Q2 2023 Funko Inc Earnings Call
Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon, and welcome to the Sun Coast and had free second quarter financial results Conference call.
At this time all participants are in a listen only mode. Later, we will conduct a question and answer session and instructions will follow at that time.
Please be advised that production of this call in whole or in part is not permitted without authorization from the company. As a reminder, this call is being recorded.
I will now turn the call over to phone calls and you had an investor relations Rob Jeffrey. Please proceed.
Hello, everyone and thank you for joining us today to discuss <unk> 2023 second quarter financial results.
On the call are Mike Lunsford, our recently appointed interim Chief Executive Officer, and Steve nave, the Companys, Chief Financial Officer, and Chief operating Officer.
This call is being broadcast live at Investor Docs, Unco Dot com, a playback will be available for at least one year on the company's website.
I want to remind everyone that during the course of this call management's discussion will include forward looking information.
These statements represent our best judgment about the company's future results and performance as of today.
Our actual results are subject to many risks and uncertainties that may differ materially from those stated or implied including those discussed in our earnings release.
Additional information concerning factors that could cause actual results to differ materially is contained in our most recent SEC reports.
In addition, during the course of this call we refer to non-GAAP financial measures that are not prepared in accordance with U S. Generally accepted accounting principles and may be different from non-GAAP financial measures used by other companies.
Investors are encouraged to review <unk> press release announcing its 2023 second quarter financial results.
The company's reasons for presenting non-GAAP financial measures.
A reconciliation of the non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures is also attached to the company's earnings press release issued earlier today.
I will now turn the call over to Steve.
Thanks, Rob and welcome to <unk>.
Good afternoon, everybody and thanks for joining us today.
In the second quarter net sales were $240 million and adjusted EBITDA was a loss of approximately eight years.
Both metrics were within the guidance ranges. We previously provided for this quarter are.
Our second quarter performance was impacted by ongoing inventory destocking by our larger wholesale customers. We anticipate this softness will continue in the second half of the year.
Accordingly, we have lowered our full year guidance I will discuss guidance in more detail later in the call.
With that brief overview I'd like to introduce everyone to Mike <unk> to give you more color Mike.
Mike was recently named interim CEO . He is an experienced CEO and has served as interim CEO for two other public companies.
He's been a member of <unk> Board for the last five years. So he is very familiar with the company its operations and its challenges Mike go ahead.
Good afternoon, everyone.
As Steve just said I was recently appointed interim CEO upon Brian's departure from the role.
Brian remains actively engaged as both a member of the company's board and his phone goes greatest evangelists.
As currently taking some time away from the day to day to Reenergize.
We plan to launch the search for a permanent CEO this quarter.
The board with help from an executive recruiting firm.
Dr. A thorough search, including both internal and external candidates.
As for me I Love Funko, and a benefit out of the company brand and team for years and I'm excited for the opportunity to lead the transition we are not in a holding period.
<unk> from the board to quickly reshape funko to regain its nimbleness to return to growth and to be meaningfully more profitable.
I'm highly confident we will do all three in short order.
I am very familiar with the talented senior leadership team from my five years on the board and this familiarity has allowed us to rapidly reset our strategy for achieving long term profitable growth.
<unk> already started to execute that strategy.
For <unk> the foundation of any strategy must start with the brand and our fans who count on us to deliver fun pop culture products that serve as avatars memories art.
And most importantly identity.
Very few brands have such a deep connection with the customer's identity as we did.
It is an honor and one that we must constantly strive to earn and maintain.
Delight them, while running an efficient business underneath and we believe there is no end to the upside and phone calls.
Despite the expected second half retail softness that Steve called out earlier, we believe our brand is as strong as ever.
We say this based on the strength of sales of our E Commerce site up 19% year over year and.
And in our retail stores up 10% year over year.
And the enthusiasm of our customers and fans, we witnessed at San Diego comic Con.
Our phone co fund days event two weeks ago.
E Commerce revenue generated from San Diego comic Con product releases.
More than 50% versus last year and drove our biggest week ever of E Commerce sales.
I'll also add that at the event, we soft launched the next generation of pop yourself.
Which generated tremendous buzz.
We expect to launch the product later this month on our E Commerce site, which.
Which will enable millions of fans and customers to pop themselves.
But a strong brand isn't enough or.
Our fans and our partners demand that we be quick to market.
Responsive to rapidly changing pop culture.
Nimble and creative in our product designs and operationally excellent.
Over the past two years, we lost sight of the importance of these competencies.
And as a result, a number of product lines and Skus that we have produced has grown rapidly bring.
Bringing too much complexity to the business with too little return.
We believe that the best path forward for Funko is to focus our energy on fewer product lines and fewer skus.
Using a data driven and strategically informed approach we are taking out products that were not adding significantly to the top line.
And not helping the bottom line.
Our plan is to reduce our product lines by 30 plus percent and our skus by a similar amount.
This simplification and focus will result in a leaner company, which is the driving factor behind the reduction in workforce that we enacted last week.
This new more focused approach does not mean, we will stop innovating. It does mean that we will put more effort behind key value driving initiatives and choose those initiatives using hard data and thoughtful planning.
Our new pop yourself as a great example.
It is a logical brand extension and one that Leverages our D to C channel first which is an environment we can control.
Over the longer run we expect that the product will add licensed content for accessorizing and that will create a new wholesale opportunity at brand specific locations.
It is a return to the basic flywheel that powers, our business delight, our fans go back to the license holders with new opportunities.
Then bring new content to our wholesale partners and further delight our fans to.
To keep the flywheel spinning we're returning to our roots as a fast moving entrepreneurial disruptor that knows the dollars we spend must perform.
This strategy and approach will inform everything we do going forward.
By focusing on our fans and our unmatched brand by.
By running the business like our lean startup rejecting complexity.
By focusing on fewer products done extremely well.
By investing in areas, we can control measure and grow profitably and that are central to our strategically aligned with our most productive businesses and by keeping the flywheel turning.
What does all this mean from a financial viewpoint.
While we are not yet prepared to provide a formal outlook for next year I will share a few of the quantifiable reasons. We are optimistic about our strategy and the moves we have made and will continue to make as we reshape the company.
First we anticipate a return to more normalized purchasing levels by our wholesale customers once inventories are right sized.
Second we expect to see a meaningful benefit to our gross margins from the annualized <unk> of price increases.
<unk> cost savings and normalized freight costs.
Third we will see the full annualized benefit of the operational improvements and cost reductions we have been implementing throughout this year.
And finally the strategy, we are pursuing to focus on generating additional revenues from our more profitable business lines will for the most part the implemented by year end.
With that I'll turn the call back over to Steve to cover our detailed financial results and guidance.
Thanks, Mike before diving into the financials I'd like to update you on the progress we've made on the first round of operational improvements and cost reductions that we put in place earlier, this year, which will generate annualized cost savings of between 155 and $185 million.
Some of the major elements of that plan included a significant reduction of inventory earlier in the year, which helped us eliminate certain storage costs and improve the efficiency of our primary U S distribution center.
The completion of a 10% workforce reduction in April the.
The renegotiation of key freight and logistics contracts across our supply chain and numerous operational changes to reduce our fulfillment cost per unit.
We also went live last month with our new temporary warehouse management system, which is a key component of our efforts to drive financial efficiencies and our primary U S distribution center.
By the way this was a herculean cross functional effort, so I'd like to take a second to recognize all the <unk> out there who are involved in this complicated systems implementation.
Turning to our Q2 financial results net sales were $240 million, which included wholesale channel sales of $205 million and direct to consumer sales, which include sales from our e-commerce sites.
And our three retail stores of $39 $5 million.
Gross margin was 29, 2%, which was below our expectations. This was primarily driven by two factors one the mix of our sales for the quarter included a higher than anticipated percentage of inventory that was received back when freight costs were much higher resulting in higher amortization.
<unk> of capitalized inbound freight costs than we expected.
Two customer order cancellations during the quarter resulted in a formulaic increase in our inventory obsolescence reserve.
SG&A expenses were $85 6 million, which was significantly better than we expected and an improvement of $14 4 million over the preceding quarter driven by efficiencies in our distribution centers and very tight expense control.
Adjusted net loss was $22 3 million equal to <unk> 43 per share, which was within our guidance range for the quarter.
And finally, adjusted EBITDA was a loss of $7 6 million also within the guidance.
I also want to note that in the second quarter due to a technical accounting requirement, we established a full valuation allowance against the company's deferred tax asset of $138 1 million offset by an adjustment to our tax receivable agreement liability of $99 6 million.
The net effect of which was a noncash charge of $38 5 million.
This charge does not affect adjusted EBITDA and despite the technical accounting requirement to record the impairment of our deferred tax asset. We believe we will be able to utilize the deferred tax asset in the future.
Turning to our balance sheet at the end of the quarter cash and cash equivalents totaled $36 8 million.
Total debt was approximately $305 million. This includes the amount outstanding under the company's term loan facility net of unamortized discounts revolving line of credit and our equipment finance loan.
Inventory was $187 3 million, which was down significantly from $246 4 million at December 31 of last year and down slightly from $191 6 million at the end of the first quarter.
As Mike discussed we are rationalizing our product lines to better focus on the products and businesses that are most productive for us.
Prove our inventory management and drive further efficiencies throughout the organization.
As a result of this sharper more deliberate focus we implemented an additional reduction in our workforce last week.
Second larger workforce reduction affected approximately 180 positions.
Which corresponds to a 17% reduction of our non variable workforce.
Annualized cost savings related to this second workforce reduction is approximately $20 million.
Combined with the earlier workforce reduction we've now reduced our non variable workforce. This year by 23%, resulting in total annualized cost savings of approximately $30 million in.
In addition to the $20 million in savings from last week's workforce reduction we've identified another $18 million in non head count related annualized cost savings for a total of approximately $38 million of annualized cost savings.
Related to the most recent workforce reduction, we expect to record nonrecurring severance and related charges of approximately $2 million in the third quarter.
Cost savings related to the product rationalization are expected to occur gradually over time.
It is important to point out that we are being strategic and deliberate with where and how we've cut costs. Our plan is to continue to invest in product development, just with more focus and financial discipline.
Turning to our outlook for the full year, we have lowered our guidance and now expect net sales of between 1.05 billion and $1, one 2 billion down.
Down from our previous guidance of $1 $1 9 billion to $1 6 billion and.
And adjusted EBITDA of between $20 million and $30 million.
Down from 65 million to $75 million driven by the drop in sales, partially offset by further expense reductions.
For the third quarter, we expect to see a much improved overall financial performance compared to the second quarter. Our expectation is based on among other things historically higher sales in the holiday season, combined with the positive impact of the cost reductions and operational improvements we have implemented.
Our outlook for the third quarter is as follows.
Net sales of between $280 million and $310 million.
Gross margin increasing meaningfully from Q2.
SG&A as a percent of net sales improving sequentially from the second quarter as well adjusted.
Adjusted net loss of $5 million.
Four tenths of a share.
$1 million or <unk> a share.
Finally, we expect adjusted EBITDA of between $14 million and $19 million.
That's it from me Mike back to you.
In closing and a challenging retail environment. We believe we are taking the correct actions to navigate the near term challenges and also set ourselves up for profitable long term growth.
We are early in the re factoring process, but we believe our financial performance next year will be significantly better than in 2023.
The actions, we have taken and continue to take strengthen our business and lay the foundation for a more profitable future.
I will now turn it over to the operator for Q&A.
Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question. Please press star followed by one on path on key Pat now.
When comparing to ask your question. Please ensure your mute locally.
We have our first question comes from Linda Bolton Weiser from D. A Davidson your.
Your line is now open.
Yes Hello.
All right.
I guess my first.
First question is about your.
Kind of performance of retail and we've had a lot of the toy companies and other durable goods companies have said that they're done with their inventory reduction at retail like things are in much better shape.
I'm wondering what's the difference for you and how is your Pos trending in brick and mortar like Walmart and target versus like your own stores like why is the Pos seemingly so different.
Yeah.
Hey, Linda Steve.
Good to hear from you.
On your on your first question, what I would say and I don't want to get too excited about this yet as we are starting to see a little bit of a shift. So we're starting to see some of the bigger replenishment orders that we would have expected.
From some of our larger retail partners, but I Wouldnt I don't want to look at that and say that's a trend yet because it's literally just starting to happen probably over the last 30 days or so.
So that gives us quite a bit of optimism, but what I would tell you is we're planning the back half of the year from an inventory perspective, a little bit different than what we've done in the past what we've done in the past as we've always wanted to make sure that we were in stock for our retail partners and this time around we're willing to let a little bit of sales.
Do you have a little bit of sales on the table if things really rebound.
So that we don't end up in another inventory position like we were at the end of last year. So.
We've actually adjusted our buys accordingly based on what our what our new projections are for the back half of the year. So it's a little bit I mean, we will always have the ability to chase some inventory, but it's kind of for us. It's a little bit said I don't want to say set in stone.
We've deliberately managed our new buys for the back half of the year down.
Which means at some point conceivably.
We might not have enough inventory to meet demand if it really does rebound, but again, it's early in that process.
But it is what we are seeing just over the last probably 30 days has been pretty encouraging on the pls side.
We're continuing to see.
POS data and just a reminder to everybody Linda I know you know this but a reminder for everybody. We don't we don't have Pos data for everybody, but we do for the big retail partners we.
We don't have them for specialty partners, which are a good chunk of our business, but on the bigger retail partner side.
Our sell through is better than our sell in just like it's been pretty much all year.
But it's also we're also seeing sell through start to go up a little bit more.
So.
The difference between.
What's going on with our own with our wholesale retail partners versus our own retail stores.
Is literally that these guys are just managing their inventories down we do think we saw some releases for some other some other toy related companies recently, all seemed very encouraging about what theyre seeing.
Just.
We're trying to be conservative and practical it's just too early for us to kind of make that debt.
Okay. Thank you that's very helpful.
Can I also ask.
About yes.
And the plans there.
I'm trying to understand are you going to like utilized fewer life happens HBO and so instead of having like 900 active licenses in a period, maybe it's going to be.
Thanks, Andre there was something is it that or is it more that youre going to just sort of give us the number of different items under each property that youre that youre marketing.
It's much more of the latter not the former.
I'll give you. An example, like we have like Marvel licenses do really really well for us, but we've expanded those products under that license to include key chains, and landlords and things like that and so I'm not I'm not.
I am not officially saying that we're getting out of those specific skus, but those are the kinds of things. We're looking at to cut back on so it's not a licensing cut back its more product cutbacks.
Yes that makes sense.
And you made it sound like the thing that we're being caught in that when we get into the top line, but nevertheless, I would think there'd be some sales.
<unk>.
Lessening strengthens of sales because of the reduction in Skus do you have any estimate what that could be.
I think that would be very small it is certainly included in the forecast that we've or the guidance that we've provided here.
The large majority of our revenue comes from a very small number of product lines and skus and those are being impacted and the shelf space that gets freed up by.
Eliminating some of these more tertiary product lines will actually I think drive volume and these more core.
<unk>.
Okay.
Can I ask about.
Sure.
Yes cash flow it actually was really good in the quarter. I mean, you had positive operating cash flow from what I can tell and so that is really good and you mentioned there will be $2 million of severance expense coming but is there anything unusual in the cash flows in a quarter that would not be repeatable I think.
Usually positive that won't repeat itself.
I don't know there are no real one time benefits to cash flow in the quarter I think what Youre seeing is the result of.
Better inventory management.
That's a big part of it and.
We've had we've had.
Started to get better at collections.
So I think part of that is managing our aging better.
And making sure that we get all the payments and on time, just following up with customers and things like that.
And a little bit of a different way than we used to so I think it's a little bit of that which all tells me. It's sustainable it's not one time and then we're going to continue to be able to to.
To be better at working capital management.
And can you just clarify on the SG&A guidance for third quarter.
Will be improved sequentially as a ratio or in dollar amounts it will be lower.
Is it.
Yes, good question so.
What we guided was a percent of sales.
The reality is.
What happened there is a big chunk of the payroll that is variable labor.
And as the volume increases so even though we brought our guidance down we will see sequential improvement in the top line.
The third and fourth quarter and so the variable labor specifically in our distribution centers starts to go up to handle that volume.
So.
It will.
Essentially it wouldn't be unreasonable to assume that our SG&A and just dollars is going to go up in the third quarter versus the second but I can also tell you the big driver of that like I mentioned is the variable labor in our warehouses and cost per unit is going down.
So it's the fact that it's going to go up in dollars is not alarming to us at all because we're managing it as a percent of sales in our fulfillment cost per unit, both of which are improving.
And my final question is.
Actually you are really kind of bullish about getting EBITDA margin back to a double digit level in the fourth quarter.
And with the lower guidance.
Just wondering.
At the pace of recovery or normalization of margins. So do you see that normalization is going to be more fully achieved in 2020 for like getting to a double digit EBITDA margin is that something you can comment on.
I don't I don't really want to get into specifics about next year, just because we haven't done the work yet to really put a fine point on it but.
The theme that you just spoke of its going to absolutely be true youre going to see the margin rate continue.
To improve third quarter fourth quarter into next year.
So yes, we'll continue to see sequential improvement there, but also keep in mind there are components of our margin and it's I know, it's the probably the most frustrating topic, which is the <unk> the amortization of our capitalized inbound freight.
That's going to take some time to fully bleed through to get all of those products that came in at those much higher inbound freight costs to get those bled through the system. So that then we're only amortizing like the new normalized rates that we started to see earlier in the year.
Okay. Thank you that's it for me.
Thanks, a lot thanks Linda.
Thank you Linda.
As a reminder, ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask any further question. Please press star one on telephone keypad now.
With our next question comes from entire stopping them from Goldman Sachs and Paris. Your line is now open.
Your line is now open.
Operator, let's move on to the next one in case, he has got to mute problem or whatever.
And we'll go back to them.
As a further reminder, ladies and gentlemen, if you have any further question. Please press star followed by one on tackling Keith that now.
And Paris Your line is now open.
Okay.
Hey, sorry, this is actually Steven I think our lines got switched out.
Just one on the long term guidance.
I think you previously gave guidance that you were working towards $2 billion of revenue in 2026 I'm curious if this is still the north star for you as a company or if there's parts of the reorganization or maybe parts of.
The new strategy that might either delay that timeframe or change at priority altogether any thoughts around that would be helpful.
Sure I think that's a great question I'd say, it's too early in the process to really respond to that I think your intuition is right.
While that May end up being we may actually be in that sort of range I don't think thats. The Northstar right now I think the Northstar is profitable growth.
Let's find the things that really drive the bottom line and focused on those and that May result, in having a lower top line number in 'twenty six than we had originally sort of pointed to but too early to say that but certainly what we're targeting in terms of the focus of the company is a little different than it was back then.
Got it that makes sense.
And then maybe just on the CEO search.
Curious what qualities. The board is looking for in a replacement for the CEO and on one hand, I can understand how creativity has been a big reason for <unk> success, but on the other hand.
Execution and maybe operational.
Yes.
<unk> is probably a important at the time. So just curious how does the board think you can do that.
Sure another good question.
Listen I think again, not just not to answer the same way, but it is still sort of early days. There I think one thing that should give you and everyone else on the call. Some comfort is that Steve and I are very operationally focused and right now that that is the main thing to focus on.
In some ways with the following revenue I would say this is almost a bit of a turnaround.
We want to get through a certain piece of that before we start thinking about the key characteristics of the person we would bring in.
That person will probably be more revenue oriented more creative than I am and named a number of other things but.
The point being we have some we have some near term things to deal with first and we wouldn't want to pick someone today to deal with those near term things we want to pick the person thats right in the long run go after the best athlete go after somebody that fits with this company someone that understands pop culture could be we have some great internal candidates here.
Sitting at the table with me now.
And I think there will there will be plenty of people outside interested in this as well. So we will get there give us a little time on that part.
That's good to hear and then maybe one more if I could.
Just as it relates to the workforce reduction could you maybe talk a little bit about what parts of the business as reductions are being made in one of the questions. We've gotten from clients over the last couple of days as it relates to this is yes, how investors can be confident that the reduction of <unk>.
And running a leaner org won't amplify some of the operational issues that have come about over the last couple of quarters.
Any color there would be.
Helpful. Thank you.
Sure. So let me start there and then I'm sure Steve will have something to add.
The reductions are really.
Many different groups many different areas theyre driven by this SKU and product line reduction. So first we went through the process of thinking about what we can take out and what work goes with that.
That starts all the way back in our product development areas and creative and rippled all the way through.
To your question about the operation side, which Steve can get into more detail on this actually will lessen the load for them at some point, we still have a ton of stuff to work through obviously, but as we get more focused on a fewer number of products and all of the things that go with that the backend should benefit.
Even more than the front end.
I don't have much to add to that that was perfect.
That's the first time, he's ever said that to me.
Everyone on the call should know that.
Yes.
Thanks for the color there.
And then just I wanted to go back to one to the previous question. One thing I, probably should have mentioned you touched on creative there Brian is a creative genius.
And whoever we get in here, we hope that they have that same level of creativity, but I'm not as concerned about that I think as maybe some grew.
Groups outside of the company are we have a very deep team here and credit O'brien for bringing in them, but we have a lot of creative talent here, Mike backer as the original founder is still here and he comes up with more ideas than we can possibly put on the shelf I don't think creativity is the issue that we have to deal with today or even in the future.
Channel that creativity into profitable products.
Thank you.
As a reminder, ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask any further question. Please press star followed by one on tackling keybanc.
We have no further questions on the line I will now pass back to the management team for closing remarks.
Thank you operator.
Steven Linda Thank you for the questions also thanks to everyone else for not asking questions.
Thank you everyone for joining us on the call today as always thanks to our fans employees and partners for their support.
And thank you to our investors and analysts for joining the call and listening in.
Look forward to sharing our progress on our next call with all of you. Thank you.
Thank you ladies and gentlemen. This concludes today's call. Thank you for joining you may now disconnect your lines.
But with all of you. Thank you.