Dorel Industries Inc.

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to Doral Industries' third quarter 2024 results conference call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question and answer session. To join the question queue, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. Should you need assistance during the conference call, you may signal an operator by pressing star then zero. Before turning the meeting over to management, please be advised that this conference call will contain statements that are forward-looking and subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated. I would like to remind everyone that this conference call is being recorded today, November 14th, 2024. I would now like to turn the call over to Martin Shorts, President and CEO. Please go ahead, sir.

Okay, thank you. Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us for Daryl's third quarter earnings call for the period ended September 30th. With me are Jeffrey Schwartz, CFO, Frank Grana, Chief Strategy Officer, and Jason Kwasnick, VP of Finance. We will take your questions following our comments. Again, all figures mentioned during this call are in U.S. dollars. The low juvenile earnings again exceeded last year's comparative quarter, driven by an organic revenue increase of over 9%. Impressively, this revenue growth was in all three of our regions, North America, Europe, and international. We had several significant customer events in the quarter, and the reception to our new product launches in all regions has been very strong, with key deliveries being in the quarter. Conversely, the rail home faced significant challenges, resulting in a 14% decline in revenue compared to the same period last year. We initiated substantial cost reductions in the quarter as we continue to right-size the business to current realities. I'll look now at our two segments in more detail. In juvenile, our quarter-over-quarter earnings improvement continues. Our organic revenue growth and better gross margins is allowing us to deliver improved earnings and cash flow. Our second quarter product launches, as detailed in our last conference call, continue to fuel the segments of results and demand outstripped availability in many cases. So we are very optimistic about the fourth quarter and beyond, as customer anticipation and demand remains strong. The marquee event in the quarter was the annual Juvenile Products Trade Show held in Cologne, Germany. Our layout showcased Aurel's global footprint, and while the majority of customers attending are European, the breadth of our product portfolio across the globe was on display. All of our divisions attended, and we had customers from around the world visit our location. Europe in particular introduced the Maxi-Cosi Emerald 360 Pro Car Seat, featuring SlideTech. The seat is the first premium all-in-one car seat in Europe, designed for 12 years of comfort and protection. This innovative car seat targets the fastest-growing category in the market, offering a unique and competitive solution that combines premium quality, styling, and safety for all ages, and is set to provide a strong and long-term competitive advantage for Maxi-Cozy and its customers. In North America, Maxi Cozy, Costco Kids, and Safety First were recognized at the Bump 2024 Editorial Awards. These awards celebrate the top pregnancy, postpartum, and baby products of the year, evaluated by real parents and industry experts. This recognition underscores Darrell Juvenile's commitment to innovation and quality. We want also to recognize Safety First, which celebrated its 40th anniversary this quarter. As evidenced by the Bump Awards, Safety First, as well as Costco Kids, remain an important part of our portfolio. Safety First partnered with Camp, a family experience company, to offer a free day of fun at camp stores across the U.S. This event hosted well over 2,000 children and parents nationwide. It featured immersive show parties, hand-on craft activities, exclusive giveaways, and a showcase of Safety First innovative products. Influencers amplified the event's reach through social media, contributing to a substantial brand impact for Safety First. A post-event study revealed that participants were 87% more likely to purchase Safety First products 91% more likely to feel the brand aligns with its mission of safety and exploration. I want to congratulate our teams across the segments on their success and the way in which we are delivering our message of best-in-class safety, comfort, and innovation to the market. If we look back just a couple of years, our juvenile business was quite different. We were losing money and market share. I'm very proud to say that with our many new senior executives and their local teams, Juvenile has gained market share and become the leading brand in many areas and is profitable. Now turning to the real home. Sorry to say the situation is not like juvenile. The industry and the real home is still finding it challenging. Although overall revenues decline, we observe positive momentum in indoor seating, TV stands, and stepstools within our home categories. However, this was insufficient to counterbalance declines in other categories. We are driving sales through promotional pricing, which, when combined with lower production efficiency, led to gross margins being lower than anticipated. From a cash perspective, we reduced inventories again this quarter, positively contributing to our cash flow. Following the end of the quarter, we attended the annual High Point Furniture Show in North Carolina. Our new product designs were very well received at the market, which will help position Borel for the future. Our Costco home and office division continues to perform well and showcase several new innovative products in High Point, which should continue to drive growth for that division. Despite this, the furniture industry continues to face challenges due to the lack of a significant increase in demand. exemplified by the recent cancellation of the annual European Furniture Show in Cologne scheduled for January. We are right-sizing the business and initiated the previously announced closure of the RTA manufacturing facilities in Tiffin, Ohio, transferring production to Cornwall, Ontario. This move is expected to result in one highly efficient and profitable facility for domestic RTA furniture production starting in 2025. We are committed to finding more cost reductions within the segment and expect to take further actions by the end of the year and into next year. While the return to profitability is taking longer than desired, the actions we are undertaking in 2024 position us for improved earnings in the future. As we look ahead, Dorrell Juvenile remains committed to driving sustainable growth through strategic investments in product innovation, market expansion, and operational efficiency. We anticipate continued strong performance in our key markets, supported by our robust e-commerce channels and successful partnerships with key suppliers and retailers. Despite potential challenges from currency fluctuation and container costs, we are confident in our ability to navigate these headwinds and deliver sequential earnings improvement in the fourth quarter. We at the Real Home are on a path to reduce its cost and match its footprint to current revenue expectations, which are substantially lower than our peak years of 2020 and 21. We have expanded our restructuring plan announced at the end of 23 with the consolidation of our RTA facilities in the third quarter, and we'll be initiating other aggressive actions going forward to right-size the business. We acknowledge that we are operating within a challenging industry, but we believe we can operate profitably with our dual sourcing business model and efficient domestic production coupled with overseas imports. With our recent success at major brick and mortar retailers and traditional leadership in e-commerce, we will focus on key profitable categories and targeted promotional activities. We remain confident in our ability to adapt to market conditions and deliver value to our shareholders. I will now ask Jeffrey to review the financials.

Thank you, Martin.

I'll try and go through this quickly and get into some of the more strategic issues. For the third quarter, our overall revenue decreased by $5.4 million, just around 1.5%. The organic revenue decline was actually less than 1%. after removing the variations on foreign exchange rates. The revenue and organic revenue decline was all in the rural home and was partially offset by improvements in the juvenile. You know, the gross profit for the quarter decreased by 400,000 or less than 1% compared to last year. Gross margin for the third quarter actually increased 20 basis points. to 18.5 from 18.3, excluding restructuring costs. It actually went from 18.3 last year to 18.7. Again, increased significantly in the juvenile, which was brought down by the issues in the home furnishing. One of the issues, we had an impairment loss on the trade account receivable. with a bankruptcy by one of the home furnishings U.S. customers in the third quarter, $2.1 million. That number is comparable to last year's third quarter, where we had another issue. The operating loss for Dorrell was $11.1 million compared to $3.7 million last year, excluding restructuring charge. The operating loss increased by $5.5 million to $9.2 million from the $3.7 million last year. If we move over to look at the juvenile business, revenue increased by $16 million or 7.8% to $222 million. This year, the organic revenue actually went up by $9.2 million. The improvements in revenue and organic revenue was in most markets, so we're pretty proud of that. The big three are the U.S., Europe, and Brazil. We've had some big increases as well in some of our other smaller markets. The only area of concern right now continues to be Chile, which we're dealing with. Gross profit for the quarter increased 14 percent compared to last year. The gross margin in the quarter was 28.3, an improvement of 160 basis points from the 26.7. The increase in gross profit and gross margin was driven by higher sales volumes, the lower cost, better mix, the foreign exchange rate that was positive to us as well. The operating profit was 7.2 million during the quarter compared to 3.2 million last year. If we exclude restructuring costs, it improved by $4.8 million to an adjusted profit of $7.9 million. If we switch over to home, not such a good story. Revenue declined $21.6 million, or 14%. The decline was mainly from online sales. Brick and mortar sales were relatively flat compared to last year and even sequentially. You know, again, current environment is very tough. It's very competitive and demand continues to be a big issue in this area. Particularly on the lower end, there is some better demand at the higher end of the furniture industry. Unfortunately, we don't really play a lot in that area. Growth profit for the quarter decreased 8.2 million of 74% compared to last year. Growth margin went down to 2.1, representing a decline of 500 basis points. The decrease in the growth margin is mainly due to lower efficiencies, lower volumes, while we still maintain the large footprint that we have. You know, as well as due to, you know, increased promotional incentives as we clear out our older products and also the reduced online business where we generally had higher margins. In addition to that, there was an accelerated depreciation on equipment and some inventory write-downs related to the closure of the Tickin, Ohio plant. I MENTIONED THAT WE HAD A TRADE ACCOUNTS RECEIVABLE ADJUSTMENT DUE TO THE BANKRUPTCY OF ONE OF OUR CUSTOMERS. FROM AN OPERATING LOSS STANDPOINT, YOUR OWN HOME OPERATED LOSSES INCREASED BY 9.6 MILLION TO A NUMBER OF 13.2 MILLION, EXCLUDING RESTRUCTURING COSTS, THE NUMBER IS 12 MILLION. The only other issue I do want to address is a reclassification of our debt from long-term to current from the statement. The reason for that is November 1st, we amended our ADL facility and our term loan facility to facilitate compliance with covenants. As a result, we became compliant with everything with the amended September 30th COVENANTS. HOWEVER, GIVEN THAT THE AMENDMENTS WERE DONE ON NOVEMBER 1ST, THEY WERE CLASSIFIED AS CURRENT IN OUR STATEMENT. HOWEVER, AS OF RIGHT NOW, THEY ARE NO LONGER CURRENT.

WITH THAT, LET'S OPEN UP SOME QUESTIONS, I GUESS.

OKAY. SO, OPERATOR, OKAY, PLEASE OPEN UP THE LINES FOR QUESTIONS. ask a question to limit it to two in the first round.

Okay, thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. To join the question queue, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. You will hear a tone acknowledging your request. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw from the question queue, you may press star then two. Again, we are asking you limit yourself to two questions. We will pause momentarily as callers join the queue. Today's first question comes from Derek Lessard with TD Cohen. Please go ahead.

Yeah, good afternoon, everybody. I just want to hit maybe mostly on the home side. Congrats on juvenile. It looks like the profitability and sales are coming back nicely in that business. But on home, do you have any sense as to what's driving this incredible weakness in home? Is it oversupply? Is it the consumer? I mean, we're now four years removed from COVID at this point.

Well, we're four years removed from the beginning of COVID, but I think there's still an overhang where people bought a lot of furniture. They really did. That was a real spike. So a lot of, you know, what did that mean? So that means that, first off, you've got a lot of new furniture in the homes. Second, there was a lot of product in the channels, although I think today it's pretty safe to assume that most of the COVID product is out of the channel. And third, it put a lot of new people into the furniture business. And what's happening now is demand is down because people don't need as much furniture. Housing INFLATION IS UP SO PEOPLE, AND INFLATION IS UP SO PEOPLE, AND INFLATION IS UP SO PEOPLE, AND AGAIN, INFLATION IS UP SO PEOPLE, AND AGAIN, KEEP INFLATION IS UP SO PEOPLE, AND AGAIN, KEEP INFLATION IS UP SO PEOPLE, AND AGAIN, KEEP IN MIND INFLATION IS UP SO PEOPLE, AND AGAIN, KEEP IN MIND WE'RE INFLATION IS UP SO PEOPLE, AND AGAIN, KEEP IN MIND WE'RE AT INFLATION IS UP SO PEOPLE, AND AGAIN, KEEP IN MIND WE'RE AT THE INFLATION IS UP SO PEOPLE, AND AGAIN, KEEP IN MIND WE'RE AT THE LOWER INFLATION IS UP SO PEOPLE, AND AGAIN, KEEP IN MIND WE'RE AT THE LOWER END INFLATION IS UP SO PEOPLE, AND AGAIN, KEEP IN industry. Nothing to me shows it more than when the massive Cologne, Germany trade show in January is canceled for this year. The industry is just not doing a good job. What does that mean for Doral? We cannot and will not continue to operate the way we're operating today. or in the last nine months, let's put it that way. We've made changes already, but we can't do that. We can't afford it. We cannot wait for demand to come back. Our previous strategy in the last 12 to 18 months has been to reduce costs and do everything we can to get our sales back up. Going forward, we are going to assume for planning purposes that our sales do not necessarily increase, and we need to be and have a cash flow business based on today's volume. And that's a lot of work to get to resizing or restructuring. I don't want to use the word restructuring as much as resizing the business to be able to do that. And, you know, it starts with closing one of the factories that we already announced, the different facility. By the way, in Q3, we still had the different facility operating at a significantly lower under utilized pace. So, you know, costs were much higher in Q3 because we were in the process of closing it there. But there's other things to do. And, you know, the commitment that we have today is to put a plan together to be effective next year. You know, unlikely to start in January, but we need to get to a point where we're making money, and we're making cash as well next year. And that's what we're working on. We hope to come to market hopefully by the end of this year, if not early, early January, where we can talk about the plan and how we're going to get there. But it is going to be a simpler version. We have some great product lines. We have great margins. We probably have too many things we're trying to do. that's dragging down the averages and, of course, all of the overheads are matched with all of that. We've got some great people, you know, and we want to, you know, sort of move forward with the best of our business and just make it into a smaller, more profitable business. And we're optimistic that we're going to get there. We're just not at a point where we can disclose all the details yet, unfortunately.

Okay. Well, thanks for some of that color, Jeffrey. A bit of a segue into my next question was in terms of the categories that were struggling the most and might not be viable.

Can you just sort of – could you give us some color on some of the more – Yeah, I'd rather not talk about which categories we want to – discontinue. We haven't finally decided. And again, you know, I'm not sure I want to go to the market at this point because if we have inventories, we want to make sure they're good inventories. But we're looking at everything, you know, and which ones carry good margins. And some of them are just so competitive today that we find that, you know, competition from Asia is just... making them not, you know, not, not sustainable. Um, so we're, we're picking and choosing the best of what we have. Uh, we are optimistic. Martin talked about the show. You know, I know we talk about shows a lot, but we got some great feedback on some great new products that we, um, shown. Um, and, and I think some of the product we're designing today is as good as anything we've done in the last three, four years. Um, And we want to get back into that where we think, again, newer, more exciting stuff is going to carry higher sales potentials and better margins. And that's the focus. But we've got to get this footprint shrunk because we can't make money when we have the footprint that we have today.

Okay. And then maybe one last one for me. Are there any – other customers or retailers that might be struggling or are in financial distress that you could talk to?

I mean, there's a lot of people that are struggling in this industry. There's no question. I'm not aware. I mean, again, it might be smaller chains. It's a struggling industry, but, you know, our biggest customers are still Walmart, Amazon, Target, Wayfair. These are our biggest four customers. So, you know, I'm not worried about those customers per se, but yeah, it's still, it's a struggling industry. I'm, you know, we keep hearing about, you know, competitors of ours that are closing or going chapter 11 or stuff like that. But you know, it's not our intention to get there. We, We have enough really good stuff in this business to make a really good business. And it's not tiny. You know, we still are selling quite a bit of stuff. We just have to right-size, you know, the effort we put behind it and simplify it as well.

Okay. Thanks, everyone.

Thank you. The next question is from Nevin Yokim with BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good afternoon, guys. Hopefully, we can just stay on the home segment. If you're able to comment on the health of the consumer, just wondering if you observed a sequential deterioration in Q3 relative to what you were seeing in Q2, and then any change in that consumer's behavior into Q4 so far?

Although, you know, all I can say is it's just we keep waiting for it to come back. We keep waiting to see an acceleration, and we're just not seeing it. You know, it's a steady business. We did notice, and I think we talked about all year, that the brick-and-mortar end seems to be much more stable than the online. The problem with brick-and-mortar, or I guess the difference, the biggest difference from us from brick-and-mortar, is that you need to prepare your business months in advance. That's always been the way brick and mortar works, right? So we know today we have new listings next year on the floors of some of our customers. But we don't have the orders today, but we know we're going to have them in Q1, Q2, Q3, whatever it is. Online, the beauty of online used to be we can put something on tomorrow and it could start selling this week type of thing. And it's faster to get new stuff done. So you know, if we had a big online demand, we'd be able to be more confident in the speed that we can, you know, get our new stuff to market. But today, you know, the brick and mortar is just a steadier business. It's easier to plan for. And, you know, that's the area where we're rebooking. It seems strange in today's world that we're talking about more business in brick and mortar, given what we went through in the last five years with online. But, It is what it is right now. Yeah, okay. That's the only comment I have on the customer in that area.

And then just on the inventory in the home segment, you know, I guess I was under the impression that inventory was relatively normalized. It sounds like you were still selling through a little bit of older inventory that was higher priced. Where do you sit today, and is this inventory just in products that you're looking to discontinue, or do you sort of have excess inventory across the home channel?

Okay, so it's a good question. So let's take the first part of it. No, I think what I said was that that was a big feature of the COVID boom for us, but we are today no longer sitting on COVID inventory. So that's gone through the channel. I don't believe many retailers or even competitors have much of that. Going forward, we will have items we discontinue, and that's because we're making a smaller go-forward line of products. We won't be in every category we're in. Like I said, we're judging it for margin, for volume, for all of those things. So, yes, we will have items that we discontinue. going forward into next year will be much smaller. I hope to be able to, you know, address all of that when we talk about the changes that we're going to make in our business. But for sure, 25 will have significantly less I don't want to call it clear out, but like whatever that word is. I've got to be careful. I don't want to step on a limelight there. But but good that we don't go forward with anymore.

Yeah. Okay. Fair enough. And so then I guess in the near term, as you sort of thinking into Q4, you know, using these promotions and maybe working through some of these items that are going to be discontinued, as well as the restructuring that's ongoing in the home segment, would you expect to see a sequential improvement in profitability in the home segment in Q4? or would that be reserved for 2025?

It's probably 2025, and you probably hit the nail on the head as to why. I mean, we're going to continue to move through these goods. The faster, the better, right? We want to get into cash as soon as we can. And the second part is, again, inefficiencies as we move to more and more efficient models. You know, I know we won't be spending all the money in Q4 at Tiffin that we spent in Q3 because Tiffin's gone. So that's, you know, a positive there, but there's other areas that we're going to be winding down. And because of that, you know, we'll get some inefficiencies. So it'll start in 2025, you know, January will not be as good as, you know, Q4, but we, that's all part of our plan and, and, GOING TO HAVE ALL OF THAT ANALYZED AND HOPEFULLY, LIKE I SAID, COMMUNICATED TO THE MARKET SHORTLY. BUT ONE THING I CAN ENSURE TO EVERYBODY IS THAT WE ARE COMMITTED TO GETTING THIS BUSINESS TO A POSITIVE RUN RATE DURING, AND I DON'T HAVE THE DATE EXACTLY, DURING 2025 BECAUSE WE DON'T HAVE A CHOICE. AND IT'S NOT A LUXURY THAT WE CAN AFFORD any more to deal with, hoping for a return to business, hoping for the market to come back. You know, if it does and we do our plan, we'll make even more money. But right now, our focus is making money with the business that we have committed for 2035 today. Mm-hmm.

Understood. And I'm just going to sneak one more quick one in here before I pass it over. You know, more positively on the juvenile segment, it's nice to see the operating margin coming back If these current trends continue, what do you expect to see your EBIT margins back into that historical mid-single digit range next year?

I hope so because, you know, we're actually planning and we're working on getting beyond that. We, there's a lot more to do. That's, I guess, where our excitement lies is we've seen some great numbers this year. We've seen some good numbers. We hope to take them to much better numbers in the future. And we have the pathways to get there. Some of them are cost-related. There's ability to take costs out. A lot of it's product-related, market share-related. We've gained significant market share in car seats in Europe. We've gained market share in Europe and U.S. Certainly continue to gain market share in South America, primarily Brazil. We've got some great stuff coming through the pipeline for next year. A lot of what we did this year, we haven't shipped in volume. So we talked about a great stroller that we introduced earlier in the year called the Fame in Europe. It's doing very well, but it's been restricted by supply. We haven't been able to get the... We haven't matched demand yet. We're hoping to... I hope we actually never get to match demand. That would be great, but... More realistically, by Q4, we'll be putting a lot of products into the market. And again, high price points, higher margins. In the U.S., we introduced the Kindred line of high-end Maxi-Cosi products. Only got introduced in mid-October, so we're only a few weeks in. Very excited about it. It's a product that's pretty much sold at the high end, the independent stores. There's a few other places, but... Check it out. It's all over Instagram and stuff like that. It's a real high-end look. Very different. Very excited about it. Again, it won't have a material impact on 24 numbers, but hopefully by 25. Then there's all the stuff we're introducing in 25. Really excited. This is the best I felt about our business in many, many, many years because it's Not only is it great today, but we see all the past when life's going to be great tomorrow.

Great. I appreciate that detail. Thanks, guys. Okay.

Thank you. The next question is a follow-up from Derek Lessard with TD Cohen. Please go ahead.

Hi, Jeff. I just wanted just another question just to clear something up. You said you hope to get back to the market with more specific details around the plan in early 2025. You don't report Q4 until March. So can we or can investors anticipate an update before that?

I would like to say, yeah, I believe so. I mean, I would want to do that because I believe it's material what we're going to do. And I know that overhanging a lot of fears that an investor would have is about you know if if you don't turn this business around and you let it go as it goes today you know um you know is is it bio is it a viable company and you know the answer would be no we can't afford to continue to lose big money you know every every quarter so i think it's super important and therefore i think um you know, coming to the market and explaining what it is we've done and where the goals are and some timelines and all of that on the home furnishing side. I think that's very important. So, yes. Okay. Thank you.

Thank you.

There is one other issue I just want to address. I didn't get a question on it. And that's our liquidity level. So, we are, you know, very much aware that liquidity is an issue that is on the minds of everyone, including ourselves. We are in the process of looking to increase our liquidity. I know we've said we've done it before, but realistically, we can't tell the market what we're doing until it's done, just from a disclosure standpoint. But we have numerous apps that we are currently working on. Again, I'm not going to discuss them, but other than tell you that we have levers to pull to increase our liquidity. We're working on all of them at the same time. Don't think all of them are going to work, but don't need all of them to work to get us to the point where we have enough liquidity to operate properly. It is tied to not losing money at home furnishings. So we need to get to the cash flow positive next year, and we need to increase some liquidity. And all of that is about getting to be able to get the value out of the juvenile business that we think we're going to get in the next, you know, we'll call it the short term. It's more than a year. But as you know, we are at some point looking to monetize that, but not today. And we're doing everything we can to make sure that business thrives and shareholders are rewarded.

Thank you. This concludes the question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Mr. Schwartz for any closing remarks.

Okay, I just want to thank all of you for joining us this afternoon. And I wish you all very well. Thank you.

This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect your lines. Thank you for participating and have a pleasant day.