Marine Products Corporation (NYSE:MPX) Q3 2024 Earnings Conference Call October 24, 2024 8:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Ben Palmer - President and CEO
Mike Schmit - Chief Financial Officer

Conference Call Participants

Griffin Bryan - D.A. Davidson

Operator

Good morning. And thank you for joining us for Marine Products Corporation’s Third Quarter 2024 Financial Earnings Conference Call. Today’s call will be hosted by Ben Palmer, President and CEO; and Mike Schmit, Chief Financial Officer.

At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. Instructions will be provided at that time for you to queue up for questions. I would like to advise everyone that this conference call is being recorded.

I will now turn the call over to Mr. Schmit.

Mike Schmit

Thank you, and good morning. Before we begin, I want to remind you that some of the statements that will be made on this call could be forward-looking in nature and reflect a number of known and unknown risks. Please refer to our press release issued today, along with our 2023 10-K and other public filings that outline those risks, all of which can be found at www.marineproductscorp.com.

In today’s earnings release and conference call, we’ll be referring to several non-GAAP measures of operating performance and liquidity. We believe these non-GAAP measures allow us to compare performance consistently over various periods. Today’s press release and our website contain reconciliations of these non-GAAP measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures.

I’ll now turn the call over to our President and CEO, Ben Palmer.

Ben Palmer

Thanks, Mike, and thank you all for joining our call. Third quarter results remained negative compared to prior year, as we had signaled they would, in a very difficult demand environment. We and our peers in the marine industry continue to navigate a tough period, managing costs and production as best we can until consumer demand picks up.

There have been some minor positive developments regarding channel inventory levels and interest rates. However, dealers continue to exhibit caution with respect to new orders. We have reduced costs as appropriate through manufacturing headcount reductions and scaled back our production to allow showroom inventories to shrink. We are taking decisive and prudent measures in the near-term without sacrificing longer-term opportunities or jeopardizing our operations.

With regard to dealer inventory, levels of our products in the field have come down and we are comfortable with current levels. While we don’t disclose detailed quarterly dealer inventory counts, we are pleased that boats in the field are trending lower. On a sequential basis compared to the second quarter of this year, field units were down 13% versus prior year were down 4%. Just as we did last quarter, we have extended our promotional programs, as we believe these are critical to supporting our dealers and incentivizing consumers. We have also enhanced our third-party floor plan financing program to include added features and more promotional capabilities.