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Transcript Summary

Malibu Boats (MBI) delivered a strong third quarter for fiscal 2026, headlined by the strategic acquisition of Saxdor Yachts and legacy performance that exceeded guidance. Despite a bifurcated market where value-oriented buyers face affordability hurdles, MBI's premium consumer base remains resilient. The company reported $235.7 million in net sales and a significant 420-basis-point sequential gross margin improvement, driven by the success of its centralized sourcing initiative and disciplined inventory management. The integration of Saxdor is progressing well, with plans to expand its North American manufacturing footprint using existing capacity in Fort Pierce. This acquisition targets a younger, affluent demographic, diversifying MBI's global reach. Operationally, the company is seeing success with its MBI Acceptance financing program, which saw a 200% jump in application volume. Dealer inventories remain healthy and in line with historical norms. Management raised the full-year legacy revenue outlook, projecting total fiscal 2026 sales between $880 million and $886 million. With a strong balance sheet and a 1.5x leverage ratio, MBI continues to balance growth investments with shareholder returns through active share repurchases.

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Malibu Boats, Inc.: Litigation Quagmire and Inventory Bloat Dampen Acquisition Synergies

Full Earnings Call Transcript — Q3 • 2026-05-08

Operator: Good morning, and welcome to Malibu Boats conference call to discuss third quarter 2026 results. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that reproduction of this call in whole or in part is not permitted without written authorization of Malibu Boats. And as a reminder, today's call is being recorded. On the call today from management are Mr. Steven Menneto, Chief Executive Officer; and Mr. David Black, Chief Financial Officer. I will now turn the call over to Mr. Black to get it started. Please go ahead.
David Black: Thank you, and good afternoon, everyone. Joining me on today's call is our CEO, Steve Menneto. On the call, Steve will provide commentary on the business, and I will discuss our third quarter fiscal year 2026 financials. We will then open the call up for questions. A press release covering the company's fiscal third quarter 2026 results was issued today, and a copy of that press release can be found in the Investor Relations section of the company's website. I also want to remind everyone that management's remarks on this call may contain certain forward-looking statements, including predictions, expectations, estimates and other information that might be considered forward-looking and that actual results could differ materially from those projected on today's call. You should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of today, and the company undertakes no obligation to update them for any new information or future events. Factors that may affect future results are discussed in our filings with the SEC, and we encourage you to review our SEC filings for a more detailed description of these risk factors. Please also note that we will be referring to certain non-GAAP financial measures on today's call, such as adjusted EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA margin, adjusted net income and free cash flow. Reconciliations of these GAAP financial measures to non-GAAP financial measures are included in our earnings release. I will now turn the call over to Steve.
Steven Menneto: Thank you, David. Good afternoon, everyone. This was a defining quarter for MBI. We delivered revenue and adjusted EBITDA that exceeded our guidance on a legacy base, and we closed on the acquisition of Saxdor Yachts, the most significant strategic milestone in our company's history and a decisive step in executing the build, innovate and grow strategy we outlined at our September Investor Day. The core business is performing. Our integration is underway and our conviction in the long-term opportunity in front of us has never been higher. This is particularly notable given the backdrop. Since we last spoke with you, the broader consumer environment has grown more uncertain with geopolitical developments impacting gas prices and thereby sentiment, exacerbating affordability pressures that are weighing on the more value-orientated buyers who tend to utilize financing. But we are seeing a clear bifurcation in the market. The premium cash-driven buyers continue to engage, and that is the consumer our portfolio is built around. Our brands, our ASPs and our customer demographics skew meaningfully towards buyers who have historically demonstrated greater resilience through periods of macro dislocation. We believe that our positioning differentiates us and is showing up in our results. Turning first to the selling season. Boat show season has largely played out as we expected, and bolstered with pockets of strength across our portfolio. At the Miami International Boat Show in February, we debuted the new Pursuit DC 286 and Pathfinder 2800 Hybrid, which represents 2 of the 11 new models that were launched across our portfolio over the past year since last year's Miami show, reflecting the continued investment in our innovation pipeline. The reaction to both has been tremendous. We saw a strong immediate reception to the Pursuit 286 launch with several customer conversions and the momentum created at the show with the Pathfinder 2800 has continued building into the week since. This has bolstered wholesale orders from dealers for both models, which have exceeded forecast throughout the end of the fiscal year. Additionally, our commitment to designing and manufacturing the highest quality boats was recognized by the NMMA with Customer Satisfaction Index awards across 5 of our brands during the Miami Show, Malibu and Axis in ski, wake and surf boats and Cobalt, Pursuit and Pathfinder in fiberglass outboard boats. These awards are determined by verified boat owner feedback and being recognized across 5 brands in 2 segments is a powerful external validation of the product quality, dealer experience and ownership support that define our portfolio. In general, boat show performance remained resilient year-over-year and outpaced broader market trends, demonstrating continued consumer engagement and demand for our brands in a challenging retail environment. Most recently, at the Palm Beach International Boat Show, both Pursuit and our Maverick Boat Group brands delivered year-over-year sales growth, a clear reflection of the premium consumer dynamic I just described, which is a meaningful data point in a show environment where broader industry traffic is subdued. Across our towboat segment, dealer and consumer feedback on the Malibu and Axis lineup continues to reinforce the leadership position we have built in that category. David will take you through the financials in detail shortly, but the headline on the legacy business is that our team continues to deliver against the priorities we laid out at the start of the year and the centralized sourcing work we've been discussing for several quarters is now meaningfully contributing to margin. We continue to work in close partnership with our dealers, guided by our established playbook of prioritizing dealer health and tightly managing channel inventories. Our dealers entered the selling season with healthy current model year '26 inventory, and we have maintained that disciplined posture throughout the quarter. Dealer inventories are in line with historical weeks on hand norms, a position we have earned by being deliberate on wholesale shipments throughout the year, even when the discipline pressure near-term volumes. While the broader industry continues to work through pockets of noncurrent inventory, our channel is positioned to support retail as the market stabilizes, not to clear stale product. Turning to our strategic initiatives. MBI acceptance continues to gain traction across our network. What began as a pilot within our Malibu and Axis brands is now deployed and available across all brands, with early feedback actively shaping how we think about the next phase of programming. During the quarter, we saw encouraging engagement from both dealers and customers, underscored by application volume increasing by over 200% from January to February as adoption broadened at the point of sale. The program is doing exactly what we designed it to do, drive showroom traffic, give our dealers a competitive retail financing tool and create another touch point in the ownership life cycle. Our marine components business also continued to progress during the quarter. While we are still in early innings, the operating systems and processes we put in place last year are now enabling us to move faster and engage more customers, and that's exactly what we are seeing with active external customer engagements to work through application engineering and quoting across our entire portfolio, including engines, trailers and flooring. On operational excellence, we continue to leverage the MBI advantage to drive quality, efficiency and consistency across the business. Our centralized sourcing initiative is now meaningfully contributing to margin, consistent with what we communicated last quarter. As the higher cost inventory we discussed previously has worked its way through the P&L, the benefit of our sourcing work are showing up clearly in our results. I also want to touch briefly on tariffs. The trade policy environment has continued to evolve, but our position remains consistent. We expect our total fiscal 2026 tariff exposure to fall within the range we communicated at the start of the year. Importantly, our expectation is that the Section 232 related impacts on our business will be de minimis. Our vertically integrated U.S. manufacturing footprint, combined with the central sourcing capabilities we have built out, gives us meaningful flexibility to manage this environment. And with Saxdor now part of MBI, we have manufacturing capabilities on both sides of the Atlantic, which provides incremental flexibility as we think about serving customers in each region and managing evolving trade policy over time. Let me now turn to Saxdor. We closed the acquisition on March 2, and we are thrilled to welcome the Saxdor team to MBI. The integration is progressing well, and our early experience has reinforced every element of the thesis we laid out on our acquisition call, particularly in today's consumer environment. Recall that Saxdor's customer demographic skews young, affluent and adventure orientated with an average household income of approximately $375,000. That profile was a core part of our rationale for the acquisition, and it's proving even more relevant in the current macro. At the Palm Beach International Boat Show, Saxdor debuted the new 460 GTC flagship to exceptional customer response and our full planned production for the model this year is effectively spoken for. Importantly, that reflects a deliberate approach. We are pacing production of the 460 to protect the brand's premium positioning to ensure a world-class delivery experience for our customers and to scale thoughtfully in partnership with our dealer network. The 400 GTS continues to perform well following its Miami debut, and our combined product pipeline remains robust. Beyond the product, we have made meaningful progress on integration planning since close. During our acquisition call, we discussed our ability to meaningfully expand Saxdor's North American manufacturing capacity by leveraging the existing Fort Pierce footprint, which operates today at approximately 65% utilization. That capability is a strategic unlock. It allows us to grow Saxdor's North American presence on our own time line without capital-intensive greenfield investment while simultaneously relieving demand pressure on Saxdor's European facilities in Finland and Poland. Our focus in these first several months has been straightforward: protect what makes Saxdor special and begin laying the operational foundation for value creation opportunities we outlined like procurement scale, North American manufacturing utilization and extending our service platform across the combined customer base. Looking ahead, our expectations for the broader marine industry remain largely unchanged. We are managing the business for the long term, guided by our priorities, protecting dealer health, maintaining operational discipline and driving innovation across the expanded global portfolio. With Saxdor now part of MBI, we have significantly broadened our runway for growth into new categories, new geographies and a younger consumer demographic that can compound for decades. With that, I'll turn the call over to David for the detailed review of our financial results.
David Black: Thanks, Steve. Our third quarter results reflect strong execution across both our legacy business and 1 month's contribution from Saxdor following the March 2 close. Throughout my remarks, I will make select references to both consolidated results and legacy results, which exclude Saxdor, to provide a clear view of underlying sales drivers and year-over-year comparability. Net sales increased 3.1% to $235.7 million, inclusive of $23.1 million from Saxdor. On a legacy basis, net sales were $212.6 million, exceeding our guidance range of $198 million to $202 million. Legacy unit volume decreased 17.1% to 1,187 units, primarily due to lower wholesale shipments consistent with our disciplined approach to channel management. Saxdor contributed 66 units in its partial quarter contribution. From a mix perspective, on a legacy basis, Malibu and Axis represented approximately 46% of unit sales, Cobalt represented approximately 28% and saltwater Fishing represented the remaining 26%. Saxdor is being reported as a new fourth segment, and we intend to build upon this disclosure going forward. Consolidated net sales per unit increased 12.1% to $179,000 on a legacy basis, driven by a favorable model mix across all segments and a favorable segment mix and year-over-year price increases. While not included in this metric for the sake of comparability, Saxdor had net sales per unit of $350,000 and is expected to drive net sales per unit higher in subsequent periods. Turning to profitability. Gross profit decreased 9.7% to $41.3 million and gross margin as a percentage of sales was 17.5%. On a sequential basis, gross margin expanded 420 basis points from Q2, reflecting the tangible benefit of our centralized sourcing initiative as higher cost inventory worked through the P&L, along with improved segment mix and normalization of promotional activity. This is consistent with the trajectory we laid out on our last call. On a year-over-year basis, gross margin compressed 250 basis points, driven primarily by fixed cost deleverage from lower legacy unit volumes and higher per unit material and labor costs across our legacy segments. Selling and marketing expenses increased 22.1% year-over-year to $8.3 million. The increase was driven primarily by higher personnel-related expenses, marketing events and incremental increase in selling and marketing expenses due to the new Saxdor segment. As a percentage of sales, selling and marketing expenses increased versus the prior year to 3.5%. General and administrative expenses increased 60% or $11.9 million, driven primarily by $10.6 million of acquisition and integration-related expenses associated with the Saxdor transaction, which are excluded from adjusted EBITDA. Excluding those items, G&A was broadly in line with the prior year. Amortization expense was $3.1 million, which includes partial period impact of intangibles acquired in the transaction. GAAP net loss for the quarter was $2.4 million compared to GAAP net income of $13.2 million in the prior year. The year-over-year decline is primarily explained by the acquisition and integrated-related expenses I just mentioned, along with lower legacy operating income. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $22.7 million and adjusted EBITDA margin was 9.6%. Included in this consolidated results is approximately 1 month of Saxdor contribution or approximately $1.4 million of adjusted EBITDA since we closed the transaction on March 2. Non-GAAP adjusted net income per share was $0.56 per share, calculated using a normalized C-corp tax rate of 22.1% and a basic weighted average share count of approximately 19 million shares. For a reconciliation of GAAP metrics to adjusted EBITDA, adjusted net income per share, please see the tables in our earnings release. Turning to the balance sheet and cash flow. We ended the quarter with approximately $50 (sic) [ $50.2 ] million in cash and $165 million in long-term debt, reflecting the financing of the Saxdor acquisition. Pro forma leverage of approximately 1.5x net debt to trailing 12-month adjusted EBITDA remains well below our stated maximum target of 2.5x, preserving meaningful flexibility for continued investment and return of capital to shareholders. We generated $16 million of free cash flow during Q3, inclusive of $5.9 million of capital expenditures. Looking ahead, we will continue to be thoughtful and opportunistic in our capital deployment, balancing investments for growth with actions that prioritize shareholder value. On capital allocation, our actions during the quarter demonstrated the discipline of our framework that we have talked about consistently. As partial consideration for the Saxdor acquisition, we issued roughly 1.5 million shares of Malibu stock priced using the 10-day volume-weighted average price of $30.98 per the deal terms. At closing, those shares were recorded at a GAAP fair value of $27.37, which you'll see reflected on our cash flow statement. During the same quarter, we repurchased approximately 492,000 shares at an average of $26.24, a discount to both figures I mentioned, partially offsetting the acquisition dilution at favorable prices. Our $70 million share repurchase authorization remains in effect with meaningful capacity going forward. Before moving to our outlook, I wanted to briefly flag a few modeling considerations related to Saxdor that will be helpful as you think about the combined business going forward. First, Saxdor's quarterly revenue profile differs from our legacy business. Approximately half of Saxdor's revenue is generated in Europe, where the boating season and production cadence follow a different calendar than our North American operations. Second, with Saxdor, we now have meaningful euro-denominated revenue for the first time, which introduces foreign currency translation exposure that did not previously exist in our reported results. Going forward, we expect to address FX impact in our quarterly commentary as relevant. Third, we expect to continue calling out acquisition and integration-related expenses as adjustments to adjusted EBITDA through the course of our integration work, and we will continue to see modest margin impacts in the coming quarters from purchase accounting. Both of these items will be clearly identified so the underlying performance remains transparent. Turning to our outlook for the full fiscal year. On a combined basis, legacy plus Saxdor, we expect full year fiscal 2026 net sales of approximately $880 million to $886 million and adjusted EBITDA of approximately $72 million to $74 million. Let me walk through the components. On the legacy business, we are raising our full year net sales outlook to reflect Q3's outperformance, while our Q4 expectation on the legacy business is unchanged from the cadence we embedded in our prior annual framework. That brings full year legacy revenue to down slightly versus fiscal 2025, an improvement from the flat to down mid-single digits range we communicated previously. On the legacy adjusted EBITDA margin, we expect to finish towards the lower end of the previously communicated range of 8% to 9%. Q3 benefited from a more favorable mix tailwind that we expect to be less pronounced in Q4. Shifting to fourth quarter. On the Saxdor business, we expect fourth quarter net sales of approximately $57 million to $59 million and adjusted EBITDA margin of 10% to 11%, a meaningful sequential step from Q3 and consistent with the near-term margin expectation we communicated when we announced the transaction. Note, Saxdor's Q3 margin reflected only 1 month of revenue against its full fixed cost structure, while Q4 is a full quarter that captures the peak of Saxdor's European sales season. On a combined basis for Q4, we expect consolidated net sales of $261 million to $267 million and adjusted EBITDA of $29 million to $31 million or roughly 11% to 12% margin. Our intent is to return to a single consolidated outlook when we provide fiscal 2027 guidance in August. To close, we delivered a strong third quarter on both sides of the business. Our legacy operations exceeded expectations. Our centralized sourcing initiative is meaningfully contributing to margin as we planned, and we closed and began integrating a transformational acquisition while continuing to return capital at an attractive price. With healthier dealer inventories, a differentiated product portfolio and a strong balance sheet, we are well positioned to execute through the remainder of the fiscal 2026 and into fiscal 2027. With that, I'd like to open the call up for questions.
Operator: [Operator Instructions] Your first question is from Joe Altobello with Raymond James.
Martin Mitela: This is Martin on for Joe. I kind of want to quickly touch on your guide for Saxdor next quarter. Trying to get an idea of how many units we can expect. Just trying to get an idea of what ASPs might look like for next quarter and next year as well.
David Black: Yes. This is David. I think we don't typically guide on ASP and volume. But if you look at our ASP for Saxdor for Q3, I think that would be a pretty good proxy and you should put it back into the volume expectation for Q4.
Martin Mitela: Great. And would you mind sort of touching on why you're trending toward the bottom range of the legacy EBITDA margin of 8% to 9%?
David Black: Yes. It's really just a function of the higher mix impact that we had in Q3 that we don't expect to continue into the following quarter. So it's really just a positive mix impact for that quarter.
Operator: Your next question is from Gerrick Johnson with Seaport Research Partners.
Gerrick Johnson: A couple of Saxdor questions here. First, on your comment about your shipments to Europe being different than they are to the North American market. So can you talk about the phasing between the quarters and how that is different?
David Black: Yes, Gerrick, it's still early on, but the way that I would characterize it is the back half of our fiscal year is heavier from the sales side than the first half with Q1 being the lowest on the sales side of things. So it's really a ramping into that back half of the year with it being about 60% of the revenue at that point in that quarter.
Gerrick Johnson: Okay. And then on Saxdor, there are about 5 models, I think, from 27 to 46 feet. Is there room for more models? Or is that a full portfolio for Saxdor?
Steven Menneto: No, Gerrick, I think we have -- we're pretty excited about the about the product plan that we have in place over the next 3 to 5 years. So we think there's a lot more opportunity in their model plan as we go forward. So pretty excited about it.
Operator: Your next question is from Jaime M. Katz with Morningstar.
Jaime Katz: There was a pretty good uptick in gross margin compression this quarter. So when we would expect that to maybe flatten out or turn positive given the cost initiatives that you guys have already undertaken.
David Black: Jaime, this is David. So I think if you're looking in the context on quarter-over-quarter or year-over-year, I think the way to think about it is sequential. So quarter-over-quarter, we're up 420 basis points versus the previous quarter. And so that really translates from the centralized sourcing initiatives that we've been talking about, plus the other cost savings actions that we've been taking across the business. So as you think about moving into Q4, I think you'll see sequential increase as well on a flow-through basis from those initiatives.
Jaime Katz: Okay. And then is there any insight you guys have to sort of what you expect for input cost inflation over the next couple of quarters? Just do you expect that to slow, maybe be a little bit easier to manage? Or are we looking at sort of levels of input cost growth that we've seen in recent quarters?
David Black: Yes. No, that's definitely an evolving topic. I think from the cost savings initiatives that we've taken, we're able to manage through all of those. Right now, we're not seeing significant uptick in input costs, but we are keeping our eye on it as things change in this geopolitical world we live in.
Operator: I'm not showing any further questions at this time. With that, we'll conclude today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.