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Toro Company (The)
9/7/2023
Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Toro Company's third quarter earnings conference call. My name is Gigi, and I'll be your coordinator for today. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. We will be facilitating a question and answer session toward the end of today's conference. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded for replay purposes. I would now like to turn the presentation over to your host for today's conference, Julie Karikas, Treasurer and Senior Managing Director of Global Tax and Investor Relations. Please proceed, Ms. Karikas.
Thank you and good morning, everyone. Our earnings release was issued this morning and a copy can be found in the investor information section of our corporate website, thetorocompany.com. We have also posted a third quarter earnings presentation to supplement our earnings release and general investor presentation. On our call today are Rick Olson, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Angie Drake, Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, and Jeremy Steffen, Director, Investor Relations. We begin with our customary forward-looking statement policy. During this call, we will make forward-looking statements regarding our plans and projections for the future. This includes estimates and assumptions regarding financial and operating results, as well as economic, technological, weather, market acceptance, acquisition related, and other factors that may impact our business and customers. You are all aware of the inherent difficulties, risks, and uncertainties in making predictive statements. Our earnings release, as well as our SEC filings, detail some of the important risk factors that may cause our actual results to differ materially from those in our predictions. Please note that we do not have a duty to update our forward-looking statements. In addition, during this call, we will reference certain non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations of historical non-GAAP financial measures to reported GAAP financial measures can be found in our earnings release and on our website in our investor presentations, as well as in our applicable SEC filings. We believe these measures may be useful in performing meaningful comparisons of past and present operating results and cash flows to understand the performance of our ongoing operations and how management views the business. Non-GAAP financial measures should not be considered superior to or a substitute for the GAAP financial measures presented in our earnings release and this call. With that, I will now turn the call over to Rick.
Thanks, Julie, and good morning, everyone. We were disappointed by our third quarter results, which came in below our expectations, largely due to a reduction in homeowner demand for residential and professional segment lawn care products. This was driven by a combination of macro factors and unusually unfavorable weather patterns. Demand was strong across the rest of our end customer base, and with that, the other businesses in our diverse portfolio delivered excellent growth. and assumptions for the third quarter and which of those did and did not come to fruition. Before I do that, it's important to note that we are encouraged by our continued market leadership and believe we are well positioned to drive long-term profitable growth in each of our attractive end markets. We're also excited by today's announcement of our partnership with Lowe's, which we expect will further strengthen our mass retail channel. We'll be discussing this development later in the call. But first, I'd like to explain what drove our lower-than-expected results for the quarter. On our June call, we shared expectations for total company net sales growth slightly below 7% in the third quarter. Instead, our net sales of $1.08 billion was a decline of 7%. We also shared expectations of adjusted diluted earnings per share slightly higher than last year's $1.19 and instead delivered 95 cents. When we provided our third quarter and updated full-year outlook on our last call, we outlined the key estimates and assumptions underlying our guidance. These included continued strong demand across key professional segment markets, steady supply chain improvement, reduced volume for solutions geared to homeowners, and more normalized weather patterns for the remainder of the year. The first assumption held. robust demand continued for products in our underground and specialty construction and golf and grounds businesses within our professional segment. The second assumption also held as the supply chain continued to stabilize. This, along with our operational execution, drove meaningful volume growth for these professional segment businesses on a year-over-year basis. While lead times are improving with more stable supply, the sustained strength in demand continues significantly elevated. This leads me to the third and fourth assumptions underlying our guidance, neither of which played out as anticipated. Achievements of lawn care solutions within both our residential and professional segments were down much more significantly than expected. This was driven by a sharp decrease in demand for homeowners during this quarter as compared to prior quarters, combined with an acceleration of channel D stocking, and this is what led to the change in performance from our previous expectations. The reduced demand from homeowners was due to a number of macro factors and weather. Macro factors included economic uncertainty, higher interest rates, and consumer spending preferences following the exceptional demand during the pandemic. With respect to weather, hot and dry weather patterns persisted across key regions. While the abnormal weather patterns delayed replacement needs, Macro factors further reduced demand from homeowners, leading to purchase deferrals and some trade downs to lower-priced models. This, in turn, led to a reduction in replenishment orders by our residential and professional segment dealer channels. Macro factors also drove an acceleration of destocking by our residential segment mass channel, where, in many cases, significant SKUs were left out of stock. For the past several quarters, we have discussed the trend toward more normalized demand patterns for solutions sold to homeowners following a period of exceptional demand during the pandemic. We believe the combination of macro factors and weather factors this quarter exacerbated the rebalancing trend. With this, we now expect dealer inventories of lawn care products to be higher than typical heading into next year. These factors also played into the intimidator group impairment charges we recorded in connection with the preparation of our third quarter financial statements. Since closing on the acquisition in January of 2022, the operating environment has been more challenging than anticipated. Even so, in its first year, the business delivered top-line growth of 16.5% compared to the 12-month period prior to the acquisition. During the third quarter of this year, the Intimidator business experienced a significant reduction in demand from homeowners who prefer professional solutions, driven by a combination of unfavorable macro factors and unusual weather patterns. As we mentioned on last quarter's call, the end user sales mix for this business includes a sizable portion of homeowners. In addition, we have also mentioned that this business has a stronger presence in southern US markets where abnormally hot and dry weather patterns have been more persistent and pronounced than other regions. These factors are reflected in our results and have also dampened our near- to mid-term outlook for this business. While the short-term has not played out as anticipated, we remain confident in our market leadership and our long-term strategy in the attractive zero-term mower space. We continue to expect benefits from our ability to leverage technology and drive efficiencies in design, procurement, and manufacturing across our three trusted brands, Exmark, Toro, and Spartan. Based on our current visibility for the fourth quarter and taking into account our third quarter results, we are reducing our full-year net sales and adjusted earnings per share guidance. Angie will share the specifics shortly. And while we spelled out the confluence of factors that have affected our near-term outlook, we're encouraged by a number of positive trends and operational initiatives. First, as I mentioned at the outset, we are seeing and expect to continue to see strong performance across much of our professional segments with notable strength in our underground and specialty construction and golf and grounds businesses. Second, Given our long history of delivering consistent, positive financial results, we are taking swift action in light of our current market dynamics. This includes scrutinizing all costs, further aligning production with demand, and driving productivity and operational excellence across the enterprise. For our construction and golf and grounds businesses, we intend to enable incremental, flexible production capacity as key component supply continues to stabilize. We expect this will improve lead times and allow us to better serve our customers. Importantly, we plan to leverage our existing manufacturing footprint to do so. And third, we're extremely excited about our new strategic partnership with Lowe's, which was announced in a separate press release this morning. Lowe's leadership position in the zero-turn-more category and strong footprint in key customer markets complements our existing channel strategy and is expected to bolster placement of our powerful 60-volt battery portfolio. Our full lineup of Toro-branded all-season outdoor power equipment will be available at Lowe's nationwide for the spring 2024 selling season. As I hand the call over to Angie, I'd like to summarize my introductory remarks by emphasizing the high confidence we have in our ability to navigate the current macro headwind. And just as importantly, the confidence we have in our ability to continue to capitalize on growth opportunities, including the demand we're seeing across many of our professional businesses and the eventual rebound expected from homeowner markets. With that, I will turn the call over to Angie to walk through the details of our third quarter performance and our updated full year guidance.
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