ASV Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:ASV) Q3 2018 Earnings Conference Call - Final Transcript

Good day and welcome to the ASV Holdings Incorporated Third Quarter 2018 Financial Results Conference Call. Today's conference is being recorded.

At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Andrew Rooke. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you. Molly. I think it's Andrew Rooke, but let's not worry about that too much. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for your interest in ASV and welcome to our third quarter 2018 earnings call. Joining me on the call today is Missi How, our CFO, who will take you through the financial results for the quarter, after the overview of market and strategy update from me.

(Forward-Looking Cautionary Statements)

So I will begin with slide number three and an overview of the business. Today, we reported $32.8 million in sales, $2.4 million of adjusted EBITDA and earnings per share of $0.06. Although our total revenue growth from last year's quarter was again held back by lower sales to our largest customer, we recorded 16.4% machine growth in total, our 7th consecutive quarter of year-over-year quarterly machine revenue growth.

In North America, our largest market and where our goal is to build our brand and presence, our year-over-year quarterly machine growth was 40%, with same-store sales growth of 30%. The increased sell-through from same-dealer stores is good evidence that our dealers are maturing and securing opportunities in their territories, where underlying demand and retail activity is still strong and that our efforts to work with them are gaining traction.

Last quarter, I commented that with our dealer/rental location count approaching our near-term target of 300, our focus was increasingly movement -- moving towards dealer management, that is, taking steps to facilitate higher rates of sell-through from our current dealers who sell ASV products. A key action for this was the dealer meeting that we hosted here in Grand Rapids back in September. As we recently reported, that event was attended by approximately 140 representatives from our North American network, representing over 100 dealer locations where ASV products are sold. Beyond the nearly $40 million in orders for machines that we took during those two days, we met with our partners to discuss our vision for the brand and product, and to communicate what we expect to need from dealers who want to be able to receive the highest level of incentive discounts and most attractive co-marketing and promotional commitments from us.

With the highest same-store sales we have experienced since relaunching the brand just under two years ago, clearly, we're seeing improvements in inventory turnover rates from within our dealer base and we expect to see this trend continue buoyed by demand in the underlying markets that our products serve. I'll return to this later. The other key items from our third quarter relate to the industry supply chain and input costs. With elevated levels of market demand comes some strain on the supply chain, particularly for critical components such as engines and this shortage continues to have some impact