Lakeland Industries, Inc.
Q4 2021 Earnings Call Transcript

Published: 15 Apr 2021

[Operator:]

Before we begin, parties are reminded that statements made during this call contain forward-looking information within the meanings of the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Forward-looking statements are all statements other than statements of historical facts, which reflect Management's expectations regarding future events and operating performance, and speak only as of today, April 15, 2021. Forward-looking statements are based on current assumptions and analysis made by the Company in light of its experience, and its perception of historical trends, current conditions, including business affairs, pertaining to the COVID-19 pandemic, expect future developments and other factors that believes are appropriate under circumstances. These statements are subject to a number of assumptions, risks and uncertainties that are factored into the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. General economic and business conditions, the business opportunities that may be presented to you and pursued by the company, changes in law or regulations and other factors, many of which are beyond the control of the company.

[Charles Roberson:]

Thank you, and good afternoon to you, all. We appreciate your taking the time to join our Fiscal 2021 Fourth Quarter Financial Results Conference Call. I'm joined here today by Lakeland's Chief Financial Officer Allen Dillard. Lakeland's Fiscal 2021 has proven to be the most complex, yet most rewarding year since our founding in 1982. In our nearly 40 years, we have been through many black swan crisis situations, never have we emerged from any of those prior events with consolidated annual revenues in excess of $100 million. And none of them could have adequately prepared us for the COVID-19 global pandemic. Having an entire year of COVID-19 behind us, I would like to begin our Fiscal 2021 year-end earnings call with a brief review of the year in order to put our financial performance into context with regard to Lakeland's current strategies and outlook for Fiscal 2022. At the onset of the COVID-19 outbreak, we put in place a strategy, dedicating our manufacturing capacity to our industrial customer base and serving the COVID-19 market only to the extent that we had capacity beyond the requirements of our core customers. Knowing that black swan events frequently leave industrial end users short of products they need to carry out their work safely. Lakeland sought to secure a new every day industrial customers and increase market penetration before pursuing sales into what we knew would be a transient COVID-19 market. Focusing on servicing our existing customer base first not only provides for increased market penetration, but it ensures that capital and resources invested in expansion are directed toward long-term growth and not ephemeral opportunities like mass manufacturing. This was a key lesson learned from the West Africa Ebola outbreak in 2015 and 2016. Our sales to new customers increased market penetration with existing customers and orders for direct COVID applications are largely indistinguishable from one another because we sell through distribution, which clouds transparency as to the end user and application in most cases. all three cases are related to COVID-19 either for direct use, or as a result of supply issues caused by the pandemic.

[Allen Dillard:]

Thank you, Charlie. From a financial results perspective, Fiscal 2021 was an incredible year. For the seventh consecutive quarter, our revenues exceeded $27 million. For each of the past four quarters, our revenues have been in excess of $35 million. Our Q4 press release and 10-K will provide a detailed review of our financial performance. Rather than repeat that, I'd like to talk today about some of the more important issues that shaped the year's performance and provide the framework for the future. We believe we will exit the COVID-19 era with critical market share gains and an enhanced visibility into sustainable improvements. Collectively, we envision these elevating our business performance from what was reported before the pandemic set in. One critical area has been at fixed management through investments in manufacturing facilities and IT systems. Charlie touched upon this and I'll talk further to it, particularly as it impacts inventory. We continue to diversify our raw material and component suppliers, qualifying multiple suppliers whenever possible to enable us to press for price reductions and better payment terms as well as providing for continuity of supply. We are sourcing raw materials and components from most of the countries in which we have operations in order to reduce freight costs and inventory levels. The insights gained from managing the complexities brought on by the pandemic, through our ERP system have proven to be extremely valuable. We are re-engineering many products to harmonize designs to meet the requirements of multiple global markets, while reducing the raw materials used and reducing the direct labor required as much as possible, thereby eliminating a number of SKUs based on local search or preferences. The result is improved manufacturing throughput and reduced inventory levels. Disposable and chemical SKUs are expected to increase by approximately 50% from COVID response levels as we settle into our post-COVID product mix strategy. The result will be a reduction in SKUs of about 40% from pre-COVID and benefits our inventory efficiencies. Sustainable improvements are being realized from these ongoing efforts. Early benefits were improved pricing strategies and international market entry while more recently, we have benefited from IT-driven decision making. Consider that our gross profit as a percentage of sales was 27.7% in Q4 2019, followed by 37.7% in q4 2020, and then increasing to 49.2% in Q4 2021. That's an improvement of over 20 points in two years. At present, raw material supply appears to have caught up with demand, albeit at prices above pre-COVID-19 pricing. We anticipate raw material pricing to continue at inflated levels through most of our FY 2022. As noted we did experience significant price increases for fabric during FY 2021 and managed through our available manufacturing capacity to lower cost and increased pricing to meet customer demands at these higher prices. Customers responded and have to drive our record performance as we saw growth in sales from our diversified geographic footprint and focused product offering. For the year, U.S. sales were up 26% to nearly $71 million; internationally, UK European sales were up 80% to $16.8 million; Mexico's sales were up over 100% to $5.7 million; Asia sales were up 71% to $31.2 million; Canada sales were up 42% to $13.6 million; Latin America sales were up 45% to $12.1 million in sales; and other foreign markets were up 147% to $9 million. Sales for traditional industrial use by our mainstream customers were up from the second quarter, following pandemic shutdowns of factories and also up from the third quarter. We have been winning business for new customers for disposable and chemical product lines when they could not get supply from other manufacturers. In terms of our product mix diversification, disposables, which continues to be our largest product group, increase to nearly $108 million for the year, up from $53 million in Fiscal 2020. Chemical suit sales were $29.1 million, up from $23 million in the prior year. Both disposables and chemical product groups benefited from organic growth, but the primary driver was COVID-19-related demand. As businesses redirected ordinary purchasing to COVID defense related products, sales in our other product categories declined. We saw improvement as the year progressed. Fire products declined to $6.2 million in Fiscal 2021 from $8.6 million in Fiscal 2020. Gloves were $3 million in Fiscal 2021, down from $3.1 million in Fiscal 2020. High vis products were $4.1 million, which was down from $7.8 million in Fiscal 2020 and wovens were $7.1 million versus $10.3 million in Fiscal 2020. High Performance wear, one of our newer product lines with higher margin contributions to the complexity of the garments contributed over $1.7 million in sales, versus $1.6 million in the prior year. Operating expenses as a percentage of net sales was 22.1% for Fiscal 2021, as compared to 29.7% for prior year. Operating margins were 27.8% for Fiscal 2021, up from 5.5% in the prior year. With respect to our SG&A expenses, we certainly spent more in Fiscal 2021 than in the prior year, since sales commissions and freight out cost increased on the higher order levels. We've been actively managing our expenses and driving cost out of the business through investments in technology, and process improvements. During Fiscal 2021, we entered into an agreement with Bank of America for a new borrowing facility. This required the pay down of prior facility, so we eliminated our remaining debt of $1.2 million during the year. The B of A facility consists of a senior secured $12.5 million revolving credit facility, which includes $5 million Letter of Credit sub-facility, and an option to convert up to $5 million of the facility into a term loan facility. The facility also includes an accordion feature under which the company may request from time to time, an increase in the revolving commitment of about $5 million for a total commitment of up to $17.5 million. We have aligned the size of our new credit facility to reflect our current capital requirements, while incorporating expansion flexibility. At the same time, we received improved pricing, decreased administration, and will have access to Bank of America's global platform for cash management. This facility and its enhanced features reflect our efforts to optimize all aspects of our business and financial operations aimed at better supporting our continued worldwide growth, including being used to augment our financial toolbox as we seek opportunities to deploy capital to fuel organic and inorganic growth. With a substantial increase in operating profits, our tax expense also increased. Income tax expense consists of federal, state and foreign income taxes. With an income tax rate of 19.9% in Fiscal 2021, our income tax expense was $8.7 million, up from $5.8 million in Fiscal 2020. Lakeland's net operating loss for U.S. Federal Tax person purposes will be fully utilized during Fiscal 2021. The net operating loss for state purposes, is estimated to be approximately $22.7 million at January 31, 2021 across multiple jurisdictions. Net income for Fiscal 2021 was $35.3 million, or $4.40 per basic share and $4.33 per diluted share, compared to Fiscal 2020 net income of $3.3 million or $0.41 cents per share. No shares were repurchased during Fiscal 2021 as part of the company's stock buyback program. The company did increase the amount available under this program to $5 million, which we announced in February to increase our flexibility. Free cash flow from operations for the year grew to a record $39.4 million, up from $3.6 million in Fiscal 2020. The company's cash position grew with each successive quarter in Fiscal Year 2021. Our cash balance at January 31, 2021, was a record $52.6 million, an increase of $38 million from the end of the prior Fiscal Year. While our market capitalization doubled during the course of the year, cash per basic common share increased to approximately $6.58 at January 31, 2021, from $1.83 per share at the end of Fiscal 2020. Lakeland is relatively asset-light business with capital expenditures for Fiscal 2021 of under $1.7 million, as compared with $1 million in the prior year. The majority of capital spending in the year was for investments in our technology platform and manufacturing capacity increases. Our CapEx spending is expected to continue to increase in Fiscal 2022 for continuation of our IT investments, expansion of our sales and marketing platforms and additional manufacturing capacity. The company's future manufacturing investments call for increases in production capacity of new product lines in Vietnam, India and Mexico. We continue to create flexibility among our production facilities for our primary product lines, which include disposables, chemical and critical environment. These objectives support our manufacturing resiliency and flexibility and they also complement the existing methods of factory floor efficiencies yielded by our ERP systems and data-centric planning processes. Outside of the U.S., our ERP system deployment will continue on a country-by-country basis among our larger international operations during the next 9 to 21 months. As a result and based on our experience to date, we expect to extract even greater efficiency from our international operations, which comprises roughly half of our consolidated revenues and will be incremental to our top-line growth initiatives. After paying off our debt and funding capital investments, the increase in cash of $38 million was primarily a result of increased profitability, improved working capital efficiencies, including AR collections and inventory management that resulted from our investment in our IT systems. This led to an increase in inventory terms. Inventory decreased $0.4 million during the year even as sales grew, unit volumes increase, our customer base for disposable and chemical garments grew, and certain of our other product lines experienced lower year-over-year demand due to purchasing priorities amid the pandemic. As mentioned, we ended the year with no debt and full availability under our borrowing facilities. Working capital was $108 million at January 31, 2021, up from $66.9 million at the beginning of the fiscal year. The company's current ratio improved to 7.8 to 1 in January 31, up 26% from January 31, 2020. More than just numerous record financial performance metrics throughout Fiscal 2021, our results demonstrate a quality of earnings and cash flow, which has benefited from improvements and profitability measures, factory floor and distribution efficiencies and operating leverage. As we mentioned throughout the past year, COVID-19 provided us with a proving ground for change that will benefit Lakeland well into the future. This concludes my remarks. I will turn the call back to the operator to open the call for questions.

[Operator:]

Our first question comes to line is Alex Fuhrman with Craig Hallum. Please, proceed with your question.

[Alex Fuhrman:]

Great. Thanks very much for taking my question, and congratulations on a really fantastic year. Now that things are starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel and industrial activity is starting to pick up, I'd be curious where you're starting to see the biggest increases in green shoots in your traditional business -- both in terms of where in the world you're starting to see the increases as well as which of your industry end users are really picking up first?

[Allen Dillard:]

Alex, that's kind of a mixed question. We still have COVID direct sales running in some cases in Eastern Europe. So, there's kind of a mixed performance. I think that in terms of industrial strength returning the two places that we're looking to, the most are China and the U.S. and Canada -- well, China and the U.S. are among the first countries in the world to kind of open back up and get back to normalized business. The first attempts at it in the U.S. were in Q2. China was along the same line. So I think that's where we're actually seeing it. The U.S. start was a little more fitful than China's, so we've kind of seen the stop and start or a stutter, but it appears to be on track at this point in the U.S.

[Alex Fuhrman:]

Great, that's really helpful, Allen. Thanks. And then, how should investors be thinking about gross margin over the course of 2021 and just longer term? You had an incredible 50% gross margin this year. It sounds like a lot of the improvements you've seen there in terms of efficiencies on the supply chain and reducing the number of SKUs you're manufacturing are going to continue post-pandemic, but maybe some of the pricing starts to fade a little bit. So, how should investors be thinking about gross margin in Q1 and then for the rest of this year?

[Charles Roberson:]

Alex, we're gonna see pricing pressures. That's for certain. Allen has parsed our margins more than anyone else in the company and I'm gonna let him speak in more detail to that.

[Allen Dillard:]

Yes, there's three factors there, Alex, that we're going to see impact our margins going forward. One to your point around pricing might be a bit of a headwind as Charlie discussed in his remarks. We recognized there's a pricing bubble as a result of the COVID demand. But at the end of the day, we're very confident that pricing in the PPE market has been elevated as a result of COVID well beyond the post-pandemic era. So, we think we will see some settlement in the pricing side, but we think it will shake out at levels above the pre-pandemic levels. Similar to what we're seeing on the raw material supply side from a cost perspective. The other things that we're doing are around inventory management and manufacturing efficiencies. The two things on the efficiency side has been our investment in our capacity expansions, which has been a significant upgrade to our processes and our equipment. But, probably the bigger driver there has been the consolidation of our SKUs that are in our normal production, going forward. With that reduction of 40% beyond pre-pandemic levels, we've created a substantial improvement in our throughput ability at our facilities. And then on the management side, we've invested in additional leadership in the global supply chain area and are beginning to utilize our technology tools much better than we were doing before. We're creating visibility, greater visibility into our lead times and into our inventory cycles, so that we are planning our production more efficiently going forward. And we expect while margins won't settle out, at the levels, we enjoy pre-pandemic, we're definitely going to see them settle out at levels substantially higher than we were enjoying immediately pre-pandemic.

[Alex Fuhrman:]

Great. That's really helpful. Thanks, Allen, thanks, Charlie.

[Charles Roberson:]

Thank you, Alex.

[Operator:]

There seems to be no further questions at this time. So, I would like to turn the call back over to Mr. Roberson for any closing comments.

[Charles Roberson:]

Thank you. We appreciate your participation on Lakeland's Fiscal 2021 Fourth Quarter Financial Results Conference Call. As we look ahead to Fiscal 2022, we continue to be well-positioned as the new standard of excellence for PPE manufacturers anywhere in the world with an incredibly strong balance sheet and an optimized operating platform with further room for improvement. We're excited for the new year. Thank you again for joining us on today's conference call and have a nice day.

[Operator:]

With that, this concludes today's teleconference. You may now disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation and have a wonderful day.