Smith & Wesson Brands, Inc. (SWBI) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Smith & Wesson Brands Inc. Annual Meeting of Stockholders. I would now like to hand the conference over to your host today, Mr. Robert L. Scott, Chairman of the Board. Please go ahead, sir.

The annual meeting of the shareholders of Smith & Wesson Brands, Inc. will please come to order. I'm Bob Scott, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Smith & Wesson Brands, Inc. and as such, I will act as Chairman of this meeting. Chris Scott, our acting General Counsel, will act as Recording Secretary of this meeting. Also here with us today are Mark Smith, our President and Chief Executive Officer; Deana McPherson, our Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer and Assistant Secretary. Representatives of Deloitte & Touche LLP, our independent auditor, is also available at this meeting via telephone conference call. An agenda that outlines the order of business for this meeting and the rules of conduct for this meeting have been made available. Please note that the use of any recording device or similar equipment by anyone attending this meeting via the webcast or telephone is strictly prohibited. I think it best that we proceed with the formal business matters properly before this meeting. As set forth in the proxy materials previously furnished to stockholders as amended by the supplemental proxy materials we filed with the SEC on September 10, 2021. After the formal meeting is adjourned, Mark Smith, our President and Chief Executive Officer, will make a few remarks, after which we will address stockholder questions. Though we may not be able to answer every single question, we will do our best to provide a response to as many as questions as possible that are germane to this meeting. I now call upon Deana McPherson to report as to the mailing of proxy materials and the notice of this meeting.

Mr. Chairman, an Affidavit of distribution of written notice of this annual meeting has been prepared by Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc., the company's mailing agent. The Affidavit states that the notice of meeting and accompanying proxy statement were duly mailed and deposited with the United States post office commencing on August '18, 2021, to all stockholders of record at the close of business on August 4, 2021, the date fixed by the Board of Directors as the record date for stockholders entitled to vote at this meeting. The Affidavit will be filed as part of the record of this meeting.

As established by the Board of Directors and as stated in the notice of this meeting, only stockholders of record of the company's common stock on August 4, 2021, may vote to this meeting. At this time, I appoint Christel Pauli of American Election services, LLC as the inspector and teller of election. I now request she canvas the number of shares of common stock of the company represented at this meeting present, either virtually or by proxy to determine the presence of a quorum. After we have voted on all matters that come before the stockholders, the inspector and teller of election will report the preliminary results of each vote.

Mr. Chairman, I have so far counted a majority of the outstanding shares of common stock of the company present at the meeting, either virtually or by proxy, and eligible to vote at this meeting. I will continue to be available during the meeting to count additional shares of common stock if more stockholders or proxies join the meeting.

Based on the report of the inspector and teller of election, I declare that a quorum is present at this meeting, and as such, the annual meeting of the stockholders of the company may proceed. At this time, we will proceed to vote on matters properly before the stockholders of the company as described in more detail in the proxy statement. The polls, with respect to these matters, are open. Any stockholder who has not yet voted or wishes to change their vote may do so by clicking on the Voting button on the web portal and following the instructions there. The first order of business is the election of 8 directors to serve until the company's next annual meeting of stockholders and until their successors are elected and qualified. The nominees for election as set forth in the proxy statement are: Robert L. Scott, Michael F. Golden; Anita D. Britt, Fred M. Diaz, John B. Furman, Barry M. Monheit, Mark B. Smith, and Denis G. Suggs. The second order of business is the proposal to provide a nonbinding advisory vote on the compensation of the company's named executive officers for fiscal 2021. The third order of business is the proposal to ratify the appointment of Deloitte & Touche LLP as the independent registered public accountant in the company for the fiscal year ending April 30, 2022. The Audit committee of the Board of Directors has appointed Deloitte & Touche LLP as the consolidated -- to audit the consolidated financial statements of the company for the fiscal year ending April 30, 2022, and the Board of Directors recommends the stockholders to vote in favor of the ratification of the appointment. The fourth order of business is to approve our 2021 stock purchase plan to replace our expiring 2011 employee stock purchase plan. The fifth order of business is to vote on a stockholder proposal submitted by the Adrian Dominican Sisters. The Board of Directors strongly opposes this proposal and recommends that the shareholders vote against this proposal. I now recognize Sr. Judy Byron, an authorized representative of the Adrian Dominican Sisters for a period of no more than 3 minutes for the purpose of formally presenting the stockholder proposal for consideration by the stockholders of the company. Sr. Judy Byron, you may proceed.

Thank you, Mr. Scott. Good afternoon, Mr. Smith & Shareholders of Smith & Wesson. I am Sr. Judy Byron here representing the Adrian Dominican Sisters and 14 co-filers who are members of the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility. We ask for your support for proposal #5, requesting that our company develop a human rights policy to help it mitigate human rights risks throughout its operations and supply chain and through sales of firearms to civilians. You may recall that a number of us put forward a proposal in 2018 requesting a report on gun safety. Over 60% of you saw fit to pass that proposal, and we're grateful for your support. This year's proposal is nearly identical to when we submitted for the proxy in 2019, which more than 1/3 of you supported. We refiled this proposal in 2020 but offered to withdraw it in exchange for a conversation with management, where we could, in good faith, work towards the common goal of making our business safer, safer for our company and safer for the public, including our children who are too often the victims of gun violence. Unfortunately, the provisions management insisted on for that conversation were so onerous that we were left with no option but to rescind our offer. And here we are forced once again to invoke the proxy process. I assure you this is not our preferred method of engagement. In fact, we were able to convene a very cordial and productive dialogue with team members at [ Steinberger ] last year. These conversations build trust and a desire to achieve a common understanding. We have never attempted to conceal our deep concern about the devastating tool of gun violence in our communities, nor the fact that we are proponents of gun safety, including a tightening of regulations that would prevent guns from getting into the wrong hands. The majority of us are people of faith, some of us school teachers and health professionals. I expect that you're as troubled as we are when another gun violence event occurs, especially when involving a Smith & Wesson firearm. Our advocacy on gun safety has been characterized by Smith & Wesson management as a ruse, whose real intention is to put the company out of business and to abolish the second amendment. We have always said this is not our agenda. Again, we seek to make the business, the products and the consumers who buy them safer. We seek, as everyone here maturely do, to save lives. Undisputedly, something must be done about the misuse of guns in our country. As a leading firearms manufacturer, we genuinely believe Smith & Wesson has the knowledge and the expertise to engineer the solutions we need to reduce gun violence and save lives. In conclusion, a human rights policy would help Smith & Wesson demonstrate that it is neither tone deaf nor callous to the cries for change.

Thank you, Sr. Judy Byron. Any stockholder who has not yet voted or wishes to change their vote may do so by clicking on the Voting button on the web portal and following instructions there. [Voting]

Now that everyone has had the opportunity to vote, the polls, with respect to these matters, are closed. At this time, I will ask for the report of the inspector and teller of election on the preliminary voting results for the stockholders of the company.

Mr. Chairman, the preliminary vote report shows that each of the 8 nominated directors received a majority of the votes cast. The preliminary vote report also shows that the nonbinding advisory vote on the proposal to approve the compensation of the company's named executive officers for fiscal 2021, the proposal for the ratification of the appointment of Deloitte & Touche LLP and the proposal to approve the 2021 employee stock purchase plan have all been approved. The preliminary vote further shows that the stockholder proposal was not approved. The company will be reporting the final vote results in a current report on Form 8-K to be filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission within 4 business days.

Thank you, Ms. Pauli. As there is no further business to come before the meeting, I declare the annual meeting of stockholders of Smith & Wesson Brands, Inc. adjourned. I'll now turn the call over to Chris Scott, our acting General Counsel.

Thank you, Bob. Mark Smith, our President and Chief Executive Officer, will have brief remarks before we proceed with a question-and-answer session. Before Mark speaks with you, I'd like to remind you that what we say today may contain forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements include statements regarding our expectations, intentions, beliefs, projections and other similar words regarding the future. Such forward-looking statements represent our current judgments about the future and are subject to various risks and uncertainties. Forward-looking statements and the various risks and uncertainties to which they are subject are detailed in our securities filings, including our annual report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended April 30, 2021. Also, if you have questions for us on today's call, please remember to enter them online now. We will begin with a few questions that we received in advance of the meeting, after which we will take stockholder questions that are being entered today on the web portal. Please note that we will attempt to answer as many questions as time allows, but we will only address questions related to the business of the meeting. Out of consideration for others, please limit yourself to one question. Now I'll turn the call over to Mark.

Thank you, Chris, and thank you, everyone, for joining us today. First, as always, I'd like to take a moment to thank our employees for their resilience and dedication throughout a very successful but also very challenging year. As I've said before, each and every member of our team has faced adversity in their personal and professional lives this year that we could not have ever imagined. And yet, they rose to the challenge without hesitation, coming together to support each other through a very difficult year and making sure that the company that they love never missed a beat. And the results speak for themselves. By nearly every financial and operating metric, fiscal 2021 was a record-breaking year for our Iconic 170 year old company. As we all know, the past year has seen an exceptional increase in the number of Americans who have chosen to exercise their second amendment rights for the first time, with some estimates now reaching as high as 13 million new firearms owners since the beginning of the pandemic. By leveraging our manufacturing infrastructure model that enables us to react rapidly to the shifts in demand, which occur in our industry, we were able to deliver an impressive 70% increase in unit shipments during the year, which led to full year revenue of just under $1.1 billion, surpassing the $1 billion mark for the first time. In keeping with our operating model, the team held fixed costs largely flat despite doubling top line revenue year-over-year and subsequently, drove net income for the year of nearly $244 million and generated over $317 million in cash from operations. Without a doubt, an impressive performance by the entire Smith & Wesson team. But what I'm most excited about is how well we are now positioned moving forward. From a strictly financial perspective, we used the cash we generated in fiscal 2021 to completely pay off our $160 million debt, return over $8 million to shareholders through dividends and reduce our outstanding shares by over 14%, all in the first 10 months as a stand-alone company since the spin-off. This is in keeping with our stated capital allocation strategy, which focuses on returning excess capital to our shareholders, and you can look forward to us continuing to demonstrate that commitment going forward. Most importantly though, from a market perspective, we could not be in a better position. We outpaced the marketplace by over 28% as measured by adjusted NICS, with our manufacturing and logistics teams producing and shipping nearly 2.5 million units last fiscal year. Many of these market share gains were to new firearms owners who now have brand loyalty to Smith & Wesson. And so we recorded over 45 instructional videos for our Gunsmarts program, along with our professional shooting team on topics ranging from the basics of responsible firearms ownership, how to find a local fire arms social community or increase your skill and become a proficient target shooter. And these videos have been viewed now over 2 million times. We completely redesigned and relaunched our website to improve ease of use and brand messaging. And that has been very well received by the over 16 million people who have visited our site for the first time in fiscal 2021. We held the first ever virtual show in the firearms industry, and we produced the first ever brand anthem for the company, a powerful video highlighting the values and beliefs that Smith & Wesson shares with firearms owners across the country. We're installing state of the art touch screen interactive displays at over 50 major retail locations around the country. And last, but certainly not least, our product design teams are hard at work with plans to launch 10 unique brand-new products this upcoming fiscal year, keeping our loyal consumers excited about us and keeping that momentum going. As I've highlighted before, our renewed focus on being a pure-play firearms company has allowed us to move the needle very quickly across every function of the business and in a very short amount of time. When we combine our results of the past year, our healthy balance sheet and focus on shareholder return, the well-publicized influx of first-time firearms owners, our talented team, our market share growth over the past year, our iconic brand and our millions of loyal followers, even before the pandemic, we are extremely excited for the future of Smith & Wesson. I will now turn the call over to Deana to identify questions that we have received.

Thank you, Mark. Our first question is, knowing the business is cyclical, what is the long-term framework for return of capital?

That's a great question. I think you can kind of think about it, as we've talked about before in some of our Analyst days and communications we had with the investors, we're going to hold a minimum. We should be holding a minimum of about $100 million in cash. We look to continue a steady increase of the dividend. And then any excess cash or capital beyond that, that we don't need for operational needs, I think you can expect that we're going to continue returning that to the shareholders in the same model as you've seen over the past year.

Okay. Great. Our second question. Part of it may be to know, have you begun to see any industry impact from the newbie gun owners who entered the fray on the past 12 to 18 months, the 8 million to 9 million first timers? What can the company share as to how these new owners are being addressed going forward on the marketing side? And further, is it too soon to see them start their second, third and fourth [ time ]?

Yes. I think it's going to be hard to obviously parse out the increased mix that we're seeing right now, how many of those are new buyers are returning firearms enthusiasts. So what we have seen is, although the NICS are definitely down from where they were last year this time, they're still very much elevated versus where they have been historically. And I think a lot of that is that continued excitement around firearms. And those new firearms owners, as we've kind of talked about before, we expect somewhere between 25%, 30% of those to come back and return and purchase their second, third and subsequent firearms. In terms of what are we doing to market to them and understand who they are and what their purchase drivers are, we spend a lot of time and effort over the last year, kind of looking at this particular segment and trying to understand who are those folks, what are their purchase drivers? Why are they becoming firearms consumers? And how can we reach out to them, connect with them, make sure that they've got all the tools, et cetera, they need through our Gunsmarts program to be responsible for arms owners and become firms enthusiast. So we're doing a lot of that because I think it's just the right thing to do and the right thing to do for our industry. But also, obviously, it's branded Smith & Wesson. So we're looking to obviously cement that brand loyalty with them as well.

Okay. Our third question, when can you meaningfully shrink the market cap with a buyback?

Yes, I think as Deana has covered before in some of our earnings calls, we do have a $50 million authorization outstanding at this point. And we're going to continue to be kind of optimistic with -- or opportunistic with that. And -- but in terms of any further share buybacks or authorizations, just to have the tax rules around our spin off, we're going to have to wait until August of 2022. But as I said in response to the first question, in terms of our capital allocation, I think you can expect that, that is going to be one of the tools that we -- when we look to take further advantage of going forward once we kind of surpass that 2-year mark post-spin off.

Okay. That concludes our question-and-answer period. If we did not answer your question today, please feel free to e-mail [email protected], and a member of the Investor Relations team will reply to you. Mark, I'll now turn the call back over to you.

Thank you, Deana, and thank you, everyone, for joining us today. We look forward to a prosperous fiscal 2022.

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.