SharkNinja, Inc. (SN) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

My name is Brooke Roach and I cover the apparel, accessories and branded discretionary goods sector here at Goldman Sachs Research, and I am very pleased to introduce our next session with SharkNinja. Here today with me is Mark Barrocas, CEO and Director of the company. Welcome, Mark.

Thanks so much, Brooke.

Well, let's kick off with a discussion about where SharkNinja has been over the course of the last year. It's been about a year since you've publicly listed. What progress have you made so far? And how do you think about the opportunity ahead across each of the 3 growth pillars of SharkNinja?

Yes. Well, look, as you said, I mean we listed July 30 of last year. And I think the biggest progress and the biggest change has been just we've been able to tell our story. I think we have a great story to tell. Over the last 16 years, the business has grown at a compounded growth rate of 20% a year during that period of time. We've grown organically. We've done that through, as you said, this 3-pillar growth strategy of gaining share in the existing categories that we're in and expanding into new categories and growing internationally. And I think what's exciting versus 14 months ago, when people said, well, we have some of your products in homes, but we don't really know the company behind the products. I think sitting here today, our stock price has performed very well. But more importantly, I think our story has been able to be told. And it's really a great story of innovation, really tremendous consumer-centric environment. This great ability to be able to create consumer demand for our products to really be part of culture. And that's been exciting, I think, for the folks inside the company.

That's really great. You talked about innovation. And I think one of the things that's underappreciated about the SharkNinja story is that you continue to have innovation in your existing core categories. Can you talk about that opportunity that you see in core categories to continue to grow over the next few years? What is the opportunity to drive that momentum?

Well, look, I mean, I think underappreciated on the innovation side is an interesting one. I mean, look, I think for many years, as I said to people, they asked, "What did you do?" I said I'm in the appliance business, and they thought like I was a door-to-door vacuum salesman, which is great, but we have 1,100 engineers today in the organization globally. I mean this is a real innovation-driving business that is done globally in Boston, in London and in China. And I think for us to be able to innovate not just in these new categories, but to innovate within the base. I think what's exciting to me about our second quarter results is the strength in the base business. I mean I think a lot of people kind of look at the Consumer Products business, and they might say, well, the growth all coming from international or is the growth all coming from new products. I think what the second quarter showed is that the growth is really coming from a very, very strong, healthy base that is growing, that is raising average sell price, that is driving stronger gross margins. And I think the 3 elements of the way that we think about that are first is this -- as I said, this big base business that we have, we're innovating into. I mean, a good example of that is we just launched our Shark POWERDETECT vacuum cleaner, it's a new $499 vacuum cleaner. We already are #1 vacuum brand in North America. We're the #1 vacuum brand in the U.K., but we continuously keep innovating in these existing categories. The second bucket is these categories that are emerging categories for us that we entered into kind of 2, 3 years ago, places like beauty, places like outdoor cooking and in those categories, we're seeing tremendous expansion, our retailer expansion, product assortment expansion, geographic expansion. And then you layer on top of that the new categories that we're entering into, things like our FlexBreeze indoor/outdoor fans, we just launched our first espresso product, the Ninja Café Luxe. We launched an exciting product called the Ninja SLUSHi just now -- that the 160,000 people on our waitlist right now for that product. So we're in 34 different product categories. We're selling now in 27 different countries. And I think innovation is really kind of the lifeblood of the business.

That's really helpful color. You mentioned several innovative items that you've recently launched that are more towards the higher end of the value spectrum, whether that's the Luxe Café or the POWERDETECT vacuum. We've also heard from other retailers that the consumer is very value-seeking right now. Can you talk to us about how you're thinking about balancing a value-seeking consumer with the opportunity to push into some of these more premium price points?

Well, look, I think you have to look at things in terms of value, not in terms of price, okay? And that's where I think there is a big challenge. If you're not delivering something unique or innovative, then you're -- you have to sell on price. I think if you're delivering something that is unique and new to the world and highly differentiated and very problem-solving, then you've got to sell based on value. And so the Ninja Café Luxe is an interesting one from a value standpoint. The average sell price of an espresso machine in the United States is $800. $800. But it's also the reason why there's only 1.5% household penetration today in espresso machines. The consumer in the United States has either decided that because of price or because of versatility, okay, they're only getting a shot or 2 shots of espresso, they're not going to invest $800 into -- in it. So SharkNinja doesn't necessarily just look at categories that are big that we want to go into and kind of how do we drive share within those categories. We're looking for categories that we could expand the size of them. How do we go from 1.5% household penetration to 4% household penetration? Well, in the case of the Café Luxe, we do it a few ways. One is versatility, right? So it delivers everything that these espresso machines do, a single shot of espresso, a double shot, a quad shot, but it also delivers drip coffee because there's very few American households that are only going to drink espresso, okay? And we're from Boston, and you go to Dunkin' Donuts in the morning, and you get like 24 ounces of coffee, okay? It delivers drip coffee. It makes cold brew on demand. It makes iced coffee. It makes Coldpresso. It doesn't just froth your milk, but it does cold froth as well as hot froth. And it doesn't just froth dairy milk, it froths non-dairy milk as well. So you put all those things together and you address kind of the versatility challenge that people have. The second is price point. Well, the question is if the average sale price is $800 and we're delivering something that has this tremendous versatility to it, what should the right price be. And before we launch a product into the market, that product is in 500, 700, 900 consumer homes. And after they've used it for 4 weeks, we ask the consumer, "Would you buy the product?" And they have to respond yes or no. And if they say yes, well, "How much would you pay for the product?" So we're doing an enormous amount of price testing with consumers after they've used the product. And what we found was that the sweet spot of that was $499. Now you go on social media today, where you go and look at PR articles, we launched the product 6 weeks ago and last week, it was the #1 selling espresso maker in the United States according to NPD. And we're only selling it today in 3 retailers, Amazon, Best Buy and direct-to-consumer. And so when you take that into account and you read these articles, what consumers are saying is with everything the product is delivering it's at a great value. Now who would think in today's environment, that $499 would associate with a great value, but that's what it is. And so I think it's about how do you not sell off of price? How do you sell off of really making sure that the value that you're delivering is something that the consumer feels very good about?

On that, one of the follow-ups that we're asking to all companies at our conference today is whether or not the value-seeking behavior is a cyclical or a secular trend.

Look, I mean, the consumer has been under enormous inflationary pressure for the last couple of years. I mean, you have to be empathetic of grocery bills and rents and mortgages and all of these things. And so we recognize that the consumer has a big decision to make. I mean -- do they buy an Ninja CREAMi? Do they buy a Shark FlexStyle? Or do they go out to dinner a few extra times? Or they go on vacation or -- so there's -- you're in this world, I think, of trade-offs. And I think consumers are going to get -- are more and more discerning. I think they're doing their research. I think they're not just buying on a whim, okay? I think one of the things that is very powerful is -- continues to be our 5-star reviews of consumers being able to provide feedback to other consumers about their experiences with our products. And so I think we have to respect all of those things and really make sure that when we're putting out a product into the market that the consumer gets the product home, and 30 days, 60 days, 90 days afterwards, the consumer doesn't have remorse. I mean, the consumer really feels like, "Wow, okay, I paid money for this product, but I really got something in exchange for it. I mean I'm really delighted by it."

As you think about some of these new categories that you expanded into, you just talked about the espresso maker, which is exciting because there hasn't been very many options for that. How do you think about cadencing and sequencing of new category expansion? Are there like specific things that you're looking for, TAM, competition or otherwise, that allow you to say, yes, we want to greenlight this category, and we want to greenlight this category this year versus 5 years from now?

Look, I think it all starts with can we find the consumer problem that is -- that gives us the right to be in that category, okay? The right to be in that category is not a retailer coming and saying, "Hey, SharkNinja, you should probably make this because we're willing to buy it from you", okay? That doesn't exist at SharkNinja. The right to buy -- the right to be in the category is that you're delivering something that the consumer can't get somewhere else, that you're solving the consumer problem in some unique and differentiated way. So that's kind of first and foremost. Now the question is -- and I'll give you a good example, we're the #1 vacuum brand in the United States. There's a very large category called carpet extractors, or spot and stain cleaners. It's about an $800 million total market in the United States, big definable market for the last 7 or 8 years. As we went into retailers, they said, "You're Shark, you should be in the carpet extraction business. We'll buy it. We'll place your product." But we didn't have anything that was unique or compelling. I mean we didn't have any reason that the consumer needs Shark to be in this category. What we ultimately came up with was we got inspiration from actually the mouthwash industry, okay. That there are mouthwashes out there that combine 2 formulas right at the point of use. So there's a product called SmartMouth as an example. There's product called chlorine dioxide, where you're bringing these 2 chemicals together. And when you bring it together at the point, it creates some kind of bigger activating power. We were able to develop that into a product, and we called it the Shark CarpetXpert, and it enabled us to make the product much lighter weight, much smaller, put less water on the floor of your carpet, so they got less soaked, but it had better cleaning performance and better brightening. We entered the market last September, October. And by the first quarter of this year, we already have 13% market share in the category. So it may be that there's lots of categories out there, lots of opportunities, but we just don't have the right idea to be able to enter it. We haven't been -- we haven't earned the right to be in that category. There might be other categories where the technology is just -- it's too early for the consumer. I mean we're not -- the consumer is not ready for the product that we're offering them. There's a whole bunch of different factors that play into it that ultimately enable us to make the decision of, is this a category that's right for us to be able to enter into.

A lot of investors ask us how you make the decision to launch a new product category in the domestic market alone or to launch more broadly across your international markets. As we think about that growth opportunity that you have in international, what's your strategy for category expansion there?

Yes. So currently today, about 80%, 85% of the products that we make -- of our new products, and we make 25 new ground-up products a year, about 80%, 85% of those products are made for a global consumer, okay, to sell all across the 27 countries that we sell in. The remainder of those 15% are mainly sold in what we would call kind of English-speaking countries. So like corded vacuum cleaners is really a business for the United States and Canada and the U.K. and Australia. But it really doesn't exist kind of in Latin America or in Europe. So there are segments of our business that are mainly kind of English-speaking markets. But for the most part, the overwhelming majority of our products are made for a global consumer. What excites us about our international opportunity -- our international business has been growing very, very quickly over the last few years is that consumers resonate and love the products. I mean if you go online, in Germany or France or the U.K. or the Nordics or Mexico, I mean you're going to see the same 5-star ratings for our products that you see in North America. So first is consumers love the products. The second is the markets, though, are only able to digest so many products at any one time. So we're in 34 different categories in the United States. But as an example, in France right now, we're in 11 different categories. It's going to take us a couple of years before we're able to ultimately bring those products into the market and the gating item is not the product, it's the marketing, okay? Like you can only market so many messages to the consumer at any one time. So we can't -- there's no point in us kind of flooding the market with a lot of product and then not supporting it with the media investment to be able to create the awareness for the product. So in a market like the U.S. that has 34 categories, you have a market like the U.K. that has 20, 22 categories, a market like France that has 11, it's going to take us a couple of years before we're really able to kind of get to a maturity level where these categories and these countries are kind of built out.

There's a lot of opportunity in international as you build out those categories. Europe has been one of the biggest focal points for you, both the U.K. but also France, Germany and even some broader markets there. Can you talk to us about the size of your current business in each of those main Europe markets? And where you see the opportunity for growth over the course of the next 1 to 5 years?

Yes. So look, as we look out 4 to 5 years, I mean, I think loosely speaking, we would like to see 50% of our business outside of the United States. And our largest international market today is the U.K., which is fast approaching $1 billion in revenue. Our business is growing triple digits in Germany and France. The market in Germany is a little bit bigger than the U.K. The market in France is a little bit smaller than the U.K. So I think we believe kind of Germany and France combined or kind of a $2 billion opportunity. But there's a lot of other markets that we feel very strong about as well. I mean, we've just taken our distributorship back in Mexico. And so we are now going to be going direct in Mexico. We think that market has a tremendous amount of potential. We think the rest of Europe, a lot of our European retailers are pushing us much faster to enter into a lot of countries. I mean you do all the best planning, and we had a nice PowerPoint presentation that we gave to our Board that showed that Poland we were going to launch in 2026 until the President of Euronics, one of our largest retailers in Germany said, you've got to get to Poland in Christmas 2024. And so like when the market opportunity opens for you, we've got to be able to figure out how to navigate some of those opportunities. Some we can do it directly and some we choose to do it through distributors because it's just a less costly, less risky way of us entering into a market. For example, we're doing that in Brazil. We're doing that in Turkey, in markets that are quite complex that we don't fully understand. So there's lots of ways for us to get to this international consumer. There's lots of white space and opportunity for us. I think the key is just making sure that consumers love these products, that our marketing and our messaging is really crafted to that local consumer. I mean, what we don't want to do is feel like the American company that is trying to talk to a consumer in Norway. Now what I think is so exciting though about our model, our social media model is that if you go online today, into TikTok or Instagram, and you look, for example, at the Ninja SLUSHi, while it's only sold in the United States today, if you look in the comment section, what you're going to see is a lot of comments of people saying, "When is it coming to Norway? When is it coming to Portugal?" 6, 7 years ago, when we ran TV in the United States, the only people that saw were the people that were watching that TV show. Today on social media, there's really no borders to any of the advertising and the marketing that we're doing. And so even before we get into many of these markets, there's already some pent-up consumer demand for these products.

As you think about scaling some of these international markets, how should we be thinking about the margin potential of these businesses relative to your U.S. business over time?

So on the gross margin side, our gross margins in Europe are roughly the same as our gross margins in the United States. There are -- on the net margin side some of these countries have a significantly higher advertising expense. As an example, we will not make money in Germany until this third quarter of 2024. We have in our P&L lots of embedded losses as we're entering into new markets because the advertising that we need in order to be able to create demand and establish our brands in those markets is quite high in the beginning. And as we scale up the revenue, that advertising as a percentage of sales starts to come down. And the same thing takes place when it comes to new categories that we're entering into. So there is a need for a lot of investment because we've grown our business organically. We haven't done it through acquisition. And so we're creating these businesses, either by entering new categories or entering new markets and that requires investment for us to be able to do that. I think the only difference that you'll really see, Brooke, is mix. There's a little bit more mix towards direct-to-consumer in the international markets than the U.S. There might be some mix from a product standpoint. But when you kind of look at the businesses like-for-like, the gross margins are about the same and the net margins over time will get to be very similar.

Let's get it back to North America for a moment. And maybe to set the stage, on the last call, you talked about seeing some sequential signs of stabilization in the health of your overall categories. What do you think is driving that stabilization? And do you think that, that's sustainable into the back half of this year and into 2025?

Yes. So it's interesting. Like there's a lot of talk in the consumer about is there a recession? Is the consumer pulling back considerably? I mean the small home appliance business has actually been through a 2-year recession, just now. I mean there was outsized growth in '20 and '21 during COVID. Market declined 14% in 2022. I mean market declined 11% in 2023. I mean that was a recession. I mean '22 and '23 from an industry standpoint, we went through a recession. Now how did SharkNinja fare last year with the market declining 11%? We grew double digits. Okay, so that gives you a glimpse of -- it's not like we've been in a booming consumer environment over the last 24 months. Now in the second quarter of this year, fortunately, the market got to minus 3%, okay? Minus 3% is a lot better than minus 11% or minus 14%. So you've got a market that kind of firmed up a little bit, didn't grow, but at least kind of firmed up a little bit. You've got SharkNinja that had a lot of innovation in its base categories, okay, and a lot of health in its base categories. We have invested a lot in a lot of those base categories. And I think what was exciting about our Q2 results is that the base is strong, that in spite of a market being down 3%, that when you look at kind of our core base business in the United States, it's close to up double digits. And we're kind of significantly outpacing what's happening in the overall market.

Just a quick follow-up, and you can keep this short, it's helpful. But one of the questions we're asking all of our companies is what are your expectations for the environment in the second half of '24 relative to recent results? Do you expect things to be the same, better or worse?

Look, I think they're going to be roughly about the same. I mean, I think our industry will roughly be flat to down 1% to 2%. And I'd love to see in talking with retailers and folks that 2025 would be a year that the market, at least in the United States, would kind of get back to its historical growth rates, which is about a 2.5%, 3% market, which is what it was from 2008 all the way up to COVID in 2020.

As we think about that backdrop, you alluded to some of these conversations that you're having with wholesale partners. Can you talk a little bit more about what you're seeing sell-in versus sell-through, order books, how has retailers' stance on inventory and a willingness to keep some of that inventory changed, if at all, over the course of the last few months?

I think overall, there are less conversations than there have been related to kind of purposeful inventory pullback. Now that doesn't mean that holiday shipments might move from September to October as retailers want to bring in inventory much closer to the holiday season, selling season. But in general, I would say that, on trend, that there are lots and lots of less discussions that we're having today about inventory reduction than we did a year ago at this time.

As we think about that holiday plan, the other thing that always comes up quite a bit is just promotionality in holiday. Do you expect your company to be more or less promotional this holiday season relative to last year? And how does that compare for your expectation for the industry?

I think we will be roughly flat from a promo standpoint, year-on-year. Last year was actually less promotional than the year before in the holiday season. So we're expecting that to be flat. We continue to invest more money in media and advertising and not put it as much into price and promo. Now that's not to say that we won't and will absolutely participate in the big traffic-driving periods during the holiday season. But roughly, we would expect our business to be flat to prior year. I think at a macro level -- look, I think if you're in the opening price point segments of the market, from what I hear, and we don't participate in those, it will be a promotional selling period. I mean it's a shorter selling period. It will be a promotional selling period. But again, that's not the segment of the market that we participate in.

That's really helpful color. One of the opportunities that you have with your wholesale partners is partner door expansion. You've entered into a lot of new categories the last few years. You talked about beauty, outdoor, some of these new categories with carpet extraction. Can you help us understand the quantification of the potential benefit that you're seeing from some of these new doors this year? And what that opportunity looks like over the next few years as you continue to scale these recently launched categories?

Yes. Look, I mean, sitting here today, we have retailers that we're dealing with 8 different -- 9 different buyers within one big-box retailer because of all the different categories that we are participating in and selling into. So we're getting into more places in the existing doors. We are -- our retailers are kind of looking at new categories that we're entering into. And even if they don't sell some of those products in those categories, they're stacking them out on their aisles. I mean I think if you go into places like Best Buy, you'll see that there are products that they're selling from Shark and Ninja that they don't sell as a category but they recognize that there's a lot of traffic coming through their stores and that these products are things that consumers are looking out for. And so they're realizing that there's an opportunity to kind of capture the consumer. So I think that's one piece of it. I think there's new retailers that we've entered into, like Ulta and Sephora that we are expanding, not just door count, but we're expanding SKUs in those retailers, and we're getting more placement. And then there's new retailers like DICK'S or Academy or SHEELS that we're just getting into for the first time, and there's a lot of white space opportunity. I think that while some of those sporting goods chain conversations started with things like coolers, those retailers are recognizing that there are a lot of other Shark and Ninja products that they can sell to their consumers walking through their stores. I mean there's no reason why the Ninja Blast, our cordless blender can't be sold or indoor/outdoor fans or outdoor cooking appliances -- portable outdoor cooking appliances. So I think what you'll see from us is that we'll enter into some of these new retailers, but there's a lot of category expansion for us to have with them over the coming years.

So a multiyear pipeline.

Yes.

Absolutely. As we think about the marketing to support some of those new categories and the multiyear pipeline with these new retailer partners, how do you think about the investment that you're going to be making in marketing, both in North America and international? And then is there a normalized rate of marketing spend that we should expect for SharkNinja?

Yes. Look, I think there's 2 line items in our business to pay attention to. One is R&D spending and one is marketing spending. I mean I think when you think about R&D, we spend over 7% of sales on R&D. And if you think about the second quarter where we spent a little over 7.5% of sales, none of that R&D spending is materializing into revenue in the second quarter. I mean that is kind of funding some future pipeline of innovation. So I think there are a lot of ideas that we have. There are a lot of new categories. There are a lot of new products in the pipeline. We have clear our 25 new products that we're going to launch in 2025. We're working today on kind of what the pipeline looks like for 2026. So I think R&D is kind of one place that I don't think you should see much leverage per se. I mean, I think around 6.5% to 7% is kind of a place that we want to be as long as there is the opportunities for us to be able to invest in. I think on the marketing side, we spend about 11% of sales on advertising. And again, as we keep entering more of these new categories and as we keep entering more geographies, it's requiring advertising spend. I mean 3 years ago, there wasn't a single German consumer that owns a Shark or Ninja product. I mean we had 0.0 brand awareness. And so, there's a lot of work that goes into this that's coming through brand awareness and advertising. And we think that as long as there is a long pipeline of international growth to expand into, we think that we'll need these elevated levels of marketing to take advantage of those opportunities.

SharkNinja's marketing mix has evolved over its history from infomercials and now you're very good at social media. How do you think about balancing where you're spending your dollars? And are you seeing any change in advertising efficiency? One question we get from some investors is how you think about that into an election year where maybe the consumer is a little bit more distracted.

Yes. Look, as you pointed out, I mean, 15 years ago, 12 years ago, we mainly only advertise through long-form infomercials. And that was our way to kind of uniquely differentiate ourselves to the consumer and to tell our story at a time when we were a much smaller company and didn't have the resources to be able to invest. But what was interesting about those infomercials is that they developed for us a really unique competency of telling a story and providing demonstrations to the consumer about how this product can improve their lives. And you fast forward to today, and that's the same thing that social media is. It's just doing it in 14-second clips versus 28-minute infomercials. And we do it through demos. We do it through consumer recommendations. What I think is so exciting that I'd invite all of you to kind of go on social media and look. And it's not just the amount of advertising that we do, it's the amount of organic content that's created, okay. So this is an interesting fact. I mean, over the course of the last few months, 99.5% of the content that is on TikTok or Instagram for the Ninja CREAMi has nothing to do with SharkNinja. Nothing to do with SharkNinja. These are consumers that just went, bought the product, made the recipes and want to tell all their friends around the world, the great recipes that they've made and what they've done with the product. So there's an incredible like flywheel that's able to be created that as we get lots of units out into the market, consumers then hack our products, they kind of turn them into what they want. And then they go and they use things like social media, and it's not just Instagram and TikTok, it's Pinterest, it's Reddit, it's YouTube. I mean, like we're going to spend more money on Reddit and YouTube this year than we've ever spent on those 2 platforms. We spend more money on Pinterest than we ever did before. So I think it's about being relevant where the consumer is having the conversation. And that's where we want to make sure we position ourselves. We want to make sure that our product enables the consumer to have that content. We're delivering the hardware but they're delivering the software. They're delivering -- that is creating kind of the flywheel of consumer demand.

One of the things that's enabled a lot of this marketing investment increase has been the recapture of margin, the tailwinds over the course of the past few years. Those are now fading. As we think about the topic of margins, one question we're asking all companies at our conference is whether or not cost pressures are expected to be the same, better or worse into 2025.

Yes. I would say roughly the same. I think there's areas or signs where they could go up a little in, for example, as we are moving a lot of production outside of China. I think shippers are going to be catching up on supply that are coming from countries like Vietnam and Thailand and Cambodia, Malaysia and things like that. At the same time, when we made our first product outside of China, we made it at a 15% premium to China. And today, we're able to make product outside of China at cost parity to China. So I mean, I think there's a bunch of puts and takes, but I think in general, on the whole, we're expecting prices to be about the same.

Excellent. We're about out of time. Any final closing thoughts or comments that you'd like to leave with the audience?

Look, just that we're coming into a really exciting holiday season right now. I mean we've got a lot of new products that we're launching across a lot of different product categories. We got feedback from one retailer that like 2 weeks of product launches from SharkNinja is like a year from another company. I mean I think over the course of the next 6 weeks, you're going to see new robot products, new cordless products, new beauty products, new kitchen products, new outdoor products. And I think we get asked if kind of is there more opportunity? Are there more categories out there for Shark or Ninja to be able to expand into? And I think we definitely believe that there are.

Excellent. Well, thank you so much, Mark, for joining us, and thanks to all of you in the audience for listening in.

Thank you.