Hayward Holdings, Inc. (HAYW) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Thanks, everyone, for joining. Good afternoon. This is the Hayward presentation. I'm Ryan Merkel from William Blair's Research Department. Before we begin, I need to remind you that a complete list of disclosures and conflicts of interest is available on our website. With us today is Kevin Holleran, President and CEO; and Eifion Jones, CFO; and Stuart Baker, SVP of Strategy. Hayward is a global manufacturer of residential and commercial pool equipment and related automation systems. The company sells through distributors as well as directly through pool builders and retailers. In my experience, the pool industry is one of the most attractive industries I cover, given the huge install base of equipment, that's all going to break and it's highly non-discretionary. So with that, let me turn it over to Kevin.

Great. Well, good afternoon, everyone. Thanks, Ryan. Kevin Holleran, CEO. I'm pleased to be joined by 2 of my colleagues, Eifion Jones right next to me is our CFO; and Stuart Baker, down at the end there leads business development and strategy for us. Next slide. You may have just covered this, but I'll also point out that we request that you do read the cautionary. This has been posted to our IR site and encourage you to familiarize yourself with the cautionary statements. Next slide. So let me just highlight a couple of things that we'll touch on during our prepared remarks, around the Hayward story. First and foremost, we are a pool pure play little alliteration there. We are heavily focused on the pool business. When you consider residential plus commercial 97% of our revenue is tied to that pool industry. Secondly, we have a very well-defined competitive moat that protects our market position and drives growth for us. Some of those things are the installed base, the complete product line, the brand equity, the competitiveness and then the specialization of our sales force, I think our vertical integration and operational excellence, supply chain capabilities has been on display over these last couple of years, in particular, during the COVID experience then also from an innovation and technology standpoint, the amount we spend on R&D, on IP and then really brick walling some of those firsts are things that serve us well from a competitive moat standpoint. Thirdly, I would say from a financial profile standpoint, in many ways, it is best-in-class from a topline growth standpoint, from a gross profit standpoint, from an EBITDA and free cash flow standpoint. Flipping to the next slide. From a technology and innovation standpoint, Hayward is really leading the way, converting legacy low-tech pools to IoT-enabled backyards, giving the pool owner that greater functionality and control of the backyard from their phone and in the palm of their hand. And then finally, we're extremely proud of the sustainability advances designed into our products, specifically around energy efficiency, reducing reliance upon harsh chemicals and then water conservation. Next slide. This is who we are. We have 2 reportable segments, North America and Europe, Rest of World. North America represents over 80% of our revenue. This is a good thing given the pricing and the margin profile of North America is best in the industry. It's nice to have the disproportionate amount of our business tied to North America, including Canada. As I said earlier, we are a pool pure play. I mentioned 97% tied to pool, 95% of that is to the residential backyard with good pricing opportunity into the backyard. And then on the right side of the slide really outlines how much of a full line product line we have. You can see just about everything that you need to operate a pool, you can procure or secure from Hayward. You can see that the pumps and heaters are the leading categories for us followed by filters and automation and water sanitization. Everything that you need to operate an in-ground pool, a commercial pool or an above-ground pool. On the next slide, here's an illustration of the SmartPad conversion taking place in our industry, really being led by the omni automation system. It really is the hub of the wheel or that centerpiece that is pulling higher-priced IoT-enabled devices along with it. The power and simplicity of use has driven connectivity of a broad array of technologies. And what we highlight here are the top 5 growth categories last year in descending order, LED color lights has a huge take rate, automation and controls, variable speed pump, heaters and finally, water sanitization. All of those grew greater than 40% at the industry level last year. Proud to say that our share gains in those categories were disproportionate. So I really -- we are proud that our performance has been bolstered, not only by a full product line, but by some great recent product launches that has driven our new product vitality index, up nearly 40% year-over-year. We are a product-based company. We invest a lot of money for product leadership, and it's a commitment that -- and a strategic element of our company strategy. On the next slide, we take ESG very seriously we know our shareholders do as well. And frankly, we're very proud of some of the accomplishments that we've achieved in our first year as a public company. We continue to focus on the energy consumption in our facilities, and it is a key focus around our product road mapping and our future product development. We strive for a safe, diverse, inclusive and engaged workforce, and we're very proud of the strong company culture that's been decades in the making from family ownership through private equity now as a public company. As a recent public company, we've engaged the expertise of a third party to help us perform our materiality assessment to identify where we have most opportunity across the ESG themes. That work has really led to our framework shown on the slide here, where we're focusing around 4 key pillars on products, planet, people in principle. I'll close from a governance standpoint that we have improved the diversity and independence of our board. We've added 3 new members since IPO last March, bringing our independent count to 6 on our Board today. On the next slide, I'll start with the takeaway on the right-hand side, 42% revenue growth LTM through Q1 of this past year. And really, that's been driven by our ability to execute on some of the key drivers shown down in the left-hand panel of the slide. Let me touch on a few. From a commercial standpoint, we have created specialization in our sales and commercial team where we have hunters and we have folks who manage the channel partnerships. So that gives us a broad-based access to the 4 different channels to market. We've also driven focus around new dealer acquisition, which we're proud to say has driven over 20% increase in our total Hayward program. Those are our dealers in the family working in the backyard, advocating, carrying the Hayward banner, promoting our products from both the service and a new construction standpoint. Hayward's innovation and technology have played a major role in our recent growth, achieving significant growth around some key growth categories highlighted on our earlier slide, around controls, water sanitization, variable speed pumps as well as LED lights. The box at the very bottom actually highlights some real savings derived just the last 3 years from some of these more recent product launches in terms of kilowatt hours saved through variable speed pump adoption, reduction of chlorine chemical usage through alternate sanitizers and salt chlorine generators. And then from a cartridge filter standpoint, reducing the amount of chemically treated oftentimes heated water down the drain during regular cleaning cycles. And then I'll just close by saying our vertically -- vertical integration and supply chain capabilities, again have been on display the last few years, really giving us flexibility to be able to ramp production, while still being able to maintain very strong structural margin profile with this incremental growth despite, as we all know, severe inflationary pressures as well as some of the supply chain constraints that have existed in the marketplace. The last slide before I turn it over to Eifion is to really highlight the SmartPad aftermarket conversion. We highlight 3 of them on this slide here. And what we're doing here is comparing the take rate of some of these products at time of new construction versus what's in the installed base of those nearly 5.5 million in-ground pools in North America alone. We believe in the premise that an existing pool owner, if educated as to the benefits of some of these more recent advancements as a new pool builder is that they're going to want that kind of upgrade and that level of increased performance and functionality, sustainability, connectivity of their backyard. The first, which we highlight is the digital conversion from manual time clocks to controls and automation. This gives the pool owner the opportunity to dynamically control their backyard functionality from the palm of their hand, lowering operating costs as they're doing so. Secondly is the conversion to natural forms of water sanitization as chemical chlorine is being replaced by salt chlorine generators as well as UV and ozone unit. And then finally, the conversion to more energy-efficient products as variable speed pumps are replacing single speed pumps out there. Our sales teams are working closely with our service providers to improve and increase the aftermarket upgrades as folks renovate and upgrade their backyard oasis. If you compile these 3 alone and these aren't the only 3, there's opportunities on heaters, there's opportunities on LED lights, there's opportunity on water features. But if you look at just these 3 alone, taking the aftermarket installed base rate, bringing it to today's take rate on new construction, that alone is a $6 billion opportunity for our industry as we continue to promote and proactively market some of the benefits of these conversions. So with that, I'll turn it over to Eifion for the last few slides.

Great. Thank you. When we think about one of the sustainable aspects of our growth algorithm, we think, firstly, at the macroeconomic level. And we certainly have seen a tremendous amount of secular tailwinds coming into our industry, de-urbanization, migration to the sunbelt and the millennials moving into their peak earning years. That's significantly driving investment into the backyard, and it will be a progressive secular trend, we believe, for decades to come. In terms of the key economic indicators, putting aside the current question marks, generally speaking, right now, we see high unemployment. We see a very strong economy despite some of the fiscal issues that the U.S. economy faces, reinvestment into the home has been high, and we believe over the long haul, will remain high and home prices and home equity will continue to increase in the U.S. Remodeling activity, we believe, is a long-term trend as well. You think about the work-from-home principle, we believe that an element of work-from-home will remain and people will focus their time, energy and dollars back into remodeling the home environment. As Kevin has mentioned, we are an aftermarket company. We get -- 80% of our conversation tends to be about new construction, but the reality is 80% of our topline goes into the aftermarket. Ryan opened with the fact that this is a highly resilient installed base that continuously needs upgrading, remodeling, et cetera. If we look at the average age of that installed base today its 23 years old, a great signal that it's ripe for continuous remodeling and upgrading. The pools of today are significantly different from the pools of a decade ago. You look at the content, the controls, the electronics, the features, they're radically different today in our offering than where we were 10 years ago. We look at it as a low-tech environment 10 years and a much more of a high tech and Hayward has been leading the way in the introduction of technology attributes into this industry and that's self-evident by our sales profile over the last couple of years, what we call lifestyle products, which is in the bottom left-hand side of the screen, have increased 84% in '21 over the prior year, whereas core pool pad equipment increased 48%. So we see the consumer driving much more towards the qualitative aspect of the outdoor living, putting in salt chlorination systems, putting in heaters, putting in lights, putting in controls. All of that is going to create a much richer aftermarket for us to continue to service for 30, 40, 50 years of the life cycle of that particular pool. I'll come back to new construction on the bottom right-hand side of the screen here. New construction is important. Again, even though we're 80% aftermarket, 20% new construction. You can see on this particular graphic, we're beginning to see a return to a normal count of new pools being added per year. We're still below the historical mean of a 153,000 pools, even though we completed 117,000 in-ground pools last year. There's still runway to continue to climb in the new construction sector. If we believe that the U.S. is underserved from a single-family residential home environment of roughly 4 million homes. Typically, we would say it's a 10 to -- 1:10 ratio new pool to new home. So that means there's about 400,000 pools that are pent-up in terms of new construction. So that 400,000 pools is roughly about 3.5 years' worth of pent-up demand for new construction. We love that because it continues to add to the installed base of pools. The next slide. This is the aftermarket, and we've worked on this particular screen here the richest part of the market, which is the U.S. in-ground pool. And you can see for every single year, the in-ground pool can has continued to climb even through recessionary environments, which is highlighted in the orange bars, on this graphic. The installed base has continued to climb. The rate of new construction will always exceed the rate of attrition. So new pools will be always built in excess of pools being taken out of service, which means this installed base will continue to grow. Our addressable market will continue to grow in terms of count and in terms of the ability to service this market with ever-increasing technologies, will continue to be a rich market for us. As Ryan mentioned, things break. So there's a high element of non-discretionary repair and replace in this particular market. Next slide. We've performed very well as Hayward. As you can see on this particular slide. Our net sales, if we go back to 2019, $733 million through the LTM period and now just under $1.5 billion. It's been a record sales period for us over the last several years. What's driven this? We are very proud of the fact that we've driven new products into the market, very informed products, particularly centric around the control environment. Our new product vitality index has doubled over this time period and nearly 1 out of 4 products that we're selling today, but we've innovated over the last 3 years. It is fair to say that we consider ourselves to be a software operator in the industry. We have our factories placed in our primary markets, 3 in North America, 2 in Europe and 1 in Wuxi, China. We're a vertically-integrated operator, and we've been able to get after the demand curve, we believe, better than others in the industry. And that's enabled us to get our Hayward product into the channel, through the channel onto those plans, creating that annuity life cycle to service that equipment thereafter. We have a very clear M&A strategy. We are focused on the pool pad and in and around the pool. We've executed on a few deals in Q4 last year, technology-based transactions and then more recently, you all have seen the announcement we just completed, a more sizable transaction related to the specialty lighting business, formerly owned by Halco. We're very pleased to be able to have a rich M&A pipeline. It really resonates back to the fact that Hayward is an excellent cash generator. We're converting approximately or just over 100% of our net income to free cash flow per year, giving us great optionality, not only for organic investments into our facilities, but through an M&A pipeline and a return to shareholder. And you'll have seen we've been somewhat active in the share repurchase category over the last 6 months. In terms -- just go back one slide. In terms of the EBITDA profile, look at the EBITDA there, $172 million back in 2019 through the LTM Q1 period, $441 million what was -- really proud of is the fact that we tipped over the 30% adjusted EBITDA margin. We're highly focused on the quality of our income statement. We've proven, I think, through the last 2 years, that we can manage the quality of our gross margin. We believe we're a price cost neutrality. We've been leaders, we believe and in price input into the marketplace in our peer set, and we're proud of that fact. And at the adjusted EBITDA line, the quality speaks for itself at just over 30% margin. With that, I'll turn it back.

Great. Let me ask 3 questions to start that are topical. Talk about the health of the consumer, talk about inflation, if you still see rising prices or if you see things peaking and then talk about supply chain, how is product flowing?

I'll grab maybe -- tend to go backwards. From a supply chain standpoint, we think of it really around 3 legs of the stool, labor, logistics and transportation and material. I would say where labor this time last year, was really something we were -- we were just starting to feel material inflation at that point, labor has stabilized. That is not our biggest challenge by any means. We did some increases around our labor rates last year to be able to attract and retain. And that really did enable us to drive pretty sizable year-on-year capacity increases. Secondly, logistics. We're starting to see some decline from historic highs, but still well above what we would consider to be normal transportation, both over the road as well as some ocean-going containers. And then thirdly, from a material standpoint, there's not open field running at this point, but I wouldn't say that it's not worsening by any means. There are things that have absolutely improved from a resin and specialty metal standpoint, we still feel some constraint around some broad electronic and microprocessors, which go into various SKUs. From an inflationary standpoint, it is slowing, but it has not yet peaked. We are still feeling it as evidenced by the fact that 5 weeks ago or so, we put another price announcement into the market, which will take effect at the very end here of June. I will say that part of our -- part of a prior announcement did have a surcharge in it. That was our indication to the marketplace that we felt this was not all structural. We felt some of what we were feeling was, in fact, transitory. It's been there now for 6 months. So it hasn't abated to the point where that would be pulled back, but that was part of our announcement back about 5 months -- 6 months ago, I guess. First question -- first part of the question was -- the consumer want to -- hope that the consumer...

Yes, I think the -- we haven't seen demand destruction at the end of the channel right now. I still think there's pent-up demand for new construction. I still think there is some remodeling that's being put sideways. Note, we took that pool out of service or very few people did during COVID. So there's probably about 2 or 3 years' worth of demand to come through and remodel. And I think people want that. So when we think about maybe some of the discussion around interest rates or employment issues, I still think, fundamentally, people are placing a higher priority on their home and the outdoor living space. And I believe the consumer trend lines that we've seen over the last 2 years will continue into the next several years.

Perfect. I want to ask about the 13% of sales that's aftermarket remodel because I think there's a bit of misunderstanding about that. I think there's a fear that, that's going to fall off if we have some kind of recession. But I think what you're saying is there's actually a pretty big backlog there. Can you unpack that a little bit?

Yes. I mean, I would say -- as we look historically, the percent of our business or I could say the industry's business, it's normally about a one-for-one remodel and new construction. Historically, it's been close to one another. If you look at our revenue breakout last year, we were 22% new construction and only 13% remodel. That fact alone, I think, is evidence to the fact that this remodel has been pushed to the right. I think that it's an opportunity that will be mined by us and by the industry. As we know, the contractors -- there are some contractors who solely focus on new. There are some that focus only on remodel, but the vast majority do both. And with the new construction expansion and demand, we know that the contractors have prioritized new construction because, frankly, it's an easier project for them then to tear something down to rebuild it. Add to that the fact that the pool was one of the primary sources of entertainment and recreation for the family. Most pool owners didn't want to lose access to their pool for 3 to 6 months, while this construction project or this remodel was being done. So we believe that it has been pushed. It's now Eifion said, it's 23 years old is the average in-ground pool, and we believe that, that is an opportunity that's going to be harvested at some point by the industry.

Got it. can we talk about the smart pool opportunity a little bit? Just what percent of sales is smart pool? What are the key products? And then talk about the key features and benefits. What does the end consumer get when they buy some of these products?

Stuart, why don't you take that?

Yes. I mean we -- Kevin talked about the ambience of the backyard. And really what's driving that, if you think about some of the pools you've seen in hotels or resorts or nice residential pools, it's having water features, controls of water features, controls of different types of lighting. And what that translates down to is having a communication protocol with multiple lighting zones, variable speed pumps, so you can change the velocity of your water features to create these different effects. Many people like to use her OmniLogic and have a single button press that you can press and have party mode, which will switch on the waterfall, the lamina jets and start a light show. These are all only things you can do if you've got a smart pool, which is connected to an automation system that's running either bluetooth or WiFi connection to all the pieces of equipment on the pool. So we -- to your point, about 60% of the products that we sell have some sort of Internet connection, either ethernet, bluetooth or WiFi so that you can actually have those sorts of features.

I would just add to that. I don't think that it gets highlighted enough in our industry. I know Peter was with you earlier in the week and he mentioned the fact that less than 30% of pools have any kind of automation to it. Demographically, as millennials and behind them Gen-Z move into their prime earning years and move out of the cities and find some room to stretch out. I really think that, that -- those generations grew up with less fear, right, around technology. Smart homes are the expectation for that generation and as they buy homes with pools or build pools into the future, I think this is more an expectation. This is not a luxury for those generations that move into their prime earning years. So in an installed base that's less than 30% as the demographics move to expect technology, I think controls and pairing them with some of those lifestyle products that Stuart just mentioned is a huge opportunity that's going to be promoted through the pool industry going forward.

And then I want to ask about margins. Your EBITDA margin is about 30%. That's the second highest on my list. What allows you to have that kind of margin? Just talk about the company and the industry dynamics that support that?

Can you tell us who the top is so we know who we're going after.

Tracks.

Yes, I think it comes down to some basic fundamentals. One is this company has always operated on lean principles. And so we run our manufacturing facilities on the lean premise. We're very judicious with our cost base, and that's been ingrained within the culture of the organization through its 65, 70 years of family ownership. So that's a piece of the heritage that we've continued to latch onto. I'd say, secondly, it's about bringing new informed products to the marketplace, which have a high price, high margin actually with a very clear win-win to the consumer, and that's where our focus has been over the last 3 years. We want to save the consumer money, they want to pay the higher price and we get the higher margin. Additionally, I'd say it's a function of the industry. And so you think about the price sensitivity of pool equipment, it's relatively low. It typically only represents about 10% of the installed cost of a pool, 90% of the pool cost is everything else. And in terms of the aftermarket, we have a significant proportion of our aftermarket sales, which are non-discretionary. If you lose the pump or a filter, your pool will suffer very quickly and will be inoperable from a swimming perspective, probably within 72 hours. So it's necessary for you to replace that piece of kit. So those would be the fundamentals which support the margins in the business.

Perfect. Let's talk about competitors a little bit. Who are your key competitors? And how do you differentiate yourself in the market?

I mean our competitors from the pool equipment standpoint would be someone like a Pentair, Fluidra. There are some others that are maybe more niche or more narrow like a Maytronics or a Raypak, which is a division of Rheem. How do we differentiate? I would say, clearly differentiation along product leadership and innovation, I think, is the most important thing. I'll be candid in saying that out of all the product categories that we have products and we don't necessarily look at them all the same. We have put crosshairs on some of those products where product leadership, we believe is paramount. And things like the controls and automation. If you win that, other products tend to come along once you win the controls and the automation. So that is very important to us, an area of differentiation. I think secondly, from a channel access standpoint, distribution is the primary mode to market, but we have strong performance across some dealer direct, across some e-commerce and across large retail as well. These are important critical channels. And I think thirdly, is our operational excellence. We've known, I think, for a long time as we were private, that this was a competitive advantage to us. I think as we've come public and it's been more apparent that our ability to ramp production, tap into latent capacity, drive the supply chain, while holding structural margins in a very difficult environment, I think is another area of differentiation for us.

I agree. All right. We're out of time. Thanks so much, everybody. Appreciate it.

Thanks. Appreciate it.

Appreciate it.

Thank you.