Good afternoon. Thank you for attending the Traeger Second Quarter Fiscal 2021 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to pass the conference over to your host, Tom Burton with Traeger. Thank you. You may proceed, Mr. Burton.

Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining Traeger's call to discuss its second quarter results, which we released this afternoon and can be found on our website at investors.traeger.com. Hosting the call are Jeremy Andrus, Chief Executive Officer of Traeger; and Dom Blosil, Chief Financial Officer. Before we get started, I want to remind everyone that management's remarks on this call may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 that are based on current management expectations. These may include, without limitations, predictions, expectations, targets or estimates, including regarding our anticipated financial performance, and actual results could differ materially from those mentioned. These forward-looking statements also involve substantial risks and uncertainties, some of which may be outside of our control that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed in or implied by such statements. These factors and uncertainties, among others, are discussed in our filings with the SEC. We encourage you to review these filings for a discussion of these factors, including our quarterly report on Form 10-Q filed today, which is also available on the investor portion of our website at ir.traeger.com. You should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. They speak only as of today, and we undertake no obligation to update or revise them for any new information. This call will also contain certain non-GAAP financial measures, including net income as adjusted, diluted EPS as adjusted, adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA margin, which we believe are useful supplemental measures that assist in evaluating our ability to generate earnings, provide consistency and comparability with our cost performance, and facilitate period-to-period comparison of our core operating results and results of peer companies. Reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to the most comparable GAAP measures and definitions of these indicators are included in our quarterly report on Form 10-Q and in our earnings release, both of which are available on the Investor portion of our website at ir.traeger.com. Now I would like to turn the call over to Jeremy Andrus, Chief Executive Officer of Traeger.

Thank you, Tom, and thank you, everyone, for joining us for our first earnings call as a public company. I'm incredibly excited to be here today to share our story and talk about our journey ahead. First, I'd like to say how proud I am of what we have accomplished to date as a team in terms of driving our growth strategies, completing exciting acquisition and launching our successful IPO. Today, I will share why Traeger represents a unique and compelling growth opportunity. Later during the call, Dom will discuss the details of our second quarter financial performance and provide our outlook for 2021 and longer term. We are pleased with the momentum in our business. For the second quarter, revenue grew 39%, reflecting ongoing strength in consumer demand across product segments, including grills, consumables and accessories. We are excited to see growing brand awareness and extraordinary customer engagement with strong performance across regions. Customers enter the funnel as they recognize Traeger as a pioneer in outdoor cooking, and we drive lifetime customer value with our consumables and accessory categories. At the heart of our brand is a passionate and engaged community called the Traegerhood, which is comprised of everyone from casual grillers to competitive pit masters and professional chefs. The strength of the Traegerhood is reflected in our strong top line performance and our growing loyal following. We have over 1.6 million followers on social media that create hundreds of thousands of user-generated posts across various social media platforms, demonstrating our engaged and supportive fan base. For those of you less familiar with us, Traeger is the creator and category leader of the wood pellet grill and a disruptor in outdoor cooking. Our outdoor cooking system ignites all natural hardwoods to grill, smoke, bake, roast, braise and barbecue. Versatile…

Thanks, Jeremy, and good afternoon, everyone. As Jeremy mentioned, we are very excited to share our second quarter momentum and our outlook for the future of Traeger. Our business has experienced rapid growth, and we are building on this momentum through strategic investments in product innovation, brand awareness and global expansion. Looking back at the second quarter, we exceeded our expectations in revenue and profitability. For the second quarter, total revenue increased 39% to $213 million compared to the second quarter last year, driven by strength across product segments. Grill revenue increased 40% to $156 million attributable to growth in both volume and ASP. Growth in ASP was driven by product mix toward premium offerings, including our Ironwood and Timberline series. We also experienced an increase in our installed base of grills, which in turn drives recurring consumables revenue. This consumables revenue grew 28% to $41 million compared to the second quarter of last year. Lastly, accessories revenue increased 65% to approximately $16 million, reflecting strong consumer demand and growth in ASP. We are pleased with the revenue growth in our core channels and saw strong gains in national and specialty retail and in our direct-to-consumer channel. Looking at our performance by market, we continue to see great momentum in the U.S. as well as exceptional growth in Canada and rest of world. We remain in the early stages of our international expansion, and we are highly encouraged by the strong acceptance of the Traeger brand outside of the U.S. Gross profit for the quarter increased $80 million compared to $67 million in the second quarter of last year. Gross profit margin was 39.1% in the second quarter, decreasing 440 basis points from the same period last year. The decrease in gross margin was largely due to increased inbound transportation…

[Operator Instructions] The first question is from Randy Konik with Jefferies.

You can hear me, right?

Yes.

All right, great. So just, I guess, Jeremy, maybe give us some perspective on the consumables distribution. Give us some perspective of where it is now and then basically how you're thinking about expanding that footprint with partners across the country over the next, let's say, 12 to 24 months, how should we think about the expansion of that? Should it be regionalized, nationalized? Just give us some perspective of how you're thinking about that part of the business.

Yes, it's a great question, Randy. So first of all, I would say that it's only been the last sort of 12 months that we have been meaningfully expanding distribution of pellets. Pellets have traditionally been sold where the grills are sold. And one of the things that we learned in consumer research is that while the grills are a considered purchase, and they need their own dedicated point-of-sale and deep education, the consumables need to be in convenient locations where consumers shop regularly. And so we really focused initially on pellet distribution. We've begun to expand it to places where a consumer would naturally expect to buy them. So I would say grocery is probably the most meaningful channel -- distribution channel expansion that we've undertaken. We've opened meaningful new doors during this calendar year. Some of these, they're national chains, although we're always focused on distribution, first and foremost, in the markets that have the greatest penetration. And we ultimately believe that grocery represents an important channel that we've learned in our consumer research, they want to find pellets. The -- and then I would move to rubs and sauces. The rubs and sauces component of our consumable business traditionally have been more about the recipe creation, ensuring that there is an easy guide to helping consumers create a great home cooking experience. And it's only been recently that as we've seen traction in our core channels, and I would say notably in specialty retail, specialty barbecue, specialty hardware, we've seen nice sell-through. And so we've been testing outside of our core channels. And we've seen actually very significant traction, and we believe it's suggesting -- well, it's clear it's suggesting we have permission to play in more traditional consumables channels. So again, grocery would be a natural. My expectation is that over the next 12 months or so, you'll see the consumables distribution increase within our core channels. And as we're building enhanced consumable line, with a price pack architecture that's appropriate for grocery, back half of '22, first half of '23, you'll start to see the rubs and sauces in more traditional consumable channels.

Super helpful. And I have just one more question. I want to get your perspective on how you're thinking about technology. Obviously, one of the great things about the brand is the connection it has through technology. When I think about the Traeger app, for example, it's saying to me right now, my grill has 60% pellets, right? So how are you guys thinking about the next level or the next leg of technology implementation to kind of further enhance -- as you put it before, you want to increase the ability or reduce the friction point for consumers to buy and do things with your -- interact with the brand. So just give us some perspective on maybe your wish list of technology that's going to be happening over the coming quarters and years.

Yes. So I would say for us, everything really fundamentally begins with a great cooking experience. And ultimately, it's a very seamless cooking experience and an equally seamless purchasing experience. We're really optimizing an omnichannel distribution strategy but certainly using technology via our app and the website to remove friction from that purchase experience. We're very early innings in really understanding the value of this one-to-one connection with our consumer, understanding what they're cooking, when they're cooking and really using that data to deliver personalized experience. And we're actually in the process -- we spend a lot of time in habitat with our consumers. And I think we're making some very significant progress currently that over the next couple of quarters, you'll see in a greatly enhanced digital experience. And it really goes -- it really boils down to owning the moment from the moment a consumer decides they're going to cook at home all the way through the inspiration of what they're going to cook, the recipe, how and where they're going to procure ingredients, how they're going to cook it, whether it be video, short-form recipe content, long-form recipe content. And so the technology is there. It's about us really intimately understanding our consumer and how they want to use it. And you're going to see very significant advancements. I would even suggest that over the next 6 to 12 months, you will see more evolution and innovation in the digital experience than you've seen in the last 4, 5 years of Traeger. We are that committed to making the cooking experience much better. And certainly, all of the components of purchasing and ingredient procurement and easy recipe content are components of that. So the technology is there, and we're finding ways to make a very elegant cooking experience. So we really like the progress that's on its way to market.

The next question is from John Glass with Morgan Stanley.

First, Jeremy, I wondered if you could just talk a little bit about the go-to-market strategy you employed this summer. You have events to create demand in some new markets. Maybe kind of recap what you did there and maybe some of the results. And then if you think about the next couple of quarters, how do you think about the next market you're going to approach? What are they, for example? And what's the sort of sequence of events as we think about the brand moving east?

Yes. So this is a really important part of the acceleration of our unaided brand awareness. And there's a lot of history in how we've arrived at where we are. I would say that the first handful of years under this management team, our real focus was building an authentic brand platform. Long before we were investing in customer acquisition, we were thinking about what are the tenets of a brand that creates real emotion with our consumer, how do we authentically tell a cooking experience that gets people excited. And the reality is most people are not excited to cook, Traeger owners are. And that really starts with this foundation of brand. So all the things that we've done are with community ambassadors, grassroots marketing, which has always been an important part of our business model, social media, cooking classes, all of these sorts of things. That's been the foundation of the brand. The last couple of years, we've really been honing in our marketing execution model to ensure that we get a return on our brand platform. And so we've tested many markets. We've seen great success. Salt Lake City is the market that we have the most history in as a management team. And so we've been able to refine a marketing model that's increased our household penetration from very low single digits to 15% household penetration 6 years since we've been here. And all of the elements of that model have been testing and measuring and refining. And that -- we call this our Market [ Assault ] program. And so we rolled this out beginning in the back half of last year into 14 markets around the U.S., strategically chosen, one of them being Salt Lake City, which we're continue to scale. We are monitoring…

Dom, I just wanted to follow up on your supply chain commentary. Have things gotten worse maybe since we last chatted, wherever, it was a month ago. I think there was some disruption in Vietnam. I don't know if -- is that recurring now? Maybe some contextualization around is this what you expected? Or is it maybe worse than you expected? And what specifically, whether it's manufacturing capabilities or is there a supply issue with components? Or is it shipping? Which of the pieces are more or greater or lesser pressure than you maybe expect even a short time ago?

Yes. That's a great question. And I would say that the answer to your first question is yes. We are seeing some of these challenge worsen as we head into the back half of the year. And we certainly took a fairly conservative viewpoint on kind of where we were kind of June, July time frame as we looked ahead and just based on kind of the known factors that we were experiencing at the time. And ultimately, some of the headwinds that we felt in gross margin in Q2, inbound transportation rates, FX, these are actually trending in a slightly worse direction currently. And so that's one sort of factor that we're seeing emerge, growing headwinds just really related to inbound transportation. And that's something that our products are fairly sensitive to, just given the size of our products and sort of the loadability per container. I'd say the second piece that I think is emerging as slightly newer in terms of a headwind is steel. We've seen just as you look at kind of the indexes on cold-rolled steel and in China, that sort of increased 30% to 40%, and that's beginning to have an impact on our cost of goods as well. That's one that we also believe will be transitory over time, and we're sort of evaluating what China is doing as they look at some of these inflationary pressures and maybe ways to sort of offset the impact either in the near or longer term, and so something that we're watching closely. And I'd say that at the end of the day, the biggest component right now that we're really focused on more than anything else is the impact that we're seeing and sort of the growing pressures that we're feeling in inbound transportation. And…

The next question is from Simeon Siegel with BMO Capital Markets.

Jeremy, can you talk about the supply chain from the other side, so maybe the impact on revenue, if there is any? How do you think about supply constraints versus demand? You highlighted marketing, maybe speak to the way you approach transactional marketing versus brand building? And then Dom, just to kind of circle back on that point you just brought up, any way to quantify the transitory costs that you think you would see? Yes.

Sure. So Simeon, first of all, on the supply side, I would say we are at a reasonably good position for the first time in a long time, certainly since early first quarter of 2020 when the pandemic hit. We've been very, very diligent around expanding capacity within our existing manufacturing facilities in both China and in Vietnam. We've been working very carefully with them, even remotely. We've got an office in Shanghai to manage manufacturing, but also a team here that interacts daily with these facilities to drive efficient production and high utilization rates. And so we made a strategic decision over a year ago, number one, to increase capacity; number two, to start to carry more inventory as we got caught up. And so we're finally -- it's taken time to both add the capacity and to feel the impact of more production coming off the line. But I would say in the quarter, we're feeling like we're not leaving much demand on the table. We did a little bit in the second quarter, but we feel like we're caught up now. And so my expectation is that in steady state -- steady state is -- in this environment, that may be a bold prediction. But even in this environment that we have the mechanisms and the processes in place to keep supply running smoothly. Dom described some of the things that we're doing in terms of running at high utilization rates, increasing the safety stock in the U.S., in our multiple DCs, increasing safety stock in Asia and bringing it over as cost effectively as we can. And so I feel pretty good about where we are in the third quarter and going forward from the supply perspective. So switching to the marketing side, that's an interesting…

Cool. Yes, and I'll jump in. I think first, Simeon, I appreciate the question. I think at this point, we aren't going to provide direct guidance on gross margin in the back half of the year. I think what I will say is that we do expect gross margin pressures in the back half and particularly in Q3, to be fairly outsized relative to where we were trending in Q2. And I would say that ultimately, this is a gross margin story, which is almost entirely driven by the macro inflationary pressures, which we believe are transitory -- and EBITDA is reflecting that even though we continue to see strong demand on top line and certainly the right controls in spend, as well as conviction in where we need to continue to invest to drive growth in the brand. I think that the other point here that I would make is although there may be a lag to some of the strategies that we're implementing to offset these pressures, that the price increases is an important one that will ultimately influence the later half of H2 in terms of offsetting these growing macro pressures. And we're also exploring a few other avenues, which we believe could be meaningful levers to further offset these pressures. And so I think at this point, we just don't have enough visibility aside from what we know today to communicate anything on gross margin other than it is a growing pressure in the business. But certainly, that's really the main theme as we think about performance for full year.

The next question is from Peter Keith with Piper Sandler.

Thanks. Good afternoon, everyone. Congrats on your first quarter out of the gate here. Dom, maybe just to follow up. When you talk about exploring other avenues to offset pressures, I know you have commented on pricing potentially coming down the pike in Q4 with an increase -- are you at a point now where you think you've finalized that? Or conversely, maybe just to provide perspective, do you have a sense on maybe how much the grill market has increased in price with some of your main competitors.

Yes, sure. So we have finalized that. We feel really, really good about where we landed on our strategy, and it has been communicated. And so that will take effect and be fully realized in Q4. So that's a great win, and kudos to our sales team for executing on that and obviously, great partners in ensuring that we're aligned on that strategy. In terms of competition, yes, we don't know exactly what their -- the internal makings of their strategy is, but we are seeing price increases from our competitors, both our larger and smaller competitors. And so they're clearly feeling some of the same pain points that we are in terms of inflationary pressures, inbound transportation costs, et cetera, and are addressing this through price increases as well

The next question is from Sharon Zackfia with William Blair.

I guess to follow up on that comment on your pricing philosophy. Given that a lot of what you are seeing appears to be transitory or thought to be transitory, how did you land on that number? I mean, are you seeking to offset 1/3, 1/2, 3/4? I mean how much of the pressure are you looking to offset there? And just to clarify as well, are all of your suppliers up and running at this point? Or are you facing kind of any shutdowns at all in Asia?

Yes. So great question on pricing philosophy. So we clearly evaluated the pressures that we're feeling and the impact on gross margin. And certainly, that was the guiding force in evaluating a price increase this year. However, we were fairly methodical in our approach to our price increases. And it wasn't set prices at levels to fully offset any headwind that we feel. I think we want to still ensure that we're balanced in our strategy to how we think about pricing, which is why we were very methodical in the analysis that went into which products we were raising price on and ultimately, where we felt we had permission to make certain adjustments on price such that there wasn't a corresponding impact to gross profits as a result of slower volumes across those SKUs. And I think -- the good news is that there is precedent here. And I think we've proven that there is a relative degree of built-in inelasticity in our products, and so there's permission to raise price. But it's fairly complex, and we want to ensure that, that's a balanced approach versus just simply trying to solve for gross margin percent. And so I think that's the first comment I would make. The second comment I would make here is that it's not meant -- it's not set up to fully offset rising pressures that may come as a surprise, which we're certainly seeing in inbound transportation. And so it will be a meaningful component of -- or a meaningful offset to the pressures that we're feeling, but it won't necessarily offset entirely those pressures. However, we are exploring other avenues that may be even more temporary in nature, but where we have permission to make certain adjustments to be slightly more reactive to some of the changing dynamics that we're facing day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month. And that's something that we'll likewise evaluate and potentially execute on in Q4 in addition to the price increase that's going into effect here shortly. Remind me the second question.

Facilities.

Oh, facilities. Yes, yes, we're up and running across all 3 of our main factories in Asia.

The next question is from Peter Benedict with R.W. Baird.

Just -- first, just a clarification. It sounds like you've got visibility into the product flow to kind of support this second half revenue outlook. Is that, Jeremy, what you're trying to kind of imply, I guess, with those comments on you feel good about where you are with inventory? That's my first question.

Yes, we do. Production has been smooth. We like our inventory position. As I said, we're being fairly methodical around how we move inventory from Asia to the U.S., just trying to balance cost as much as possible in this environment, but we feel good about the inventory position. Our expectation is that it will satisfy demand in the back half of the year.

Yes. And just good to hear that the MEATER business seems to be doing well here. I know it's still early with you guys. But -- maybe can you talk a little bit more about your plans to leverage that? What -- is there anything you're going to be able to do to influence kind of the back half of the year? Or is this something -- it's more of a '22 event where we should see maybe MEATER more integrated with the core brand?

There's certainly some activities that could have some -- I would say there's some nominal incremental upside this year. Of course, it's new, and we're really taking the long view on this acquisition. We actually -- we had a partnership with MEATER 18 months ago in integrating their product and their technology into some new innovation that we're launching next year. And so we know the product well. We understand its capability. We like how it fits into not only our brand from an accessory perspective but into our core product line. And so there are already plans in place. Some of those will be leveraging our retail distribution capabilities. That will mostly happen next year. We want to make sure that we're thoughtful around where we launch it, meaning that this is a premium product. It's expensive. It's new innovation that requires merchandising, at the point of sale requires education. And so I would say we are mostly building our strategy for next year and leveraging the right Traeger points of distribution and beginning to connect the brands in the marketplace. But there will be some upside in the fourth quarter, mostly through mostly through e-commerce partners, just given the time to bring it to channel. But we'll also be testing it in some of our sort of premier specialty distribution retailers, just so that we can start to really test and understand what is the right way to scale the go-to-market.

The next question is from Jim Duffy with Stifel.

Jeremy, Dom. Nice work with your first call. I wanted to ask, I know there's no end to the outdoor cooking season. But as we move past Labor Day, are there any metrics you can share about the state of channel inventories? And then can you speak to the mechanics of the channel strategy to manage the pricing transition? Have you seen any pull-forward of orders to get ahead of pricing increases?

Yes. I can jump in. That's a good question on the channel inventory levels. And I would say that compared to where we were in 2020 as we were navigating the pandemic and certainly, the very robust demand and pull-through at point of sale, inventory levels in channel are much improved. And not to say that it's perfect, but we're in a fairly good spot now, and that's really been a very focused effort from the beginning of the year to where we are now to ensure that: one, we are improving in channel inventory levels so that we're not seeing out-of-stocks the way we did last year; and two, to ensure that we remain balanced in how we manage the collaborative planning process with our retail partners, to ensure that they're also not over inventory. We have seen a dynamic, at least earlier in the year, where just given the disruption that COVID has had on product flows, inventory, there has been an appetite for more. And Jeremy mentioned earlier that we are methodically -- or really obsessed with evaluating sell-throughs as well as on-hand levels on a weekly basis. And we have real infrastructure in place to manage that as a partnership with our retail partners. And that also allows us to pull back when we believe that there may be an over appetite for inventory when it's not needed. And so fundamentally, our strategy hasn't changed other than just trying to get to the point where channel -- in channel inventory levels are at the right spot, and we feel like we're in a pretty good position there. And I think the second -- on your second question, I would say no, we really haven't seen anything that would indicate behavioral shifts in trying to bring in more inventory prior to the price increase.

The next question is from Joe Feldman with Telsey Advisory Group.

Congrats on the start to being public. I had a question. Can you -- related to the Home Depot, I know you guys have been working on more shop-in-shops and rolling that out. Can you give us an update on where you are with that and the level of upgrades and what you're seeing from those upgrades?

Yes, absolutely. Look, first of all, I would say, Home Depot is the largest grill reseller in the world, and we have a tremendous partnership with them. I think they really value having a differentiated brand that's focused on experience and premium and innovation. And it's -- and they've really been a great partner since earliest days, which I think is phenomenal given the size of their business. It's one of the things that we've been talking about for many years, and I feel like we are making progress. We have certainly pushed Home Depot on how our brand looks at retail. We think it's incredibly important that inventory isn't just sitting there with a price tag on it. But when a consumer approaches our brand, she or he has an experience where they're able to understand that this is a brand that's meaningful. It's not just a grill. It's an experience and all of the components of the digital, the recipes, all of these things are integrated into that experience. I would say early on, as we pushed Home Depot on some of the ways that we wanted to express our brand in retail, there was an alignment. It's taken time for us to really align on what a great representation of the Traeger brand looks like. We've made a lot of progress this year. We've launched about 50 locations of this beautiful premium fixture and brand experience. We've been tracking sell-through. We're seeing a lift in sell-through and there's alignment to begin to roll that out. I expect that next year, we'll see a very significant increase in the number of doors that will have this premium brand experience. What we know is that when a consumer walks into a specialty retailer, and they're greeted by a sales associate who oftentimes knows them by name, they know what they're looking for, they understand the Traeger brand and the attributes of the product. our conversion is really, really high. And we've measured that conversion through various studies that we've done. We know that Home Depot, the traffic is really high and the conversion is really low. And so to some extent, that's frustrating. And to another, we sit down and we view it as an opportunity. And so the way that we speak to a customer is very different at Home Depot than a specialty retailer, because you've got to catch a consumer as they're racing down the aisles. In a less assisted environment, we need to create an environment that's friendly for the brand. And I think we've got a great partnership with Home Depot and a willingness to begin to really invest much more next year than we have in any of the 6 years that we've been in Home Depot.

There are no additional questions waiting at this time. I will now pass it back to Jeremy for closing remarks.

Well, we appreciate -- thank you for listening in. It's exciting for us to announce our first quarter as a public company. We've got an engaged team. We're fired up. We think this is a ton of fun. We appreciate the great questions that have come in. We certainly appreciate our fiduciary obligation to our shareholders and the confidence that you've placed in us as you've recently become owners of Traeger stock. We are incredibly optimistic about the future. We could not be more excited about it. We could not be more confident in it. And we're looking forward to furthering our relationship going forward. So thank you so much. Take care.

That concludes the Traeger Second Quarter Fiscal 2021 earnings conference call. Enjoy the rest of your day.

Thank you.