The Shyft Group, Inc.

Good morning and welcome to the SHIFT Group's first quarter 2023 conference call and webcast. All participants will be in a listen-only mode until the question and answer session of the conference call. As a reminder, this call is being recorded at the request of the SHIFT Group. If anyone has any objections, you may disconnect at this time. I would now like to introduce Randy Wilson, Vice President, Investor Relations and Treasury of the SHIFT Group. Mr. Wilson, you may proceed.

Thank you for joining this morning's call. I'm joined by Daryl Adams, President and Chief Executive Officer, and John Doyer, Chief Financial Officer. Their prepared remarks will be followed by a question and answer session. For today's call, we've included a presentation deck that's been filed with the SEC and is also available on our website. Before we begin, please turn to slide two of the presentation for our safe harbor statement. Today's conference call contains forward-looking statements which are subject to risks that could cause actual results to be materially different from those expressed or implied. Primary risks that management believes could materially affect our results are identified in our Forms 10-K and 10-Q, filed with the SEC. We will be discussing non-GAAP information and performance measures we believe are useful in evaluating the company's operating performance. During today's call, We'll provide a business update before moving on to a more detailed review of the results in our 2023 outlook. We'll then open the line for Q&A. Please turn to slide three, and I'll turn it over to Darrell Adams.

Thank you, Randy. Good morning, everyone. Overall, the SHIFT group had a solid start to the year, delivered improved financial performance while continuing to deliver on our strategy and long-term growth initiatives. Our team achieved 18% sales growth led by another record quarter in our service body business and improved performance in fleet vehicles and services. Our ability to increase output enabled us to improve profitability by over 11 million versus the first quarter of last year. In addition, we delivered positive operating cash flow in the quarter and brought in nearly 34 million more than prior year, which allowed us to efficiently deploy capital. We continued to make great progress on our Blue Rock electric vehicle program in the quarter. We were very pleased to announce that not only did we achieve CARB and EPA certification for our Class 3, 4, and 5 EV delivery vehicles, but we did so with performance that more than exceeds our fleet customers' needs. The CARB test results for our Class 3 vehicle included a 225-mile city range and over a 200-mile combined city highway range. which can more than comfortably handle a daily delivery route. I would also like to take a moment to highlight a fantastic addition to the shift group as John Dunn joined the company in January as our fleet vehicle and service president. He is a proven leader in manufacturing, customer relations, and product development and has made an immediate impact with our employees, customers, and suppliers. Turning to slide four. Over the past five years, we have strategically moved the company toward last-mile delivery and infrastructure-focused specialty vehicles. We remain confident in these end markets and how the company is positioned to win over the long term. Consistent with our commentary in February, the market and macroeconomic environment remains dynamic. I will take you through how that looks by segment, starting with fleet vehicle and services. We continue to analyze the parcel market, including performing independent market surveys monitoring customer announcements, and reviewing published industry reports. The consensus is clear. After an acceleration driven by the COVID pandemic and subsequent pause in e-commerce penetration, the industry growth rate is expected to be in the mid to high single-digit range for the foreseeable future, driven by the secular shift to e-commerce. As a leader in this space, we are well positioned to benefit from this growth. As the operating environment unfolds in the near term, we continue to hear mixed feedback from our fleet operators, dealers, and suppliers. While certain fleet operators are looking to accelerate fleet replacement, others are still working to deploy vehicles from purchases made during COVID or working through efficiency actions given economic uncertainty. We remain close to our customers to support their fleet needs during this time, but remain cautious given these market signals. We remain flexible in our operations and will take the appropriate cost actions required to balance efficiency and growth. As we have previously communicated, the backlog in FES continues to normalize from the higher levels that we saw during COVID, driven by the improvement in production rates and supply chain. FES ended the quarter with a backlog of 585 million, which is still elevated compared to pre-COVID levels. Moving to specialty vehicles, Continued investment in infrastructure supported by federal government spending is bolstering demand for work trucks, with funding across end markets including transportation, power and grid enhancements, and other critical infrastructure needs. As projects begin, contractors and fleet operators are investing in their fleet to meet demand. Sales of our work truck products were up 22% year over year, delivering above market growth and demonstrating strong customer demand. Turning to our motorhome chassis business, we, like many others, have previously communicated overall softness in the RV market. While the Class A diesel segment is less cyclical, we have experienced declines as well. Our market share continues to remain strong and has been trending favorably, demonstrating the value of our product innovations and quality. Overall, the shift group continues to have industry-leading brands that are well-positioned to win in the markets we serve. We remain confident in our team's ability to execute in these dynamic times, deliver for our customers, and achieve our long-term financial targets. I'll now share some exciting developments underway in our FES and SD businesses. Please turn to slide five. Starting with FES highlights. As discussed earlier, we have seen certain delivery customers accelerate investment in fleet replenishment. We are excited to have been awarded a commercial off-the-shelf contract for over 18,000 cargo van outfits split between Ford E-Transit and Ram ProMaster. We expect deliveries to begin in mid 2023 and extend into 2024. This win demonstrates our position as a trusted industry partner and reflects our ability to deliver a highly quality product at high volumes. Moving to our SV highlights. We have been successful in our service body geographic expansion and continue to execute our strategy of being a leading national provider. Consistent with this strategy, we recently announced the opening of our new Tennessee location, which will serve as a hub for upfitting Royal, Dermag, Magnum, and Strobe's products. This location provides direct access to one of the fastest-growing regions in the country and enabled us to secure additional OEM chassis pools which will help accelerate our growth in an already strong performing business. Turning to slide six, I will provide an update on our Blue Arc EV development program. We made great progress in the first quarter, and we are on track with our original development timeline, which has us starting vehicle production in the second half of the year. At the NTA Work Truck Show in March, we saw significant interest from customers, dealers, and other industry partners. We also successfully hosted numerous future customers as part of our ride and drive. This positive response emphasizes that our Blue Arc EVs are differentiated within the commercial electric vehicle industry, both for their design and the performance. In the first quarter, the fact that we achieved CARB approval positions that previously discussed pre-order with random area to a firm commitment. Their team remains excited about our progress and we continue to work with them on finalizing specifications for their first deliveries. We also made solid progress with our production facility and remain on track for manufacturing readiness. We continue to have positive momentum both operationally and commercially. In the coming months, we expect to deliver on key milestones, including delivery of our first test units to key customers, expansion of our national dealer and service network, and commencement of pilot and production vehicle builds. We are proud of the progress we have made, and we have efficiently executed this program and look forward to providing updates on future calls. With that, I'll now turn the call over to John to discuss our first quarter financial results.

Thank you, Daryl, and good morning, everyone. Please turn to slide eight, and I'll provide an overview of our financial results for the first quarter. As we anticipated, our team performed well in this dynamic environment. delivering solid sales growth and significant improvement in profitability after a challenging start last year. Sales for the first quarter were $243.4 million, up 17.7% from the year-ago quarter. The year-over-year improvement reflects strong service body and truck body performance and improved chassis supply in our walk-in van and up-fit product lines. Net income was $1.7 million, or 5 cents per share, compared to a net loss of $3.9 million or 11 cents per share in the previous year. We improved adjusted EBITDA to $10.8 million or 4.4% of sales, up from a loss of $0.6 million or negative 0.3% of sales in the first quarter of 2022. These results include EV spend of $8.5 million, up 4.1 million from the prior year. Excluding EV spend, adjusted EBITDA with 7.9% of sales, up 610 basis points year-over-year. Adjusted net income improved to $4.3 million compared to a loss of $2.1 million in the year-ago quarter, while adjusted EPS rose to $0.12 per share from a loss of $0.06 per share last year. I'll now walk through our first quarter results by operating segment, beginning with fleet vehicles and services on slide 9. The team delivered improved performance year over year as we saw the benefits from prior year truck body expansion efforts, as well as higher production output driven by healthier chassis supply. While margins did significantly improve year over year, we do continue to experience inefficiencies as we work through the impact of supply chain challenges. FBS achieved sales of $159.4 million of 41.5% compared to $112.7 million a year ago. FBS adjusted EBITDA was $12.5 million versus a loss of $0.9 million a year ago. Adjusted EBITDA margin was 7.8% of sales compared to a loss of 0.8% of sales in the first quarter last year. Please turn to slide 10 for the specialty vehicles first quarter results. Our specialty vehicles business continues to perform well despite the softness in the motorhome chassis business. The team delivered our third consecutive quarter of adjusted EBITDA margin of more than 15% driven by strong operating and commercial performance in our work truck businesses. First quarter sales were $87.2 million, a 7.4% decrease from $94.2 million in the prior year. Adjusted EBITDA was $13.9 million or 15.9% of sales compared to 10.1 million or 10.7% of sales in the same period last year. reflecting strong operational performance and the impact of improved price and mix. Please turn to slide 11 for our 2023 outlook. We are pleased with our overall start to the year and the underlying performance in our business despite an uncertain operating environment. We delivered first quarter performance that was in line with our expectations, and as we look to the balance of the year, we are reaffirming our full year guidance. We remain cautious on demand in the broader economy, and are taking appropriate actions to remain focused on both cost efficiency and growth. Our 2023 outlook is as follows. Sales to be in the range of $1 billion to $1.2 billion. Adjusted EBITDA of $70 to $100 million, representing 20% growth at the midpoint. Adjusted EPS of 98 cents per share to $1.60 per share, with shares outstanding of approximately 35.8 million, which includes the reduction in shares given recent stock repurchases. And finally, free cash flow conversion as a percentage of net income expected to be greater than 100% as we drive down working capital. Please turn to the capital allocation slide on slide 12. Overall, our balance sheet remains strong, and we were able to maintain an overall net leverage ratio of 0.9 times while investing in the business and returning capital to shareholders in the quarter. After delivering strong cash flow generation to end 2022, we generated $5.9 million of operating cash in the first quarter, demonstrating significant year-over-year improvement. Further progress on reducing working capital remains a key focus area for the company. SHIFT's organic investment priority is the development and launch of the BlueArk EV. As we ramp up production levels in the coming years, BlueArk is expected to be a significant earnings contributor and deliver favorable returns. We remain flexible in other capital deployment, and while we continue to evaluate M&A, We are also focused on returning capital to our shareholders when appropriate, as evidenced by the $10.7 million deployed in the first quarter through repurchases and dividends. In closing, we are committed to generating cash flow and maintaining a robust balance sheet to support strategic investments, future growth, and efficient returns to shareholders. Now, I'll turn the call back to Daryl for closing remarks.

Thank you, John. Please turn to slide 13. At the SHIFT Group, we have created a compelling industrial growth company. Our priorities start with a culture of customer-focused innovation. We are driving operational excellence across the company, and our financial strength allows us to invest in long-term growth and deliver returns ahead of our peers. We have the right people and processes in place to execute our strategy. I am proud of the dedication and agility of our team members as they remain focused on delivering value for our customers and shareholders. I'd like to conclude today's call by announcing that Todd Heaven, our COO, who joined the SHIFT group four years ago, has recently communicated his intent to retire mid-year and we're working on an orderly transition. Since joining SHIFT in 2019, Todd has been instrumental in laying the foundation and progressing lean and operational excellence across the company. Over the last several years, we have built out the depth of our operational experience across our businesses, and we will look to these leaders to drive our continuous improvement journey going forward. I value Todd's insight and would like to wish him well in retirement. Operator, we are now ready for the Q&A portion of the call.

And at this time, we'll begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star and then one on a touchtone telephone. If you are using a speakerphone, we do ask that you please pick up the handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your questions, you may press star and two. Once again, that is star and then one to ask a question. At this time, we'll pause momentarily to assemble the roster.

Our first question today comes from Felix Bochen from Raymond James.

Please go ahead with your question.

Hey, good morning, everybody. Morning, Felix. Hey, first of all, congrats on the upfit contract. I'm curious if we can talk about that. Just curious if you could maybe comment on the aggregate revenue impact of the 18,500 units, and also if you could comment on the timing. I know mid-2023 start. I'm just curious if it's going to be all wrapped up by the end of 2024.

Yeah, Felix, this is John. I think when we look at that contract, you know, think about an update for us is mid-single-digit thousands of revenue, so you're talking, you know, north of $70 million from that perspective, which is an exciting win for the team as we continue to support the customer and carry on the long relationship that we've had there. I think as we look at timing, you know, we mentioned that it's across two different platforms, both the eTransit as well as the Ram ProMaster. Those will be, there's a bit of a sort of timing sequence from that perspective, but we expect to begin production mid-year. There will be a portion of that that does extend into 2024, though, but we're extremely excited about the win and the opportunity.

Our team did a fantastic job being able to secure that.

Okay, got it.

That's helpful.

And then just on the backlog, I know it's stepped down a bit, but I just wanted to clarify, it does not yet include any of the EV pre-orders. And then just bigger picture, just curious if you could talk about how you're thinking about opening those blue order books, you know, just given the anticipated production start here.

i think from a blue arc perspective i mean we continue to see demand as daryl talked about in in his comments a high level of demand and interest from the customer base we continue to work through building out the dealer network as well as working with key customers and getting vehicles in their hands here which we expect to do in the second quarter when you look at the backlog to your point it does not include the uh the order that we have secured from or the committed order from Randy Marion that we previously discussed. You know, our intent here at this time is to really, you know, continue to report backlog from a legacy business perspective. But as we look at Blue Arc, really talk about vehicle commitments. And a piece of that is really because it's tied to our overall production levels. And so, we've talked previously about ramping the 3,000 units here by 2025. And so putting an order in there that's multi-years from a dollar perspective, we don't necessarily need or want to, you know, artificially inflate the backlog. And we think production is actually a better representation of what future sales will look like versus a multi-year order. So, again, vehicle, we'll talk vehicle commitments and then continue to talk backlog in our legacy business.

Got it. Understood. I appreciate the time. I'll pass it on. Thank you. Thank you.

Our next question comes from Mike Schliske from DA Davidson. Please go ahead with your question.

Good morning and thanks for taking my question. I want to start off with a quick follow-up on the off-the-shelf 80,000 unit order that we've been talking about so far on the call. Is that the kind of order where you take ownership of the chassis like you had in previous large orders of this type or is it your typical upfit order where you are able to just build on top of an existing unit that never actually hits your balance sheet or P&L?

Great question, Mike. Good morning. This is a traditional upfit contract where we're not taking possession of the chassis. It's just our content and labor that's going into these vehicles.

Great. Outstanding. Your comments, Daryl, on FDS or the final mile business being a mid to high single-digit kind of industry growth rate for the foreseeable future, is that roughly in line where you expect the actual FDS business to go over a long period of time here? Or do you have other than Blue Arc, any kind of market share initiatives or other ways you can outgrow or perhaps underperform that growth rate here?

Yeah, good question, Mike. So in the parcel delivery space, yeah, we're comfortable with the mid to high single-digit number. I think what can accelerate the growth of FES would be the truck body business as we continue to see nice orders come in on that. And that's, you know, something that we jumped back into a couple years ago and are seeing good order intake and customers excited about our product. So

know longer term i think that might add a little bit more to it to bump it up a percentage two or or so but uh the main driver as you know in fes is the mature business is the parcel delivery got it thanks for that um and then looking at especially vehicles real quick um do you expect the the good margins there to continue for the foreseeable future given the given the strong strong um strong environment for demand can you get some of the drivers there is just volumes or Do you have some supply chain improvements you can point to as well on that segment?

Yeah. As we talked about in the prepared remarks, we've seen three fantastic quarters in a row delivering north of 15%. I think, you know, as we look at that business forward, the team has done a really nice job, particularly on the work truck side of the business, you know, service bodies and the like, driving price as well as efficiencies in the factories. And so, continue to see strong demand, I think, and certainly can expect to continue to see momentum from that perspective. And like we said, the team's done a great job both commercially and operationally to position that business and continue to move it forward.

Got it. I want to ask you one last one in here, if I could. The guidance being pretty much unchanged, you know, it's still a pretty wide window now that we're the way through the year already. Can you maybe just review the big questions you're waiting to answer before you narrow that guidance out of the low, high or, you know, middle of the range here?

Yeah, I mean, I think when you look at how we've guided the year on our last call, we talked about doing mid-single digits in the first quarter, which, you know, which we just delivered. We talked about roughly 30% of the year in the first half. which is still in line with our expectations. I think as we look to the second half of the year, we want to make sure that we understand what the, you know, the demand side of things will look like before we solidify it. I think, you know, filling in with, you know, our sales with the off-the-shelf order that we talked about earlier, the upset order. things like that. I think there's a couple different dynamics there from a lever perspective that would give us or put us in a position to narrow the guidance.

Great. I appreciate the answers. I'll leave it there. Thank you.

Thanks, Mike. Thanks, Mike. Thank you. Our next question comes from Greg Lewis from the TIG. Please go ahead with your question.

Yeah, hey, thank you, and good morning, everybody. Thanks for taking my question. Darrell, you know, I was hoping maybe for a little bit more color on those comments around the mixed demand. I mean, you touched on it with some of the, you know, existing fleet being, you know, squeezing out efficiency. Could you maybe talk about the opportunity for shift as some of these companies, as some of your customers kind of are in the process of, you know, basically trying to extract some more value out of some of their legacy vehicles?

Yeah, I think – good question, Greg. I think it's maybe a little early to put a pin in anything certain, but I think when you think about efficiencies, right, I mean, I'm sure you're reading the same article as we are, but maybe if you look at it a different way, efficiency could also be – maybe getting rid of some of their older vehicles and moving to more fuel-efficient vehicles, which we would have, if they choose to do that, we would have our Velocity vehicle, which gets double the fuel efficiency of a typical walk-in van, and the cargo space is slightly smaller. So that's one option that our sales guys are talking to them about. But I think it's too early. They're still trying to figure it out, especially if you look at the FedEx Express to the FedEx Ground articles that have been out in the press, right? They're just on the start of a new project called Drive. So we are rest assured that we are sitting in meetings with them, understanding that staying close and offering the products that we have to help them become more efficient. And we've been great partners in the past and expect it to continue.

Okay, great. And then just real quick on the, you know, we're going to keep the EV arc out of, I'm sorry, we're going to keep the we're going to keep it out of the backlog. But as we think about that normalization of the backlog, you know, is there kind of how should we be thinking about that run rate of kind of normalized just so?

Yeah, I think when you when you look at, you know, where this business historically operated, it's in the four to six month range. And so as you look at, you know, a next 12 months revenue, historically, we would have had call it 45, 50% of that in backlog. We're still north of 60 if you look at our 2023 guide and extend that. And so we would expect, as we've said consistently, to see that normalized here over the next couple quarters. You know, it's probably Q3, maybe later in Q3, Q4. But, you know, our view on where we are and our comfort with that hasn't necessarily changed. And so we expect to see that play itself out within the year.

Okay, perfect. Thank you very much for the time. Thanks, Ray.

Our next question comes from Steve Dyer from Craig Hallam. Please go ahead with your question.

Thanks. Good morning, guys. I may have missed this. The SB segment, really fantastic margins, better than they've been in a long time. Is there anything specific that drove that? Is that just mixed within the segment, or was there anything particular to call out?

I think, you know, certainly a little bit of mix. We talked about some motorhome softness in there, but I think really just strong performance within our service body and work truck businesses, both from a, you know, pricing and growth perspective, as well as just driving efficiencies in the factories.

Got it. The 18,500 up fits, you talked quite a bit about it. Is that a new customer? Is that just one customer? Any other color you can sort of give around that to frame that up?

Yeah, you know, single customer that we've, you know, we've been a partner with for decades. And so, you know, really a good opportunity for us as they look to replenish a legacy fleet for us to step in and provide upfitting content, which we've been doing over the last number of years. And so really just a continuation of that. Again, I think Daryl talked about both from a quality perspective as well as our ability to just deliver at high volumes we think is a differentiator for us, and we're happy with that business.

Got it. Okay. The rest might have been answered. Thanks, guys. Thanks, Steve. Thank you.

Once again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star and 1. Our next question comes from Matt Caranda from Roth MKM. Please go ahead with your question.

Hey, guys. Good morning. Just wanted to ask a more important question on the philosophy around guidance, I guess. No change to the range that you've provided despite a pretty big up at when. Just curious if there's something specific that you can point to that offsets that incremental revenue within 23%. Or is it just a more general ton of caution that you have toward the sort of the overall environment?

Yeah, Matt. This is Daryl. I think it's the latter that you brought up, right, is there's still a lot of moving parts. We're excited about the order. It's definitely going to, you know, help move the needle. But there's still some uncertainty that we continue to hear about. And like I mentioned that to an earlier call. It's still early in the process of our traditional customers trying to figure out how they're going to become more efficient or what actions they're going to take to be more efficient. So it's just, you know, still having cautious, still seeing some different comments coming in from even different ones, different customers recently in the news. So we're just being cautious on that.

Okay, fair enough. And then just on the margin profile of the update business specifically, if I could – I guess, historically, upfit has been accretive to the margin profile of FBS. Should we expect anything different on that front with this particular piece of business?

No, not necessarily. I mean, I would say, you know, you look at the upfit business in general, it's a bit shorter cycle of a business. And so, as you know, if the FBS backlog is four to six months, it's typically on the shorter end of that. When we gave guidance back in February, we had assumed some level of upfit business for the year. This obviously filled that in. And so it's not – I wouldn't view it as completely incremental. I think it sort of solidifies that upfit assumption. But, again, it's a great opportunity for us and I think physicians as well.

Okay. Got it. Curious on FES, where should backlog normalize? Like either if you want to characterize it in the form of like quarters, months, however you want to characterize it, would be curious to get your take on where FES backlog should normalize over the next quarter or so.

And then what does that mean for near-term order flow?

Yeah, I mean, I think as you, I mean, it'd be tough to pinpoint a number there just because given there's a number of variables, But I think, like we said, we expect it to normalize here over the next couple months. I think if you look, you know, really over the last four quarters or so, you know, we've had modest orders in that business coming off that record high backlog. I think we expect that to continue here in the near term until it normalizes and then see some activity from that perspective.

Okay, fair enough. And then just last one for me on Blue Arc. I just wanted to get a specific sort of some color, I guess, on an update with customer testing, how that's going. Do you have vehicles now in the field? Maybe you could just speak specifically to how that's progressing.

Yeah, Matt, this is Daryl. Customers do not have the vehicles in their hands yet. We're still working through development testing. And the big milestone that we have to achieve is the brake testing, which will give us ABS so that when Customers have the vehicles that are certified to be safe, and we expect that to happen later in this quarter.

Okay, great. I'll jump back into you guys. Thank you. Great. Thank you.

And, ladies and gentlemen, with that, we'll conclude today's question and answer session. I'd like to turn the floor back over to Randy Wilson for any closing remarks.

Thank you. And I'd like to thank everyone for participating in today's conference call and your interest in the SHIFT group. Over the coming weeks, we'll be hosting one-on-one investor meetings at the Advanced Clean Transportation Expo in Anaheim, and as well, the 20th Annual Craig Hallam Institutional Investor Conference in Minneapolis. With that, operator, please disconnect the call.

Ladies and gentlemen, the call has now concluded. We thank you for joining. You may now disconnect.