1/23/2020

speaker
Operator
Conference Call Operator

Good morning, and welcome to the Marine Max, Inc. 2020 Fiscal First Quarter Conference Call. Today's conference call is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Brad Cohen of ICR, Investor Relations for Marine Max. Please go ahead, sir.

speaker
Brad Cohen
Investor Relations, ICR

Thank you, Darrell. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining this discussion of Marine Max's Fiscal First Quarter 2020 Conference Call. I'm sure that you've all received a copy of the press release that went out this morning. But if not, please call Linda Cameron at 727-531-1712, and she will email one to you immediately. I would now like to introduce the Management Team of Marine Act, Mr. Brett McGill, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Mr. Mike McGill, Chief Financial Officer of the company. Management will make a few comments about the quarter and then be available for your questions. And with that, let me turn the call over to Mike McGill. Mike?

speaker
Mike McGill
Chief Financial Officer

Thank you, Brad. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining this call. Before I turn the call over to Brett, I'd like to tell you that certain of our comments are forward-looking statements as defined by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. These statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations. These risks include, but are not limited to, the impact of seasonality and weather, general economic conditions and the level of consumer spending, the company's ability to capitalize on opportunities or grow its market share, and numerous other factors identified in our Form 10-K and other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. With that in mind, I'd like to turn the call over to Brett. Brett?

speaker
Brett McGill
President and Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Mike, and good morning, everyone. Let me start by thanking the Marine Max team for their focus and commitment, which contributed to our record-setting results to start fiscal 2020. It is great to see the benefits from the investments we have made over the past few years in new brands, new technology, the global expansion of our brokerage business, and our ongoing commitment to growing our other higher margin businesses. Additionally, we are reaping the reward of the great people and locations we have added via the acquisition. I am very proud to announce 24% same-store sales growth driven entirely by increased units, which is attributable to our proven strategies and the highly desired brands we represent. Based on industry data, our unit growth was meaningfully better, especially in the categories in which we operate more heavily. Our growth this quarter built on the improving trends we saw as we ended our fiscal 2019. As we discussed previously, it seemed that the industry had started to find stability toward the end of September quarter, and the data in the December quarter generally reflects improving trends, but it still shows some choppiness. Generally, it appears the rise in consumer confidence has been able to overcome the ongoing political uncertainty in global trade wars. Weather was also mild and not much of a factor in the December quarter. In the quarter, we saw strong growth across most brands and categories. Last year in the December quarter, we commented that we saw strength in larger boats, and that trend continued. However, units accelerated more. During the quarter, we also leveraged our investments in technologies. we have been successful holding proprietary exclusive online selling events, which have proven to be another good source of leads and activity with voting enthusiasts. We also updated and relaunched the MarineMax mobile app as a better communication tool for our customers. We continue to make investments in industry-leading customer engagement tools, as well as back office advancements that improve our team's efficiency and effectiveness. We have now completed our second quarter since the merger with Frasier, the premier global super yacht services company. We could not be happier with the integration and the performance. Frasier provides brokerage, charter management, yacht management, and crew placement services to yacht owners around the world. With Frasier's 21 offices around the globe, we look forward to continuing to grow while expanding our resources and capabilities over time. This is a global high gross margin business that clearly supports our strategic plan. As we commented the last two quarters of fiscal 2019, given softer industry conditions, inventories were higher than retail trends would require. We said we were reducing orders and would likely experience some reasonable gross margin erosion as we worked through the first few quarters of fiscal 2020. We did feel some pressure, but it was more than offset by Frasier. Turning to SDMA, given the choppy trends last year, we increased our efforts to better align costs, which, among other actions, resulted in effectively optimizing our store footprint in September of 2019. In the December quarter, we saw great benefit from all our efforts as our flow-through to operating income was about 11%. This was great to see, but even more impressively when you consider that the Frasier and Salinsky acquisitions seasonally produced losses in the December quarter. Our flow through, absent those mergers, was even higher. As for inventory, the strategy I just mentioned allowed us to make great progress in the December quarter, especially given the dollars and number of units we delivered. We're still expecting some modest margin pressure as we move into the larger seasonal quarters, as everyone in the industry seems to be rationally managing inventory to better levels. Turning to earnings, we produced record earnings per share of $0.41 for the quarter. That was almost double our results in the prior year and was a record December quarter for marine items. We further strengthened our balance sheet, which supports our strategic growth plan. And with that update, I'll ask Mike to provide more detailed comments on the quarter. Mike?

speaker
Mike McGill
Chief Financial Officer

Thank you, Brett, and good morning again, everyone. I need to start by also thanking our team for their tremendous efforts that produced record revenue and earnings to start fiscal 2020. For the quarter, revenue grew 26% to $304 million, mostly on the strength of very strong same-store sales growth of 24%. As Brett mentioned, this was entirely driven by unit growth. The strong unit growth this quarter follows a pretty good unit trend in the September quarter, which was due to the strength we saw in the month of September. Based on industry data, we believe we continue to gain share in most of our markets for the brands and segments we carry. By region, Florida seasonally was the leader in terms of trends, but we saw generally good trends in most markets. Overall, gross margins improved year over year, primarily due to the July merger with Fraser. Without Fraser, margins as expected would have been down in the range of 180 basis points, driven roughly 60% by the mid-shift to much greater boat sales, and 40% based on expected boat margin pressure as we in the industry work to align inventory with trends. We are focused on growing our higher margin businesses, such as service, finance and insurance, parts, and our marine operations, not to mention brokerage, and we did make progress this quarter. It's just tough for all of them to grow as fast as we grew boat sales. Regarding SG&A, the majority of the increase was due to Frazier. Absent Frazier, we had a modest increase, which resulted in fairly good flow-through to operating income. For the quarter, interest expense increased to increased borrowings from additional inventory. Onto our balance sheet at quarter end, we had $36 million in cash. But as a reminder, we had substantial cash in the form of unlevered inventory. Our inventory levels were up 11% year over year. But without the Salem Ski merger, the increase was about 7%. Our rolling 12-month same-store sales growth is tracking at 6%. This would imply that in a very short period of time, we have dramatically improved our inventory. We accomplished this by closely working with our manufacturing partners to align orders with trends, as well as the tremendous efforts of our team to drive sales. We will work to improve inventory and our turns as we move through the selling season ahead. Our short-term borrowings were up to $334 million, which increased year-over-year due to the mergers we completed, as well as the share repurchases in fiscal 2019. Customer deposits, while not the best predictor of near-term sales because they can be lumpy due to the size of the deposits and whether a trade is involved or not, are relatively flat the prior year. Briefly, I will comment that this is the first quarter that the new lease accounting standard applies for MarineMax. While there is no P&L impact, like all other retailers, our balance sheet now has the rate of use, lease asset, and the present value of the related lease obligations, which is now a liability. Our current ratio stands at 1.39, and our total liabilities to tangible net worth ratio is 1.44. Both of these are strong balance sheet metrics. Our tangible net worth was $316 million, or about $14.45 per share. We own over half of our locations, which are all debt-free, and we have no additional long-term debt. Our balance sheet is a formidable strategic advantage that allows us to capitalize on opportunities as they arise. Turning to guidance, as fiscal 2020 started, it was on the heels of a pretty choppy 2019. Clearly, the December quarter was much stronger than we originally expected, and we do feel better for many reasons, including our improved inventory position. However, the December quarter is also traditionally the smallest quarter. So while it does appear that the industry has taken steps towards stability and improved trends, in our view, we believe we need to be thoughtful in our approach to guidance and get more visibility before we really start feeling a lot better. If things continue to improve, we can revisit our guidance. Thinking through the next several quarters, our March quarter is arguably the toughest comparison, and we have easier comps than June and September. Also, as I said last quarter, adding in the remainder of both Frazier and Salinsky for the portions of the year that we have not owned them does not produce meaningful EPS growth as combined for those periods, they will be close to break-even. Given these assumptions, we now expect annual same-store sales growth to be solidly in the mid-single digits due largely to the strength of the December quarter. This is up from the low single digits we guided to start the fiscal year. Our guidance assumes operating leverage in line with the last few years. We are raising our guidance to the range of $1.82 to $1.92 for 2020 from our earlier guidance of $1.58 to $1.68. Our guidance excludes the impact of any potential acquisitions that the company may complete. Our guidance uses a share count of approximately 22 million shares and an effective tax rate of 27%. Turning for a moment to current trends, January will close with positive same-store sales, and our backlog is higher than last year, both encouraging trends. We continue to feel better about how the industry is positioned, but we have a lot of work to do in front of us. With those comments, I'll turn the call back over to Brett for some closing comments. Brett?

speaker
Brett McGill
President and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, thank you, Mike. It was very rewarding to see many of the initiatives we have put into place the last few years contribute to our performance. Not only are we leveraging our investments in technology to reach our current and potential customers, but now we are doing this on a global basis. We also made progress in the alignment of costs, which led to nice leverage in the December quarter. We saw our asset-light, higher-margin businesses continue to grow and perform, while we further enhanced the financial strength of the company, driving cash flow growth. Finally, we continue to connect with our customers by hosting events to keep them on the water with their family and friends, which drives future business and market share gains. We are in full swing with all the seasonal boat shows, and so far, early results have shown fairly positive trends, which is Encouraging. The New York Boat Show opened yesterday. We hope that many of you will join us at the shows to feel how Marine Max provides a unique approach to experience the boating lifestyle. And with that, operator, let's open up the call for questions.

speaker
Operator
Conference Call Operator

Thank you. At this time, we will be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. The confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star key. One moment, please, while we poll for questions. Our first set of questions come from the line of Greg Battistanian of Citi. Please proceed with your questions.

speaker
Fred Whiteman
Equity Research Analyst, Citi

Hey, guys. Good morning. It's Fred Whiteman on for Greg. Just to start off, Could you help us understand, given the strong earnings that you saw in the quarter, why aren't you flowing more of that into the EPS guide? I know that March compares are tough, but you do have some easier comparisons in the back half of the fiscal year. What are you waiting for or looking for before you get more optimistic on the full year outlook?

speaker
Mike McGill
Chief Financial Officer

The December quarter is the smallest quarter of the year traditionally. And, you know, we often get asked the question, do we pull business forward or not? And it's possible. I think we just are taking more of a cautious and prudent approach to guidance. We gave over two-thirds of the beat to the increase in the annual guidance and just waiting to get more into boat shows and see how the March quarter plays out. And if warranted, we'll revisit guidance at that time.

speaker
Fred Whiteman
Equity Research Analyst, Citi

Okay, that's fair. And then just on the promotional side, you guys did call out some gross margin pressure there. I think it was sort of 70-ish base points in terms of the headwind. Do you think that this past quarter was sort of the peak for both you guys and the industry in terms of promotional activity, or do you think that that's going to continue into sort of the next few quarters here?

speaker
Mike McGill
Chief Financial Officer

I can't speak a whole lot about the industry. I believe that we've done a better job rate-sizing inventory faster than the industry. we're still planning to be incrementally more aggressive than we are right now as we head into shows, just, again, trying to see exactly what's happening at retail. It's possible that the margin pressure would have peaked in the December quarter. We'll have to really see how retail plays out as we work through March.

speaker
Brett McGill
President and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, we'll have to just look and see where kind of the industry inventory levels end up, you know, over the next couple months.

speaker
Fred Whiteman
Equity Research Analyst, Citi

Okay, and then just one quick follow-up, sorry. When you guys are talking about getting incrementally more aggressive on the promo side, are you talking about versus the December quarter, or are you talking about on a year-over-year basis? Year-over-year basis. Okay, perfect. Thank you.

speaker
Operator
Conference Call Operator

Our next set of questions come from the line of Joe Altovello of Raymond James. Please proceed with your question.

speaker
Joe Altovello
Equity Research Analyst, Raymond James

Thanks. Hey, guys. Good morning. I want to follow up on the line of questioning regarding promotion. You mentioned that it's been pretty rational so far, but given the market share gains, the sizable market share gains that you guys realized in the quarter, how would you guys compare to some of the competitors you're seeing in the marketplace relative to promotion?

speaker
Mike McGill
Chief Financial Officer

I can comment and then Breckin add to it. I mean, no one out there is – doing deep discounting or desperation-type activity at all. We don't want to imply that. I think everybody is incrementally more aggressive. I think everybody, all the dealers at the beginning of the model year last summer ordered less product for 2020, along with their manufacturing partners, to work together closely. And so... everybody believes the industry will work its way through the inventory position that it was in as we get to the seasonal larger quarters. And so given that no one's having any deep discounts, it's a very rational environment is the best way to describe it in terms of inventory discounting.

speaker
Brett McGill
President and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, I would just agree with that. There's nothing irrational out there or nothing alarming that we're seeing at shows when we look at pricing and, you know, our competitors. It seems decent.

speaker
Joe Altovello
Equity Research Analyst, Raymond James

And you guys are not outliers in that respect in terms of promotion levels? No. Okay. And my second question is, in terms of order activity this year, you guys mentioned on the last call you were curtailing some orders for 2020. Given the strong start to the year, my sense is you may revisit that at some point if demand continues to be strong. But I guess, is there a chance or a concern that manufacturers may not be able to to keep up with that demand if you start to look to raise orders?

speaker
Mike McGill
Chief Financial Officer

We are talking to manufacturers, and we have been. We are very communicative with our partners, and there's certainly product that we need. There's still some pockets of opportunities where we've got to keep the pressure on to get inventory better aligned. You know, clearly if 24%, same story, unit growth continues through the fiscal year, manufacturers will be challenged to keep up with that.

speaker
Brett McGill
President and Chief Executive Officer

But we stay in tight communication on a monthly basis with them to try to make sure they see what we're seeing and, you know, adjust manufacturing accordingly. Right.

speaker
Joe Altovello
Equity Research Analyst, Raymond James

It's a high-class problem, I suppose.

speaker
Brett McGill
President and Chief Executive Officer

That's right. It is. Okay.

speaker
Joe Altovello
Equity Research Analyst, Raymond James

All right. Thanks, guys. Thanks, Joe.

speaker
Operator
Conference Call Operator

Our next set of questions come from the line of James Harden of Wedbush Security. Please proceed with your questions.

speaker
James Harden
Equity Research Analyst, Wedbush Securities

Good morning. Thanks for taking my call. Obviously, an unbelievable quarter, and congratulations on that. But a quick follow-up to – you're welcome. A quick follow-up to one of the previous questions. I mean, obviously, you were warning us that the first quarter might actually see a loss. You put up, you know, 40-plus cents. So the implied guidance for the remainder of the year is down. Mike, I think you mentioned that there might at least be a possibility that you pulled forward some demand. Is that actually grounded in anything, or is that just you being conservative like you would normally be?

speaker
Mike McGill
Chief Financial Officer

You know what, James? We get asked the question a lot every time we have a real strong SIM store sales growth quarter, and our data – You know, I comment that our backlog is up, that January looks like it's going to be a good month. You know, so purely from the data perspective, it's real hard to say we pulled business forward because both those are up. If they were down, then maybe you would say so. But you don't know until you work more into the selling season and the fiscal year. So I think we're trying to say it's traditionally a small quarter. Let us get into the March quarter, see how trends are going, and a more meaningful month, particularly like March, which is huge. And if trends are still going well, then we'll revisit guidance at that time.

speaker
James Harden
Equity Research Analyst, Wedbush Securities

Got it. That's helpful. And then I wanted to dig into the inventory situation a little bit more. Obviously, coming out of the fourth quarter, there was a pretty big imbalance there. Inventories were up 27%. Sales were up, call it, mid-single digits. Now, as I think you pointed out, inventory is up 7x the sale in ski and same store sales up 6% trailing 12 months, which seems great. But maybe walk us through, you had called out three factors last time. One was the acquisition, which I think you sort of told us how to think about that. But then you had the sea race situation where you had drawn down inventories but hadn't yet gotten in the galleon and the incremental azimuth boats. and then the timing of inventory build ahead of the two boat shows, Tampa and Orlando. Are we now past those latter two factors such that the only non-comparable piece is acquisition? How should we think about all of that?

speaker
Mike McGill
Chief Financial Officer

You know, largely, I think, I think I'm kind of looking at Brett with your question. Great question. I think, you know, I think we still have pockets of opportunity, believe it or not, to get stores galleon product. and potentially some azimuth product, although we've done a pretty darn good job working with those manufacturing partners to get the product increased. I think largely the answer to your question is yes, other than acquisitions, we're starting the anniversary of all those other things that we had talked about on previous calls. Okay.

speaker
James Harden
Equity Research Analyst, Wedbush Securities

That's helpful. And then just how should we think about it? It sounds like you still want to bring inventories down to some degree during the remaining three quarters of the year. But as I think about, again, inventories being up 7% X the acquisitions and same-store sales being up 6%, full year you're calling for mid-single-digit or strong mid-single-digit same-store sales. Is it right to characterize this as just small tweaks here and there to inventories as opposed to the real work that you had to do over the course of the first quarter?

speaker
Brett McGill
President and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, I would say that's exactly how I would look at it. Segment by segment, brand by brand, you know, adjustments, you know, by model to get things lined up so we can get the fresh new stuff coming in a little later in the spring here.

speaker
James Harden
Equity Research Analyst, Wedbush Securities

Okay, great.

speaker
Mike McGill
Chief Financial Officer

That's all for me. Thanks, guys. Thanks.

speaker
Operator
Conference Call Operator

Our next set of questions come from the line of Mike Schwartz with SunTrust Robinson Humphrey. Please proceed with your questions.

speaker
Mike Schwartz
Equity Research Analyst, SunTrust Robinson Humphrey

Hey, guys. Good morning. I just wanted to follow up with some of the inventory questions. I think, Mike, your response to one of the questions was there's still areas that kind of stand out as far as where you need to clean up. Was that a comment around regions or was that, you know, segments, regions? Can you just give us a little more color there?

speaker
Mike McGill
Chief Financial Officer

It's more just when you open up the inventory and you look closely at it, we've got a couple different pockets of opportunities to continue to, you know, right-size the brand inventory with the brand performance. You know, we track everything down to the store level, brand level, and we have nothing really that's alarming, just trying to make sure that everything's moving and synced together from an inventory and order perspective.

speaker
Mike Schwartz
Equity Research Analyst, SunTrust Robinson Humphrey

Okay, but by category, there's nothing that kind of stands out as something that needs to be more aggressively managed over the next quarter or two?

speaker
Brett McGill
President and Chief Executive Officer

Not by category. Not in that scale, yeah, no.

speaker
Mike Schwartz
Equity Research Analyst, SunTrust Robinson Humphrey

Okay, okay. And then just with regards to the quarter, same-store sales up 24%, and I think, Mike, you said without the acquisitions, SG&A would have been up modestly, right? Can you give us a sense of maybe how much cost reduction you saw in the quarter from the closure of the eight stores that you did last year, and maybe how to think about those savings over the next couple quarters as we calendarize that?

speaker
Mike McGill
Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, I don't have my numbers right in front of me right now, Mike, but I think the most telling point is the operating leverage that we got in the quarter, which is double-digit, and absent Frazier and Saleskey, it would be even actually higher than that. I don't think it's several million dollars. It's over a million, less than $2 million. I hate to be vague like that. I just didn't have the numbers right in front of me. But it certainly helped in the quarter. And if you listen to the guidance that we put in place, we're using leverage in line with the last few years, if you listen to how I describe guidance. So we're not using the operating flow-through of the December quarter And obviously, if we continue, which is our goal, if we continue to get improved leverage in the business, we can readjust guidance at that time as well.

speaker
Mike Schwartz
Equity Research Analyst, SunTrust Robinson Humphrey

Yeah, and that's kind of where I was going to go with the next question, because I think when you gave your fiscal year 20 guidance initially, you said, it wasn't embedding any of the cost savings or the store closures in the flow through. And I'm just wondering now with the new guidance, are you embedding some of the flow through or are you saying you're still not embedding any of the maybe incremental pickup from closing some of those stores?

speaker
Mike McGill
Chief Financial Officer

We're embedding it to the extent of the December quarter of what we were adding to the improvement. But for the future quarters, we're not yet.

speaker
Mike Schwartz
Equity Research Analyst, SunTrust Robinson Humphrey

Okay, that's helpful. Maybe just a clarification question as well. When you're talking about stepping up promotion incrementally for the March quarter, and as I recall, you had stepped it up pretty dramatically in the last March quarter, what are you talking about? Are you talking about price promotion? Are you talking about marketing incentives to the sales force? I'm just trying to understand that a little more.

speaker
Brett McGill
President and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, it's a good question. It's kind of all of those, and it's a different lever depending on which segment, but, you know, sales team, promotional activity, marketing, advertising, and some price, you know, strategic market pricing. It's really a little bit of all of that, and maybe one market, it's more of one than the other. Okay, that's helpful. Thanks, guys. Thank you.

speaker
Operator
Conference Call Operator

Our next set of questions come from the line of Ryan Sigal of Craig Holland. Please proceed with your questions.

speaker
Ryan Sigal
Equity Research Analyst, Craig Hallum

Good morning, guys, and congrats on the impressive quarter. Thank you. First off, were you able to break out what the same-store sales benefit was from the store consolidation last quarter and removing those stores from the prior year comp but retaining much of that business at nearby stores? And then secondly, from the shift in the Tampa boat show?

speaker
Mike McGill
Chief Financial Officer

Can you ask the first question again? I'm not sure I followed what you were asking, Ryan. Sorry.

speaker
Ryan Sigal
Equity Research Analyst, Craig Hallum

Yeah, so you closed down, I think it was eight stores, basically under the assumption that you can remove some costs, but retain a lot of that business at nearby stores. So presumably in the same-store sales comp, you removed those eight stores from the comp last year, but retained a lot of that business this year. Am I thinking about that right from a same-store sales perspective? Yeah, you are.

speaker
Mike McGill
Chief Financial Officer

You're 100% right. That's exactly right. And, you know, based on our results, you can tell it sure looks like we did not lose a whole lot of revenue, if any, in those markets where we closed those duplicative stores. That's correct.

speaker
Ryan Sigal
Equity Research Analyst, Craig Hallum

Any way to quantify, I guess, how much sensor sales boost came from that consolidation?

speaker
Mike McGill
Chief Financial Officer

You know, because they were smaller stores generally, and many of them were in northern markets, they don't sell a lot of product this time of year. It would be single-digit millions. I don't think it hit double-digit millions. It would be, you know, four or five million, something like that, if I added up all those stores. And that's an educated thought for me right now. That's not far from what the real results would have been.

speaker
Ryan Sigal
Equity Research Analyst, Craig Hallum

Got it. That's helpful. And then from the Tampa Boat Show, any way to quantify that?

speaker
Mike McGill
Chief Financial Officer

The Tampa Boat Show is interesting. So we talked about how it moved from September to October. When it did move to later on in October, the show technically had down contracted revenue on a year-over-year basis, largely because of the change in timing. A lot of the deals from the show did not close in the December quarter. Some did. but as is typical with a boat show, they'll close in future quarters, and in some cases from that show, they'll close next fiscal year. So the benefit of the show moving to the December quarter, net-net, there is an incremental benefit, but it's not very significant relative to the success we had in the December quarter.

speaker
Ryan Sigal
Equity Research Analyst, Craig Hallum

Great. And switching over, you mentioned strength in online leads and sales. What portion of your overall business is you know, whether you want to talk in terms of sales or leads or kind of whatever metrics, but is the online piece, and then how fast is that going?

speaker
Brett McGill
President and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, the, you know, the online piece is, you know, Bobby made investments in that, and it seems to be growing. We, you know, really we don't track the sales of those online leads because they take, we track them, but they take a while. So they generate the lead, they generate interest, they come to a show, they come to our showrooms, and it might take several visits over time, and we're tracking that whole life cycle. But I guess I would just comment by saying our lead activity has grown tremendously because of some of these customer engagement activities, including our online vote sale, which is a lead generator. So it's growing incrementally each month.

speaker
Ryan Sigal
Equity Research Analyst, Craig Hallum

And then last one for me, and then I'll turn it over. But where did you see most of the Munich growth, either new or used? You can break that out. And then how are you feeling about that breakout between those over the remainder of the year?

speaker
Mike McGill
Chief Financial Officer

I can tell you that new is stronger than used. That's just sort of a function of how the business is. You take trades. And so you don't have as long to sell the trade in the quarter because you haven't had it for, you know, all 90 days of the quarter where most of the new product you do. But we felt pretty good about the business mix, whether it's new, used. And used was strong. Used was, you know, Very strong, just not at the same level that new was.

speaker
Ryan Sigal
Equity Research Analyst, Craig Hallum

Does that help? Yeah, I think that's it for me. Good luck. Thank you. Thank you.

speaker
Operator
Conference Call Operator

Our next set of questions come from the line of David S. McGrater of Longbow Research. Please proceed with your question.

speaker
Colton West
Equity Research Analyst, Longbow Research

Good morning. Colton West on here for David McGregor. Thanks for taking my question.

speaker
Mike McGill
Chief Financial Officer

You're welcome. Thank you.

speaker
Colton West
Equity Research Analyst, Longbow Research

So I guess to start off, in terms of mix during the quarter, you said that you saw some strength in larger votes. Would you expect this to continue even as we get closer to the election, since that buyer tends to be a little bit more impacted?

speaker
Brett McGill
President and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, I think, you know, when we talk about choppiness and uncertainty and We watch it closely, but we don't really have a prediction for that other than we watch it really closely.

speaker
Mike McGill
Chief Financial Officer

I'll comment also just on election years. We've gone back. We've been public for over 20 years now, which is a number of different election cycles. We've gone back and looked at the years leading up to the election, so like our fiscal 20 right now. and similar years historically. And in election years, our revenue and our units have grown every single year except for 2008, when there was other things going on in 2008 besides just an election. We further then looked at the December quarters themselves, right in the heat of all the battle of the election, when the noise is probably at its greatest. And again, in every year except for 2008, our revenue and units It increased. Actually, I think in OO, the December quarter of OO, trends were flattish. But it generally doesn't look like for our business that election years in and of themselves are a telltale sign that things are going to be softer. Now, clearly, we're in unique times right now when it comes to elections. But, you know, based on our own historical data, election years aren't something to be fearful of.

speaker
Colton West
Equity Research Analyst, Longbow Research

Okay, thanks for that. And then can you provide some color on customer deposits for the quarter? I think in the call you said they were about flat. Doing the math, it looks like they're down about 4% year over year after being positive the last three or four quarters. Kind of what's baked into that?

speaker
Mike McGill
Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, I comment often that looking at that line on the balance sheet, which I understand what everybody does, it can be, I use the word lumpy, It all depends on the size of the deposit that we take from, you know, customer A versus customer B and whether a trade is involved or not that makes those numbers move all around. You know, I think the more telling comment is my comment around, you know, is January going to be up or down? And I think a comment that January, you know, should finish up. And then what's our – we call it our backlog. So how many boats are under contract today? So instead of looking at deposit dollars – how many boats are under contract today for future delivery, and our backlog is up year over year. So the deposit line, we get questions on it. It can be lumpy, as I say. But, you know, generally our comments around backlog in the current month are probably a little more indicative of what's going on.

speaker
Colton West
Equity Research Analyst, Longbow Research

Okay. And then can you comment on the cadence of same-store sales within the quarters? industry data would suggest that October was probably the strongest month of the year in terms of retail. Are you seeing something similar?

speaker
Brett McGill
President and Chief Executive Officer

You want to say something, Bert? No, I think we had three good months in a row. I think the industry – we saw probably similar trend, but obviously higher, you know, results. Right. Okay.

speaker
Colton West
Equity Research Analyst, Longbow Research

Okay, and then I guess lastly, are you able to comment on what both segments performed better than others in terms of sales, whether it was pontoons, cruisers, et cetera?

speaker
Mike McGill
Chief Financial Officer

You know, honestly, we saw pretty darn good strength in all segments.

speaker
Brett McGill
President and Chief Executive Officer

In order to produce that type of growth, you kind of have to have almost all those cylinders hitting, so it really was growth. across the board, which is the exciting part of it for us.

speaker
Mike McGill
Chief Financial Officer

It's traditionally not a real big quarter for aluminum for us because all of our aluminum stores are mostly in the northeast, but we had generally good growth in just about all segments.

speaker
Colton West
Equity Research Analyst, Longbow Research

Okay, great. Thank you, and congrats on a good quarter.

speaker
Brett McGill
President and Chief Executive Officer

Thank you very much, yeah.

speaker
Operator
Conference Call Operator

Thank you. We have reached the end of the question and answer session. I will now turn the call over to Brett McGill for any closing remarks.

speaker
Brett McGill
President and Chief Executive Officer

Well, thank you all for joining the call today. Both Mike and I are up here at the New York Boat Show today, but we'll be available for your call if you have any questions. And we look forward to updating you on our next call.

speaker
Operator
Conference Call Operator

This does conclude today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation and have a great day.

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