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Polaris Inc.
1/27/2026
To withdraw your question, please press star then 2. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to JC Weigelt. Please go ahead.
Thank you, Betsy, and good morning or good afternoon, everyone. I'm JC Weigelt, Vice President of Investor Relations at Polaris. Thank you for joining us for our 2025 fourth quarter and full year earnings call. We will reference a slide presentation today which is accessible on our website at ir.polaris.com. Joining me on the call today are Mike Speetson, our Chief Executive Officer, and Bob Mack, our Chief Financial Officer. Both have prepared remarks summarizing our 2025 fourth quarter and full year results, as well as our expectations for 2026. And then we'll take your questions. During the call, we will be discussing various topics which should be considered forward-looking for the purpose of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results could differ materially from those projections in the forward-looking statements. You can refer to our 2024 10-K and other filings at the SEC for additional details regarding risks and uncertainties. All references to 2025 fourth quarter and full year actual results and future period guidance are for our continuing operations and are reported on an adjusted non-GAAP basis unless otherwise noted. Please refer to our Reg G reconciliation schedules at the end of the presentation for the GAAP to non-GAAP adjustments. Now, I will turn it over to Mike Stetson. Go ahead, Mike.
Thanks, JC. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. I'd like to start by acknowledging the resiliency of our Polaris team and the discipline of our strategy. These are qualities that transformed a challenging year into one that truly reflects the strength and resolve of our business. While tariffs represented the most significant challenge we have seen since the pandemic, we delivered nearly everything we said we would do and then some. We navigated difficult headwinds in 2025, while still delivering share gains, innovation, quality and operational improvements, portfolio realignments, and strategic milestones that position us for the long-term success. We achieved share gains in all segments last year, including off-road vehicles, snowmobiles, pontoons, and motorcycles. That reflects both our commitment to innovation and the strength of our dealer partnerships. In ORV, we launched several new products, from the Razor XPS to the all-new Value Tier Ranger 500. We also launched the industry's largest touchscreen in the new Razor Pro-R, and our factory racing team had an impressive year of top podium finishes. In fact, earlier this month, our Polaris factory racing team proved once again what our vehicles and drivers are capable of, standing at the top of the Dakar podium for the third consecutive year, a truly amazing and incredible achievement. In Marine, we refreshed our flagship Bennington QX line, and the all-new Godfrey Sandpan models earned Boating Magazine's Pontoon of the Year. Last few years of product launches across our business have demonstrated our commitment to innovation and further solidified our leadership in power sports, and our future product innovation pipeline remains full. Next, we made progress in executing against our decision to significantly reduce our exposure to China. We set a goal of lowering China-based spend by 80% from roughly 18% of material cost of goods sold in 2024 to below 5% by year-end 2027. This transformation has three key benefits. It lowers tariff expense under the current policies, minimizes the risk associated with dramatic swings in regulatory policy, and creates a more localized supply chain with improved working capital and faster response times. We ended 2025 with China-based spend of approximately 14% of material cost of goods sold and are on track to drive our exposure down even further in 2026. Operationally, we delivered more than $60 million in savings as our manufacturing transformation continues. We're seeing the impact in areas like improved clean build, lower levels of rework, improved labor efficiency, and reduced inventory. I'm incredibly proud of our operations team for everything they've done to get us to this point. The team and I visited our Monterey plant earlier this month and it is truly impressive to see how the plant is operating now compared to just two years ago. The improvements across our plant network positions us well as the industry normalizes. Quality is also meaningfully improved. We take exceptional pride in our product quality, and we've invested heavily in our quality systems to ensure we meet and exceed the expectations our customers have come to expect for our industry-leading products. We've seen improvements in key aspects of manufacturing, supply, and design quality that resulted in a reduction of $25 million in warranty expense last year. And initial model year 26 metrics have improved versus last year, and dealer feedback is encouraging. Finally, we made progress on our longer-term strategy to improve profitability while maintaining leadership in the power sports industry. The separation of Indian Motorcycle remains on track to close by the end of this quarter, and will be immediately accretive to EBITDA margins and adjusted EPS. As I've said many times, when we stay focused on what we can control, our teams deliver. Our people and our strategy have consistently proven that Polaris is well-positioned to meet its mid-cycle targets and maintain leadership throughout innovation and strong dealer partnerships. In Q4, sales were up 9% and North American retail was also up 9%, excluding youth, driving share gains across our main segments. We continue to emphasize retail excluding youth for two reasons. First, while youth contributes to share in retail figures, it has very little impact on profitability. Second, we're in the final stages of transitioning our youth manufacturing from China to Mexico to reduce our long-term tariff exposure. That shift temporarily impacted both retail and share this quarter, simply because dealers didn't have the inventory to meet demand. We expect this to reverse in 2026. Moving forward, we believe excluding youth retail remains the best indicator of the health of the business. As expected, we couldn't overcome $37 million of tariff cost in adjusted gross margin in the quarter. However, we did see a meaningful mixed benefit in ORV driven by higher range or North Star shipments tied to strong demand for our agriculture and ranch promotional programs. Adjusted EBITDA saw additional pressure in the final quarter as a result of incentive compensation normalization. We accelerated R&D activity in support of key programs which increased expense in the quarter. All in, this resulted in an adjusted EPS of approximately eight cents, slightly ahead of the implied Q4 guidance we provided in October. Stepping back, while 2025 was a challenging year, our team did an outstanding job of remaining focused on what we could control. I think it's important to note that if you adjusted out the tariff impact, which was unknown when we provided guidance in January of 2025, we expect we would have exceeded the original guidance. Turning to what we're seeing at dealerships, ORB retail continues to trend positively, led by utility. Strength in the utility category was across the board, with strong contributions from the value to premium models. Our data shows that the new Ranger 500 was the highest retailing midsize side-by-side in the industry during the quarter, and it wasn't even close, with roughly 60% more volume than the nearest competitor. On the premium side, our Ranger XP 1000 North Star had its highest retail month ever in December. The success across the lineup demonstrates the strength of our brand and product portfolio. And while recreational consumers remain somewhat on the sidelines, we continue to take multiple points of share in crossover powered by the category-defining Polaris Expedition. On-road retail was down low double digits, as expected, as we lapped the 2024 introduction of the new Indian Scout motorcycle. In marine, retail declined approximately 13%, though our pontoon brands, Bennington and Godfrey, outperformed the industry. For snowmobiles, the season started strong thanks to early snowfall in the flatlands, something we haven't seen in the prior two years, which helped reduce non-current dealer inventory. However, the industry has moderated a bit due to lack of mountain snowfall and lighter coverage in parts of the Midwest in recent weeks. We remain cautious on the remainder of the season and plan to keep our snowmobile build schedule lower as we prepare for the 2026-2027 season, similar to our approach last year. As we noted last quarter, we believe dealer inventory is at a healthy level with just under 100 days of inventory on hand across the network. Not only is dealer inventory at the lowest levels it's been outside of the pandemic, But the mix of inventory is in great shape as well. We believe Polaris has the healthiest mix of current versus non-current inventory of any OEM. With ORV and marine inventory in good shape, we're continuing to let retail drive our build and ship plans. This is exactly where we want to be and a place we haven't consistently been since before the pandemic. It aligns with how we manage the business and we believe is also best for dealers in this demand environment. Our teams will remain agile, and we will closely monitor retail trends. We will adjust build and ship schedules in response to market conditions to help ensure dealers have what they need to be successful. I'm now going to turn it over to Bob to provide you with more details on the financials. Bob?
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