Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the American Outdoor Brands Corporation Fourth Quarter 2017 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode, and later we will conduct a question-and-answer session and instructions will follow at that time. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I’d now like to introduce your host for today’s conference Ms. Liz Sharp, VP of Investor Relations. Ma’am, you may begin.

Thank you and good afternoon. Our comments today may contain predictions, estimates and other forward-looking statements. Our use of words like anticipate, project, estimate, expect, intend, believe, and other similar expressions is intended to identify those forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements also include statements regarding revenue, earnings per share, non-GAAP earnings per share, fully diluted share count, and tax rate for future periods, our product development, focus, objectives, strategies, and vision, our strategic evolution and organizational development, our market share and market demand for our product, market and inventory conditions related to our products and then our industry in general, and growth opportunities and trends. Our forward-looking statements represent our current judgment about the future and they are subject to various risks and uncertainties. Risk factors and other considerations that could cause our actual results to be materially different, are described in our Securities filings, including our Forms 8-K, 10-K, and 10-Q. You can find those documents, as well as a replay of this call on our website at aob.com. Today’s call contains time-sensitive information that is accurate only as of this time, and we assume no obligation to update any forward-looking statements. Our actual results could differ materially from our statements today. I have a few important items to note with regard to our comments on today’s call. First, we referenced certain non-GAAP financial measures on this call. Our non-GAAP results and guidance exclude intangible expenses related to acquisitions, acquisition-related deal expenses, corporate rebranding expenses, one time insurance recoveries, debt extinguishment cost, and the tax effect related to all of those adjustments. The reconciliations of GAAP financial measures to non-GAAP financial measures whether or not they are discussed on today’s call can be found in today’s Form 8-K filing, as well as today’s earnings press release, which are posted on our website or will be discussed on this call. Also, when we reference EPS, we are always referencing diluted EPS. For detailed information on our results, please refer to our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the quarter and fiscal year ended April 30, 2017. I will now turn the call over to James Debney, President and CEO of American Outdoor Brands.

Thank you, Liz. Good afternoon and thanks everyone for joining us. With me on today’s call is Jeff Buchanan, our Chief Financial Officer. Late during the call, Jeff will provide a recap of our financial performance, as well as our guidance for the first quarter and fiscal year. Fiscal 2017 was a strong year for our company with solid performance taking as ever closer to our vision to be the leading provider of quality products for the shooting, hunting and rugged outdoor enthusiasts. Let me recap on our key accomplishments for the year. We successfully renamed our holding company as American Outdoor Brands Corporation, a name that better represents our growing array of brands and products in the markets for shooting, hunting and rugged outdoor enthusiasts. We introduced exciting and innovative new products across all divisions. From our Firearms division, we introduced the new M&P 2.0 pistol and all major calibers. From our Accessories division, the Caldwell Universal pistol Mag charger. And from our electro-optics division several new Laserguard products and Laserguard Pro light laser models. We established an outdoor recreation division, hired a President for the business and announced our plans to expand our portfolio of consumer brands and products further into the $30 billion plus rugged outdoor market. We acquired Crimson Trace, the industry leader in laser sighting systems for firearms. This acquisition vertically integrated a key OEM supplier and marked our entry into the electro-optics market, providing a platform for both organic and inorganic growth. We acquired the assets of UST and the assets of Taylor Brands significantly growing our Accessories division and expanding our portfolio of well-known consumer brands in the cutlery campaign and survival markets. And lastly, we announced plans to create a distribution center, an important element in enabling us to consolidate our warehousing…

Thanks, James. Revenue for the year was a record $903.2 million, of which $140.7 million was from the Outdoor Products & Accessories Reporting segment, $776.6 million was from the Firearm segment and intercompany eliminations were $14.2 million. Strong consumer interest in firearms early in the year, three acquisitions in outdoor products and accessories, and market share gains in firearms at the end of the year contributed to our record results in fiscal 2017, with total revenue up 24.9% from the prior year.Without considering the current year acquisitions, full-year revenue was organically up 16.7%. Revenue for Q4 was $229.2 million, an increase of 3.6% over the prior year, with firearms at $189.9 million, outdoor products at $44.3 million, and intercompany sales eliminations of $5 million, mostly related to Crimson Trace sales to our firearm business. We exceeded our estimates in Q4, primarily as a result of significant market share gains in firearms, especially in our M&P Shield products. The gross margins were 41.5% for the full-year. Gross margins increased for the year, because higher sales in firearms resulted in greater absorption. Thus, the full-year of firearms gross margin was 40.7%, an improvement of 80 basis points over the prior year. The Outdoor Products & Accessories gross margin was 46.6% for the full-year, but on a non-GAAP basis was 50.2%. The non-GAAP improvement in Outdoor Products over the prior year was due to acquiring businesses with accretive gross margins. For the fourth quarter, gross margins were 39.6%, which is a 2 percentage point drop from the prior year. The reduction was primarily because of the strong promotional activity in firearms, which was somewhat offset by better gross margins in outdoor products related to our acquisitions. Operating expenses for the full-year were 19.4% of revenue compared with 18.7% last year. On a non-GAAP…

Thank you, Jeff. With that, operator, please open up the call for questions from our analysts.

Absolutely. [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Cai von Rumohr of Cowen & Company. Your line is now open.

Yes, thank you very much. So, James, can you tell us, you mentioned the pull forward on the Shield. Can you give us some quantification what percent of – roughly how big was that?

Really difficult to say, Cai. It’s – certainlywe’ve done some analysis and we have a very strong belief. But really because of the uplift that we saw particularly in the M&P Shield volume, it is safe to say that there would have been some pull forward. We ran the promotion April – 1st of April to the end of June. So we had a lot of activity upfront in April, which is obviously the last month of our fourth quarter. And for us, certain retailers really stepping up very strongly to participate much more strongly than we expected in that promotion making sure that they had the inventory to serve the consumer for the full 90 days. Our expectation would have been – that would have been more level, but people really got in early.

Got it. And then so your receivables went up considerably, I think, you’d advised that we expected the inventories to go up. Why did the receivables go up and maybe give us some color in terms of both the inventory and receivables, I assume, you expect them to be down by the end of fiscal 2018, give us some color on those patterns if you would?

Yes, Cai, this is Jeff. The receivables were up for really two reasons. One is, there were more sales in the back-half of the quarter. So this quarter was little bit back-loaded that that always drives higher receivables. And then we did do a lot of a promotional and dating programs in which we gave extended terms. So as I mentioned in the script, the receivables that we typically expect in Q4 are more likely right at the beginning of Q2. And we do expect receivables will come down at that point to what we would call typical levels.

And, Cai, those are the sort of activities that you have to deploy to make sure that you’re maintaining market share, and if you can increasing your market share when you’re in such soft environment, it’s very important that you’re sort of first either by wholesaler or retailer.

Okay. And are you worried about receivables that basically some of them are given what’s happed to the retail chain might be more difficult to collect?

No, we have a – there’s two things we do with respect to receivables. One, we do have a receivable insurance program. Second, when we do these kind of extended promotions, we only do it with companies that have solid financials. I mean, like you’ll note that with the Gander Mountain bankruptcy, we had driven down our receivables and ended up with a loss of only a little over a $1 million. Even though their typical receivable balance probably would have been around $3 million to $4 million. So we’re very cautious on that, and I have to say that, I’m fairly confident about the receivables.

Got it. And you said, they should be down, I didn’t quite catch. Do they go down just in the second-half and the inventory I assume stays relatively high in the first-half and then in the second-half it mitigates. But do the receivables really go down over the year? And then what sort of DSO should we expect it by end of the year?

Yes, I think the receivables will go by the end of Q2 it would be down as I would say the typical that they’ll be under 30 days. And then once they’re down, we don’t expect that they’ll rise back up. With respect to inventory, we have said that we expect inventories will rise through the year in quarter one, two and then begin to back ease off a bit in Q3 and four. A lot of that inventory rise is due to the loading, the manufacture and loading of new – our new product introductions. So we typically build a lot here. And then before we push it out into the channel, we’d like to push that all once, so there’s no leak of the new products. So, yes, basically, we – it’s kind of a bell curve on inventory this year.

Got it. So, I mean, you’d mentioned the strong cash flow in the second-half. What are we looking for? I mean, as I kind of pencil it and it looks like, over $130 million free cash flow, cash flow from ops minus CapEx, is that a realistic type of target?

No. I’m kind of – we’re not going to get into – that we don’t forecast our cash flow. So, I won’t say whether that’s reasonable or not, but I just – I’ll continue to say that we expect strong cash flow in three and four.

Okay. And just last one, how come not in a second if the receivables are going to come down to under 30 days? I would think that that would be a major plus?

Because in Q2, there’s a significant inventory build, because that is the critical point of a lot of our new product introductions. So we were like we will be really ramping inventory in Q2.

Wonderful. Thank you so much.

And also we have the shutdown at the end of Q1 first quarter of Q2. And that two-week of shutdown always causes a bit of a hole in Q2.

Great. Thank you very much.

Thanks, Scott.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Greg Konrad of Jefferies. Your line is open.

Good evening.

Hi.

I just was hoping to touch on outdoor products. I mean, most of your comments are on the promotional environment were in firearms. Have you seen any change kind of the overall promotional environment within outdoor products?

From our perspective, that’s been pretty quiet. Obviously, I mentioned in the prepared remarks, we find ourselves relatively flat. The market is, of course, under pressure with the store closures. I referenced a lot of bricks-and-mortars under pressure there. So that obviously does not help down the mountains going through a liquidation process, so there’s some headwinds there. So for us sometimes, we’re thinking about the business right now. As I said, we think a relatively good result, given some of the headwinds there. We’ll promote when necessary in the outdoor side of the business as well. We certainly have healthy margins that we can afford to spend back a couple of points, if necessary.

Thanks. And then it seem like in terms of the promotions that you ran in April and May, it was more of the big box retailers stepping up and you mentioned that the wholesaler inventory is still high. I mean, has there been a big shift between the help of those two markets more the retailers versus the more independent players?

Not at all, and I’d just say, yes. There were the larger retailers, such as Cabela’s who did participate strongly in our promotional activity. But there are also the two buy groups, certain members of those buy groups also participated very strongly. Both members are the independence. So those are bricks-and-mortar independence. So it’s really a balance.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question is from the line of Scott Stember of C.L. King. Your line is open.

Good evening.

Hi, Scott.

Can you maybe talk about the mechanics of the rebates whether there’ll be any more of that flow through into the first quarter. It’s my understanding that, obviously, as you said, this is a very popular promotion. I imagine, there’s still a lot of rebates that have yet to go out? Were those are quarter all in the fourth quarter and how much would be in the second quarter? I guess the reason that [ph] ran through June, correct?

Right. Well, the promotion ran – well, I’ll start by saying that on rebates you accrue them at the time the sale occurs with an estimation of what you think the – like the rebates going to be. But the promotion ran like through June. So, yes, there will be an impact in Q1 on rebate expenses actually impact on the gross margin.

Got it. And James, you had talked about on the handgun side. I think, you said the industry NICS in the quarter were up 4%-plus, you guys are up 4%-plus, so you’re taking share there. Could you give us same statistics for the long guns?

Much noisier there, I would say. And as a reminder, we really only participate in long guns with a modern sporting rifle. And I will say, I’m typically – we do say it every quarter, it’s our belief. As we look at our market share analytics there, we remain the market leader for modern sporting rifle. So we have a very successful product, the M&P 15 SPORT II and really continues to lead the way, so comfortable there. But I will add like other firearm categories. Modern sporting rifles was one in Q4 that was under pressure. And I think, it’s safe to say that everybody should assume that that will continue.

Got it. And maybe just last question on NICS and any assumption that you have within your guidance, where you see the market? I know, you said you expect things to in the back-half of the year, notably in the fourth quarter to – in the third quarter to pick back up. But just your sense of what NICS will possibly do over the next six to nine months just high level?

Yes, we do have a lot of analytics around, not a lot of predictive work on, where we say adjusted NICS is going. It’s part of our process to build guidance. We just don’t disclose what those assumptions are. I will say, as you look back prior year, what we see ahead, as you think about June, July, August, a very likely in a normalized environment, both consumers, which is an absence of fair-based buying, you’re going to see negative comps for adjusted NICS. We all know why, because there was some fair-based buying in those months a year ago. So, that as much color as I can give, bit of an obvious statement.

Got it. Thanks. That’s all I have. Thanks so much.

Thanks.

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our next question is from the line of Steve Dyer of Craig-Hallum Capital. Your line is open.

Good morning. It’s actually Greg Palm on for Steve Dyer.

Hi, Greg.

Ask maybe a little bit different way on the NICS, from our standpoint, at least, firearms demand as measured by NICS has held up relatively better. And curious, if your – because your guidance assume anything different from kind of what we’ve seen year-to-date. So does that assume consistency with what we’ve see an uptick or downturn, can you give us any color now?

This is Jeff. Again, I don’t think we can like say anything more than what James said. We – which you basically said, it’s certainly going to be down over like last year. The last year was definitely aberration. But if you look at the graph of NICS, I mean, we expected just a follow with typical seasonal pattern last year did not. But this year if that’s what we expect.

Okay.

Yes, the only thing I’d add is, I mean, the difference as you compare to prior year, and I’m talking about our fourth quarter is obviously the level of promotions going on. It’s a pretty promotionally intense environment right now. What is really difficult to understand is how much is that helping NICS – adjusted NICS, okay, versus the prior year. We just don’t know, it’s tough to understand a lot of noise out there.

Okay. Fair enough. Moving on, if I heard you right, it sounds like accessories revenue on an organic basis was flat in Q4. I guess, can you comment on your expectations there for fiscal year 2018 for that segment specifically on an organic basis?

No, actually, we don’t give guidance by some segments, so I’m sorry about that.

Okay.

Actually, I think I will make a statement of the obvious and that is, we did three acquisitions in the last year in the middle of the year. So certainly accessories’ revenue is going to be up over last year just because we have a full-year of accessories’ revenue.

Okay. I mean, how would you characterize the competitive/promotional environment in that segment compared to firearms right now?

As James like mentioned earlier, it’s not as promotional environment, it’s just under a lot of pressure from store closings, et cetera. So if you just want to do it on a comparative basis, it’s definitely not as promotional as firearms. But there are – it’s got higher gross margins, and so we certainly have the gross margin bandwidth to participate in any of promotional activity that we have to do to maintain or grow market share.

Gotcha. And then just lastly, I guess, as it relates specifically to the acquisitions you made, how did it perform compared to your internal expert – expectations? I mean, what worked? What didn’t? Does it make you more or less aggressive maybe in your desire to grow on an organic basis this year? And then maybe any update on sort of how the environment is now versus maybe three or four months ago?

Right. I think in general, they’re definitely in line with our expectations maybe a little soft at the top, but basically like meeting our EBITDA expectations.

And in terms of maybe the pipeline?

The pipeline is tough right now, because the sellers want in many instances more than we’re willing to pay. So there’s a little bit of buyer seller gap right now. There recently was a sale of a company at very high EBITDA multiple, yes, something that we would never like consider paying. So, we continue to focus on small companies that we have a relationship with and that the acquisition is good for the seller for various reasons and good for us and meets our hurdle rate, which has to be higher than our WACC. So it’s – as long as the interest rates stay down, there’s a lot of money on the side in DE firms. It’s probably going to continue to be a challenging environment to find good acquisitions.

Okay. Thanks for the color and good luck.

Thank you.

Thank You. Our next question comes from the line of Chris Krueger of Lake Street Capital Markets. Your line is open.

Hi, good afternoon.

Hi, how you’re doing?

Hi, good. I just have one question, all my others have been answered. This is really more of a not really about the near-term environment, but more of a big picture question. A lot of brick-and-mortar retailers have been losing share to Amazon and Amazon is entering new markets. And just wonder what your thoughts are overall on Amazon. Do they benefit your outdoor products business as it neutral to your business, or what do you think of that looking on for years?

Amazon for us is a strategically important customer. So we pay particular attention to them, obviously, more important to us in terms of our non-firearm products, given as you know, firearms serializing can only be sold through a federal firearms licensee. So for the rest of the business and where we’re looking to grow in the rugged outdoors, yes, absolutely, Amazon is a very important account and it’s an account that we focus on. And so we continue to learn more about how to optimize the placement and positioning of our products with Amazon. So that the consumer finds it easy to discover on Amazon and we’re incredibly focused on the reviews of our products as well. So our products and brands are attractive to the consumer when they’re shopping on with an Internet retailer, such as Amazon.

All right. Very good. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Ronald Bookbinder of Coker & Palmer. Your line is open.

Good afternoon and…

Hi, Ron.

.:

I think that would have to be several years ago, but..

Ron, we’ll have to get back to you, I think, Ron.

Perhaps I feel that one.

Yes.

Yes, I’m looking at a table here and it looks like you’ve exceeded as 20 quarters, and the two that you didn’t exceed you met the high-end of your guidance change.

Yes, I don’t break up, Ron…

So, Ron, you already knew the answer.

Yes, I did…

That’s a [Multiple Speakers]

It just seems like you’re being overly conservative in your guidance, given this is a five-year pattern of 20 straight quarters. So the NICS for the first two months of the quarter, it’s been positive yet you’re guiding revenue down 30% and that’s despite the addition of some additional revenue from acquisitions in the Accessories segment. Are you planning on losing market share in this quarter, you’ve done a such a great job of taking market share. Do you think the environment is so promotional that you could end up losing market share this in Q1?

It’s always a possibility, Ron. But I think, we’ve proven, we’ve been very successful both with leveraging our existing product portfolio, our new product introductions on our most recent promotional activity taking market share. And as I said, we’re always well-positioned to strongly participate in such an environment, where promotional spending is required. So we’re here, we have the same promotions continuing to run in, it’s last couple of days right now. Yes, NICS has been holding up, adjusted NICS has been holding versus prior year. That as I said earlier, it’s tough to understand how much of that is due to some of the intense promotional activity that’s going on at retail right now. But don’t forget the dimension of inventory that’s out there, okay. So there are still ample, let’s say, inventory out there. Some product types are way worth than others and that have to work its way through. And you think about we are going through the summer slowdown. Right now, we’ve got to really wait until the fall to understand how strongly that consumer returns to the retailer and their appetite for firearm buying firearms. So that’s really where we find ourselves right now.

Okay. And Ron, this is Jeff. I want to add one quick comment about – your question about the guidance in Q1 been conservative. I would point out that this call is way later than is typical in a typical quarterly call. So we’re almost like two months done. So oftentimes a lot of the conservative is caused by just waiting for orders to come in, et cetera, when you’re a long ways away from the end of the quarter.

And on the pull forward, why do you think you didn’t create a product that was so good that it expanded the market and created new demand for the Shield versus just pulling forward sort of an existing static market for that product?

We have – I have to be honest, Ron, we just have – don’t have the data to be able to support any type of thought along that path. We just don’t know. So I have to plead ignorance, I’m afraid. That data is extremely difficult to come by. There’s no doubt, as we go through the next six or nine months, we’ll be in a better position to understand what really happened as we continue to do our consumer research. But, as I say, it’s a very noisy environment right now. As you throw everything in that bucket with the way the consumer is shopping, looking for attractive pricing, participating in promotions, retailers cautious because of the inventory that they have is tying up, they are open to buy dollars, manufacturers clamoring to maintain distribution and prevent their loss. So it’s a tough environment for manufacturers. But I go back and on the bright side, we’ve always been well-positioned, as you think about how we protect ourselves with our outsourcing strategy. We always want to fully optimize our internal assets here in the plants. We don’t want to idle anything and have an absorption issue. Top tier brands, iconic brands, Smith & Wesson, M&P, which has done an amazing job of entrenching itself over the last five to seven years to become one of the top brands, our biggest brands for sure and fantastic success of products under the M&P brand umbrella as well, all position us really strongly to participate. But you just got to go back to those fundamentals that we face now of, it appears to be a soft market, there’s inventory out there, and it’s highly competitive promotionally driven.

Okay. And just lastly, on Amazon. As they build out their brick-and-mortar environment, do you think they could get licensed, such that people could go to the brick-and-mortar outlet and fill out the FBI paperwork and buy firearms through Amazon?

I really don’t know. I would hesitate to comment on what Amazon strategy is with regards to bricks-and-mortar. I think that’s a wait and see.

Okay. Thank you very much and good luck in the New Year.

Thanks, Ron.

Our next question comes from the line of James Hardiman of Wedbush Securities. Your line is open.

Hi, this is Sean Wagner on for James Hardiman. Kind of going to your last point, on the heightened promotional environment, the heightened channel inventories, any idea of kind of maybe based on history, or where you feel we are at now? What inning we are in? How long we have to go to, so we’re kind of in a more normalized environment until maybe you’re within your eight weeks threshold that you’re comfortable with? I know you talked about late fall some of that channel inventory coming down and then the promotional atmosphere still being heightened in Q1 and Q2. Is there any just kind of high-level expectation for how long this might last?

Nothing beyond what you’ve already described, I think you did a great job. And also what I said in the prepared remarks is it’s that four to five months period. And as I said earlier, we really will know a lot more once we get into September and October when we’re looking to understand the strength of consumer foot traffic with firearms retailers and their appetites just whether it’s the firearm itself or an accessory. That’s one of the advantages we have is that, we’re not only the firearms manufacturer and marketer. We’re also an accessories business as well. So very well-positioned we feel.

Okay. And just my second question, any color you can give us on kind of the initial reception to the M&P 2.0?

Very encouraging, very well received. There’s a great deal of editorials if you’ve got a sample. A lot of firearms-related publications, you will see the M&P 2.0 full size on the front page and some very good editorial, a lot of very favorable and positive comments about it. So, we’re very happy. As we’ve said, it’s a new platform for us. Next generation, we have the M&P 1.0, as we now refer to it for a decade. So it was ready for an upgrade. So here we are with 2.0 new platform and ready to start building out that family. A lot of work to be done there, a lot of great work by engineering and marketing combined.

Okay, great. Thanks for taking my questions.

Thank you. Thank you. And at this time, I’m showing no further questions. I’d like to turn the call back over to Mr. James Debney for any closing remarks.

Thank you, operator. Please note that we’ll be attending the C.L. King Conference in New York City on September 14, and I hope to see some of you there. I want to thank everybody across American Outdoor Brands for their dedication to excellence and their contribution towards delivering an outstanding performance in 2017. Thank you, everybody, for joining us, and we look forward to speaking with you next quarter.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your participation in today’s conference. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect. Everybody have a great day.