companies that we could also take a look at and different availabilities. We would potentially have the capabilities to start making our own, but is that the best way to get to that end, or do we look to our potential acquisition candidates or joint venture or whatever? That's a question that's a little bit up in the air yet.
spk07: Got it, got it. And just final question is, you in the past talked about, you know, military and military government sales being a meaningful percentage of revenues as sort of a target. Is that still on track and any updates there?
spk09: Yeah, this is Fred Wagonall. I'd really like to turn this over to John Flynn, who's worked on this project for probably the last three years. And every time I go by his office, he's got a sign on the door, I'm talking to the military.
spk04: I'll let John tell you. Not because I don't want to talk to Fred, I promise. Hi, thanks for your question. We have, there's two different parts to your question. So one, we have contracts in place relating to two products that were specifically requested. We designed ground up for U.S. Special Forces component groups, one being a ballistic match BMNPR round. The second being the signature on target round. Think about the latter as an alternative to tracer ammunition, which is incredibly exciting for this company. We have other programs going on, some of which you won't hear about, some of which you likely will hear about shortly. Our focus and our path in obtaining this type of business was to focus on really playing off what Fred said, unique capabilities, distinct capabilities, manufacturing skill sets that we have to design products for really the U.S. Special Forces who have specific needs and have a much, much faster procurement cycle than your standard big army U.S. military procurement cycle. So even though it doesn't always look like it to Fred, certainly, who comes down and talks to me or to the public, it is actually moving at light speed in that arena. It is on track. We are hitting all the milestones, all the performance requirements, and we are moving now into the latter phases of those two programs. Some of those other confidential programs are in different phases to where we reasonably anticipate and are told to expect revenue to start flowing in a more meaningful way, but it does take anybody that understands that work and that industry to take some time, but we're really moving very quickly and effectively to date on those programs with some more exciting things that will be publicly announced hopefully pretty soon.
spk07: Awesome. Thanks for the update, John. Just final question, going to the marketplace side. As you envision outdoor online in the future, Is it a zipped-up marketplace similar to an eBay but for outdoors, or are you more envisioning something along an Amazon, Shopify, where there is more, you know, the reseller is more prominent than an individual auction-type format?
spk09: Both. We're eBay and Amazon.
spk07: That's the answer I wanted.
spk09: Thanks, Fred.
spk01: The next question is from Brandon Bailo with Foundation Capital Management. Please go ahead.
spk00: Hey, guys. Thanks so much for taking my call. I have quite a bit of questions here. I didn't think I'd get the chance to ask them today. So, you know, hopefully you guys can – hopefully I can get through these. So first one – The thought process behind the spinoff didn't really sound too convincing, and the reason why is if we look back last year, I think it was like May of 2021 when you guys announced the Gum Broker acquisition, the reasons for it were basically along the lines of, hey, this is going to help us vertically integrate, and this is going to help increase shareholder value, and this is what we think is best for shareholder value. And then a year later, with all the costs that go into integrating this business and trying to ramp it up and then all the costs that are going to happen to spin it out, you're now saying that, oh, actually having this as a separate company is now what's best for shareholders. And so, like I know you said you kind of had discussions with a team and the board, but walk me through exactly why that sentiment changed from AMO being better with Gumburger inside of it versus now the shareholder value is better with Gumburger outside of AMO.
spk09: Well, one of the ways I think you can really look at it, and I know we mentioned, you know, for the last 16 months, which we've had gun broker, you know, we haven't really realized the valuation that is right there in front of us. You know, a good case in point, if you look at the consensus on the street, you've got the ammunition business, you know, trading at eight times EBITDA, and you've got the marketplace at 15 times EBITDA. You know, you collectively put those things together, and it's a billion-dollar market cap. And I think what you're seeing is I think we can start gaining on that value and where we should start trading when there's two separate entities. This could be the parts are greater than the whole. That's, you know, this is the plan. I think this way we perhaps get more coverage. We won't get manufacturing analysts following the gun broker side. We don't get, you know, the other analysts following the other side. I just think that this is a way to do their complementary businesses that are both undervalued at this point.
spk00: Yeah. I mean, it just sounds like at that point you're kind of playing to what you think shareholders should will like instead of what is probably best for the business. But maybe I'm wrong on that. But in light of kind of this sum is – or the parts are greater than the sum, if I look at the last three months ended just kind of for this quarter, June 30th, you got $44 million in revenue from the ammo business. And, again, like there's a lot of insulated costs, and maybe those are transitory. But you get roughly – $95,000 in income from operations on the ammo business. Marketplace business, completely different story, $8.5 million in EBIT on $16.5 million in revenue. Really, really good high margins. What I'm wondering is when you split this business or when you split these businesses off, what value should shareholders put on this ammunition business if it's not generating any of the income from operations because the marketplace pretty much takes all of the income from operations. And so if you remove the marketplace EBIT, the ammunition business does basically none. And then you have this other expense, corporate and other expenses, about $3.6 million. And I wonder how much of that is marketplace versus ammunition. And if I were to bet, I would bet most of that corporate and other expense is probably geared towards the ammunition business. And so even if you add half of that corporate expense, say, onto the ammunition side, you're now losing money on an EBIT basis from an ammunition business. And so what makes you think that you can capture or command some sort of value where each piece is more valuable than the whole? Because I agree that the marketplace business is valuable. I just don't see how shareholders will want to stay – with the ammunition business, given the choice between the two of them?
spk09: Well, I guess I'm not quite understanding your question as much as giving you a platform to state what your thought process is. You know, use the shareholders at 100%. The spinoff, if those shareholders do not want to continue to own the ammunition business, they don't have to. If they want the ammunition business, they can keep it and add to it. This also gives them the benefit to select. Now, I know we've got other questions coming up, I believe. So if there's any other thing you want to talk about, or can we move on to the next question?
spk00: No, we can move on to the next question. It's just the only reason I ask this is because you mentioned that if you value each business at kind of eight times, you get a collection of a billion dollars, and I just don't know how you get that value with the MO business.
spk09: No, no, you only value the manufacturing business. That's where the street is at eight times EBITDA. The marketplace is 15 times EBITDA. So you can do the math. Got it. You know, it's $360 million for the manufacturing business, and $765 million on the gun broker. I don't know. My math still comes up to just over a billion dollars.
spk11: Got it. I think another important thing to consider is we're taking on extra costs as we prepare for this move into the new facility. We mentioned that we're confident in our guidance, and we have guided significant EBITDA amounts to our ammunition business. We think splitting the two companies apart will allow each company to, you know, be more aligned with their vision for the ammunition manufacturing company to work with other manufacturers and the gun broker site to be more of an e-commerce play. So we do think that there's value, and that's why we're confident in the guidance that we provided. We know that there's additional costs temporarily, but that's not something that we see long-term and that we think that both companies will be you know, very valuable to our shareholders. Thank you for your question.
spk01: This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Fred Wagenhals for any closing remarks.
spk09: Well, thank you very much for participating with our company, and we look forward to the future. And I think within the next four to six months, you'll see a lot of activity around here. Have a good evening.
spk01: The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.
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