Smith & Wesson Brands, Inc. (NASDAQ:SWBI) Q3 2023 Earnings Conference Call March 9, 2023 5:00 PM ET

Company Participants

Kevin Maxwell - General Counsel

Mark Smith - President and CEO

Deana McPherson - Chief Financial Officer

Conference Call Participants

Mark Smith - Lake Street

Rommel Dionisio - Aegis

Operator

Thank you for standing by. And welcome to Smith & Wesson’s Third Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the speakers’ presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions]

As a reminder, today’s program is being recorded. And now I’d like to introduce your host for today’s program, Kevin Maxwell, Smith & Wesson’s General Counsel. Please go ahead.

Kevin Maxwell

Thank you and good afternoon. Our comments today may contain forward-looking statements. Our use of the words anticipate, project, estimate, expect, intend, believe and other similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements.

Forward-looking statements may also include statements on topics such as our product development, objectives, strategies, market share, demand, consumer preferences, inventory conditions for our products, growth opportunities and trends, and industry conditions in general.

Forward-looking statements represent our current judgment about the future and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by our statements today.

These risks and uncertainties are described in our SEC filings, which are available on our website, along with a replay of today’s call. We have no obligation to update our forward-looking statements.

We reference certain non-GAAP financial results. Our non-GAAP financial results exclude costs related to the planned relocation of our headquarters and certain manufacturing and distribution operations to Tennessee, the spin-off of the Outdoor Products & Accessories business in fiscal 2021, COVID-19-related expenses and other costs. Reconciliations of GAAP financial measures to non-GAAP financial measures can be found in our SEC filings and in today’s earnings press release, each of which is available on our website.

Also, when we reference EPS, we are always referencing fully diluted EPS. When we discuss NICS results, we are referring to adjusted NICS, a metric published by the National Shooting Sports Foundation based on FBI NICS data.

Adjusted NICS removes those background checks conducted for purposes other than firearms purchases. Adjusted NICS is generally considered the best available proxy for consumer firearm demand at the retail counter, because we transfer firearms only to law enforcement agencies and federally licensed distributors and retailers and not to end consumers, NICS generally does not directly correlate to our shipments or market share in any given time period, we believe, mostly due to inventory levels in the channel.