Good morning. Welcome to day two of the Jefferies Global Industrials Conference here in New York City. We are on the 7:30 slot here with Latham Group. Ticker is SWIM, which is very nice. I like that. My name is Chirag Patel. I work here at Jefferies, covering the machinery, multi-industry, and distribution spaces, along with Steve Volkmann. Today, we welcome Latham Group. Presenters today are CEO Sean Gadd and CFO Oliver Gloe. Good morning. We'll do a bit of an overview here to start with, I guess. For those in the audience who may not be familiar with Latham as much as others, can you just give us a quick overview of the company, just how you would differentiate your key product categories, and then just where you scale within the pool market overall? Yeah, sure. Latham is a company that's been around for 70 years. From our perspective, we have a number of categories in which we participate in. One is fiberglass. One is vinyl pools, which is an entry level pool for us, and it actually also gives us replacement revenue. Then we have accessories around automatic pool covers. So that's essentially the three parts of the business. We're leading market share in all three categories. We do have a differentiated product and differentiated approach in how we go to market with all three of those categories, all allowing us essentially to take share. The focus is North American based at this point. Any thoughts on international exposures, things of that nature? Yeah. We are in Australia and New Zealand, and Canada as well. So we are quasi global, but majority of our business, majority of our revenue and EBITDA comes out of the U.S. Got you. As we think about the overall pool industry and the dynamics that have been facing over the last couple of years here, how would you characterize the market environment currently, some of the challenges that you may be facing, some of the opportunities that you see ahead of you? Yeah. The market, we believe, is in trough conditions. So when you think about pool starts, estimation for the U.S. is around 58,000 starts last year. We planned this year to be essentially a flat market. I think that's what we're experiencing. So we think it's in trough conditions. You have to go back to 2014 before you saw 58,000 pool starts, so obviously after the GFC. So we do think we're at the bottom, and we expect it to return over time. For us, it doesn't matter, really, at this point. One, we're taking shares, so we're able to grow no matter what the market conditions are, which is a positive for us. Two, we're trying to drive a lot of change and disruption in the industry. So, for me, you're able to do that in soft markets. It's much harder to do it when the market's flying and people don't want to change because they're sold out. That's not the situation today, so dealers and builders are looking for options, and we're able to provide them. Got you. I feel like one of the things that we look at is the idea of how consumers. I still view the pool industry as a discretionary spend at the end of the day. Given that framework, affordability comes into a key metric here at this point. Kind of frame for us how consumers are thinking about where we are within the marketplace, what rates have done for them, and then how affordability plays a factor into your opportunity. Yeah. It is all discretionary spend. So affordability does play a part in the industry, no doubt. I think from our perspective, what we're seeing is essentially almost a K-type economy, right? So, the 58,000 pools that are going in, most of those are cash buyers. It seems like we've lost the bottom part of the market, which is essentially those who use finance. So there's no doubt interest rates are not helping, and the macro is not helping. However, what we're seeing is, one, we're taking share, but two, I think people are getting used to the fact that interest rates are where they are because now they're stable. They're not really moving up or down, so no one's waiting. So we are seeing more people come into, at least on our side, coming into the decision around building a pool. The challenge you've got with a pool is, while it's discretionary, I mean, everyone knows when you build a pool, you got, like, 18 summers with your kids, right? So you do have a time. So that's still in the back of people's minds. Got you. That idea of moving everyone to the outdoor living, I do feel post-COVID, that was such a big portion of the opportunity. Certainly a pull forward during that time period. Now there's a more stable 58,000, a little bit lower over market kind of thing. Market conditions are soft. At the same time, it does feel like your products themselves lend themselves to some growth that's outside of just the full construction of a pool and things of that nature. Yeah. Like I said, I think we've got superior products than our competitive set. The reality is we are the only manufacturer of scale. When I say that, I'm particularly focusing on fiberglass when I say that, but our competitors are essentially private companies, mom-and-pop type shops that don't have the sophistication, they don't have the dollars to invest. The exciting part for me is everything I look at when we look at marketing, when we look at TV ads, when we look at our approach to the marketplace, it's almost white space, right? So we're dealing with a pretty unsophisticated competitor. I say it with respect, but it's just the fact is we've got scale, which is a significant advantage for us, and we've got a scale organization. So those two things allow us to outperform the market. I think you characterized the recent pickup in the spring demand as a little bit of pent-up opportunity and some market share gains overall. Now that we're a couple of months past that, and we're actually through the summer season now, it's getting a little chillier outside. How do you distinguish the durability of the share gains that you had? On the other side also, how does your flat outlook for the year marry at this point with the conditions overall? Yeah, I think the market conditions are what they are. I think that's pretty much played out. We've seen the summer. Obviously, the season still is winding down at this point. So the market hasn't really shown us much. We do feel good about taking share. I think that's sustainable, and I think we'll be sustainable for quite some time. We're taking share from both vinyl, and we're taking share in our vinyl category, and we're taking share with fiberglass. People migrating from vinyl up to fiberglass for a superior product. Then obviously, we're going into the Sand States, which we're taking on concrete. We're making some good progress in the Sand States. We've got pretty dialed in into what we have to go do there. And we are seeing some of that come through. I think in general, the market is not giving us much, but we are seeing good growth. And that penetration in the Sand States, where would you characterize that currently? What do you think the opportunity looks like longer term? Yeah. The opportunity for Latham is pretty large, and I say it is actually very large, 2/3 of the pools occur in the Sand States, right? Essentially the southern markets. And our penetration is much lower in the Sand States than it is in the Midwest, Northeast, and Canada, where Latham sort of began. There is a lot of opportunity there. I think we are going after a category, which is concrete. Concrete does not have a brand, so there is no one to point to necessarily. It is an industry we are going after. We do have the brand. We are starting to see good traction. We are two years now into our marketing campaign. We are starting to get some people saying, "I saw you on TV. I heard about you. Oh, it is Latham." Those are all good positive things, and then we are really early on how we go and attack the Sand States, but we are making good progress, and we are ready to sort of expand it across. We have been focusing on Florida, a little bit in Dallas, and now we are getting ready to just focus across the whole southern markets because we are pleased with the results. Excellent. If I can give you some stats to exactly the point. Yeah, that would be great. In the U.S., we estimate the fiberglass penetration to be about 25%, which means in the U.S., one out of four pools is built in fiberglass. It is significantly less in the Sand States, and that is where the opportunity sits. It is a little bit more in the non-Sand States. If you look internationally, Europe sits at 40%-50%, depending on the country, and Australia sits at 70%. So that sizes the opportunity that is in front of us. Excellent. Beyond just cost and affordability, what are the advantages of having the fiberglass and vinyl versus a concrete or, I guess, what has been known as a traditional kind of pool here in the States? I'll start with vinyl. Vinyl gives you basically a custom pool that's very affordable, okay? That's probably the number one thing to why vinyl exists today and why that category still has space. It allows essentially a blue collar to get into an affordable pool in the in-ground. That's a positive. Fiberglass, from our perspective, the number one value with fiberglass is, well, one, it's a very durable product. It's sort of set and forget. Once it's in, you never have to worry about it. There's a lifetime warranty. When you got concrete, you've got things you got to concentrate on. And obviously, at some point, you got to do an acid wash. At some point, you most likely have to do a resurface. We don't have to worry about that in fiberglass. Then we're able to get in and out of the yard in days, like three or four days, as opposed to three months. When a consumer decides to get into the world of pools and say, "I want to go." They're inspired, and they say, "It's time for a pool." They don't have to wait three months to get the pool. They can get it within a week. I think that's a massive advantage for us. We're able to The advantage, when I look at that three to four days, where you get in and out of a yard, no homeowner wants a contractor in their yard for six months. And certainly, when you get in a yard building a pool, you do fairly destructive work. Again, I know homeowners don't love that. I think we've got good advantages for fiberglass, and it allows us to get sort of good repeats in terms of every three days. When you think about a dealer who's putting in a pool or a builder who's putting in a pool, when you're putting in a pool that goes for three months or six weeks, whatever the period is, but it takes a fair amount of time, their cash flow is pretty tight. When you're turning a pool every week, we're able to deliver pretty good cash flows. And at the end of the year, a dealer's going to end up getting more money in their pocket. Are there any size restrictions on the pool or anything like that? Obviously, there are. That said, we've got plenty amount of sizes and molds. The reality is, what we're seeing as a trend is actually smaller pools are moving. Everyone's moving to smaller pools. If we think about all the developments that occurred in the south, master-planned communities sort of 10 years ago, things have been getting smaller, lots have been getting smaller. So in reality, it's actually moving towards us. It's a bit of a tailwind. So size isn't a bottleneck for us. Molds, shapes, and designs is actually coming our way as well. More rectangles is actually the trend. Not to say we don't do free-form as well, but rectangle pools are sort of moving towards us as well. Our pools, we've got ranges from Lifestyle pools where you've got sun shelves and you've got flat bottoms where people can just spend time with their kids and with their friends. Then you've got pools that are designed for exercise. So we've got the full range, that allows pretty much a homeowner to get anything that they like. In fact, I was at a builder conference yesterday, and we posed a question about what designs are we lacking, and we really didn't come up with much. Got you. It does feel like in a softer market environment, it always feels like there's a lot more competition for any given sale. What's the dynamics there? How do you feel like you compete in that market environment, and how does that affect your own pricing and dealer economics? Yeah. In reality, we're essentially a lower price product installed than concrete. Okay? So, when it comes to if someone's looking at a price, context around price, that isn't really a problem for us. When we think about our specific pricing, 2/3 of the cost of a job are labor and equipment on the job, and 1/3 is our actual product. So we're really not the driver of price. I think, in reality, when we take a price increase, so we're putting a 3% price increase out, the homeowner, the consumer's only seeing 1% of that. So it's pretty incremental. I don't see that as a lot of drama. In fact, and I go back to Sand States, we have the opportunity and we are doing this, is compressing the install cost, which actually gives us room for more pricing. Got you. I had one more thought that was completely off of the top of here, but I've forgotten it. I'll come back to it at some point. Sean, you just joined nine months ago. What have you learned about the business and the industry so far? Where do you see the greatest opportunities? What brought you into this opportunity in the first place? Yeah. So, a couple of things. I've been here for nine months. That's correct. I worked with James Hardie before that as the president of North American business. Reasons for joining Latham were pretty straightforward for me. One, I saw a great opportunity around material conversion, which there's not a lot of material conversion opportunities available in the building product space. So that was exciting for me. I joined the U.S. business with Hardie when we were around $800 million. Left it when it was over $3 billion. So, that period of growth was exciting for me, so I wanted to get a repeat on that, and I see that as the opportunity. The material conversion in the South is very similar to work I'd done when we were trying to convert vinyl to fiber cement. I thought I could bring a fair amount of, I guess, knowledge around how to do it, what market development looks like, how do you do market development, in an effective way and build a market from scratch. To be quite honest, I see it playing out. So it's exciting. The industry is a small industry, yes, but it's a little less sophisticated, which actually provides the opportunity. We can definitely bring in some sophistication into the industry that no one else can. It is wide space because like I said, unlike, I guess at Hardie, the competitive space is very disjointed and doesn't have the dollars to invest like we would. When we'd run an ad on TV, there's no other pool manufacturer you're going to hear about. You're only going to hear about Latham. When we do our work in a neighborhood, and I'll talk about our neighborhood approach, there's no one else doing that work, right? It's not like they can't do it, but they're not sophisticated enough to put it together, and they can't do it at scale. We have nine factories around, when I talk fiberglass, nine factories around the U.S. So we're close to our market. We can get to pretty much any part of the market within two days. So we've got a scale advantage. The next closest is going to be like two. So it's a very different type of scale. When I think about our neighborhood approach, we're going with a very specific approach to go and attack a neighborhood. We think about the demographics of a neighborhood to figure out where is the most likely place where a pool should go. We are not waiting for the market to come to us. We are talking about segmentation, so we are looking at household income, age of home, price point of home, size of home, size of lot, and then we are basically pinpointing, okay, this is a good neighborhood for all the right reasons. Then we go in there, and we actively work that neighborhood. When I say actively work the neighborhood, we start with a builder who comes in with us. That typically means they are going in with an agreed price for us. We are trying to get to a place where a consumer does not get a choice to go to concrete, because that is the standard. Everybody there is on concrete. Concrete is the majority of what happens in the South. We are trying to intercept that, and we are doing that with the builders. When a builder gets a sale, and we help them get that house, the first house, we then market very heavily around the house, and we are doing these events that basically brings the, because the beautiful thing about neighborhoods is all your friends, your neighbors, you have got a connection. So you have influence on them, right, as a homeowner. So when you bring them to the house, which is what we do, we basically have a pool party, and we basically show them the pool. We are there. We explain to them why Latham, why fiberglass. The builder is there. He describes why him. Then we do this over, we do three different versions of that on that one pool. Then we basically, this concept of 2 to 10. Once you get to 10 pools in a neighborhood, the neighborhood will move to fiberglass, is the belief. So that is the approach. It is playing out quite well. We have done two events so far, and out of those two events, we have got five pools per event sold, which is way better than I would have thought. Quite honestly, the cost to acquire is really low. I think the first event was around $250. Okay. Yeah. So super low. We now are putting scale to that. We were at an event yesterday, had 15 builders. Basically, we were trying to get them into the program. All of them signed up for the program. We have got now seven events on the books. So each of those events are going to drive a new neighborhood for us. Then once the neighborhood has got to 10, that builder will get referrals for life. That is the magic. So referrals close at 50%-70% of the time. They are the best lead you can get. So their brand and our brand gets into that neighborhood, and when we get to 10, then essentially we own the neighborhood. You mentioned the cost of it, to put it on. In the back of my mind as you were speaking, I thought to myself, "Man, that sounds like a big push on marketing and SG&A and that structure." Just speak to the opportunity and the capital investment that you think overall. Yeah. So I get asked this a fair bit. We run a national campaign, okay? We are going to continue the national campaign because it lifts all markets, so that is good for us. Our core market is ultimately our bank. It is our biggest book of business today. It allows us to do all the things we want to do in the south. It also, when you have got national brands, there is a natural tailwind where people are moving north to the south. So people who do move north to south already know fiberglass. So we do not have to educate a homeowner about fiberglass. Because in the south, we do have to do a lot of education. Because concrete is the solution down south, and we are trying to change that. So that overarching marketing is it is more than anyone else in our space can spend, but it is not extremely large cost. Then when you think about the investment around a job site, it is hyper local. So essentially, you targeting that neighborhood. Again, I say you targeting that neighborhood, you and the builder are doing that, and then you can take that as far as you like. So we had one in Jacksonville, which basically, the builder wanted to go out an hour drive. That was his choice, and he actually had people driving in. But again, relatively low cost. Got you. I guess from that standpoint, the builders that you are bringing into the program, have they historically been concrete, and now they are making that switch over, see the opportunity there? Yeah, there's a bit of both. But we're seeing more and more people coming from concrete, moving to fiberglass. So they're seeing the advantage of cash flow, and the market's not giving them anything. So they're seeing us driving leads, and leads are the currency in the space. They see us doing the marketing. They're seeing us driving the market and allowing them to gain support, which they're not going to get from concrete, they're not going to get from anyone else. So we're definitely seeing builders moving across from concrete and trying fiberglass. It's not a switch. They built their business model on concrete. The approach is different. What you have to do, how you think about a job that's going on for 3 months versus a job that's 3 days. So we do a lot of training. When a builder comes across, we've got boot camps that we run, and then we have people in the field that can help them get the pool set. So typically three jobs or thereabout, and they get it, and then we're off to the races. We've got a number of examples now where someone who's doing, let's say, 50 pools, starts out doing two or three fiberglass, and now 15, 20. So we're slowly moving the market across. We've got some that now are only fiberglass. Understood. So it's a bit of a mix. One of the other leadership changes that you've made here is adding a Chief Commercial Officer. Just speak to that process, the opportunity that you see within that, and what it meets on that side of the business. Yeah. When I got into Latham, what I would say is we have really good people who care and work really hard. I say that because it is important. It is a small industry, and its relationships matter. You are always going to do business with people you trust. Our people have that. There is no doubt about that. I think they are good relationship sellers. Again, I came from Hardie, where we built a, what I would argue is a world-class commercial organization. We want to basically take our sales organization and move it to becoming world-class. For that, what it means is, I think about one, we need a commercial leader that knows how to drive market development, which is Todd Antonelli, who we have just brought on. He has just joined us. He is 3 weeks in. Sales strategy, which is from our perspective, is someone who is looking at a market, understanding the dynamics, and putting a game plan together to go and execute. Then you have sales operations, which today does not exist in Latham. Sales operations is about taking that game plan and putting it into tactics and actually driving efficiency and effectiveness. Just getting the organization to be much more efficient, much more effective at selling and getting standardized sales processes in place. It is interesting to me, we do not have all that yet, and yet we are able to take share. I am very excited by the fact that when we build a commercial organization that covers all those things, which most organizations do have, we should just see acceleration when it happens. Got you. We have covered a lot about the fiberglass and the vinyl side of the equation, the market opportunity there. You do participate in other parts of the market at the same time, right? There is automatic pool safety features there. There is also pool liners and covers. Let us speak a little bit about those products and where you see that opportunity, how you go to market there as well. Yeah. I will start with pool auto covers. Auto covers is essentially a safety device for your pool. It is a good addition to the pool. I think I saw a statistic last week that said there has been no drownings of any kids or any people with a pool that has an auto cover on it. It is an important device. It also gives the benefit of less evaporation, less chemicals, and all those things. It pays back in about five to six years, so it is a good addition to the product. The number one thing there is awareness. It is still a really low awareness product, even though it has been around a while. Again, when I think about the industry, there is not a lot of marketing that is off scale. You will start seeing, even this year, all our advertising would go through a, you will see a pool, and then you are going to see an auto cover. We are trying to get that attachment together. Today, in the U.S., about 24% of all pools end up with an auto cover. We think that should be closer to 80. We have got an opportunity to grow. We have got a unique model. We sell through VARs. VAR is essentially someone who, because it is a technical install, they will do the install for the builder. We sell through them, and then we also sell through distribution. We have opened up the distribution arm. We are enabling and training distribution to utilize the product, and they become the install for the dealer or the builder. That is starting to take off as well. We see quite a lot of growth ahead of us, and a lot of it comes to awareness. Can you frame the size of that at the end of the day, the size of the business as well as the opportunity as you see it? If you want to give the numbers of the business. Yeah. It's the majority of our Coverstar category. About 2/3 is auto cover, about 1/3 is winter safety covers. And for us, it's strongly growing. It has been growing especially because of our three recent acquisitions in the Coverstar sphere. These are the VARs, right? So we own about half of the country when it comes to VAR coverage. And we see organic growth being in excess of market, right? One interesting attribute in the auto cover is it is the better safety device, right? So we call it the garage door for your pool, right? You can always jump a fence, open a gate, right? And especially your loved ones, if you have toddlers, they aren't protected by your fence, right? They can just go through the kitchen door and run into the pool area. So actually, having an auto cover in a lot of jurisdictions in the U.S. gets you out of the need to build a fence. Suddenly, the auto cover, the investment in the auto cover, which admittedly isn't a small investment, suddenly competes with the investment in the fence. Interesting. And yeah, that does make a difference in one is just right on the pool, the other is your entire yard. So it can be a very big difference. It is the better safety device. Got you. How does VAR operate within the builder community? What is their way to go to and penetrate into that market environment? Yeah. As a VAR, you got the opportunity, you can sell directly to the consumer, so now you have the ability to be on any pool. Right? It doesn't have to be a fiberglass pool, doesn't have to be a vinyl pool, it can be on a concrete pool. So they in themselves are small marketing businesses that basically sell direct to consumer. Then, so they do the installs, and then, if you're a builder and you say to a builder, "What's your revenue today on a job?" They say, "$90,000." We can get it up to $110,000 if you start adding that device into your sales pitch. The reluctancy typically is, it's a very different install to the pool. It's much more technical. So you don't have to worry about that. All you do is call the VAR and they'll install it for you. Now, obviously, that's one avenue, and then there's also builders themselves who say, "No, I've seen it installed enough. It's not that complicated. We'll do it ourselves." That's essentially how we see the connection. What's the competition like in that space for you guys? Yeah, I mean, we have competitors. Again, we have the majority share, and we are taking share. It's kind of the same sort of story. We are the ones showing, raising awareness of the product. We have the best product. So, when you ask the industry what products are the best, they typically say Coverstar, which is our brand. So we have the best product, and again, we have the largest sales organization as well. So we definitely have competitors, but we have majority share and continue to take share. Got you. I wanted to move a little bit towards the operations and the margin outlook that you guys have kind of provided here at the end of the day. The gross margin trajectory is one of the first things I was looking at. You're still targeting 35%? What's the steps to that? Where are we currently? What's the outlook? Yeah, we've done a great job growing margin levels to, let's say, 33%, driven primarily by lean manufacturing, value engineering, two programs that pay quarterly and annual dividends for us, and general cost discipline, right? Obviously, volume growth helps cost leverage, right? 2026 will be another step towards that 35%. Again, driven especially by lean manufacturing, value engineering, and cost leverage. Got you. How much, you hear lean nowadays so much across a lot of businesses and like that. Where do you feel like you are in the process? How do we continue along that journey? Where do you see that opportunity lending itself to? Is there some sort of annual target, 50 basis points? Is there anything like that? For lean manufacturing, value engineering? And value engineering. Yeah. Yeah. Starting off, lean is working on the process, value engineering is working on the product. Cost is one element of the exercise, but it is also making our product better, higher quality, easier to install. It creates capacity and so forth. The annual contribution is somewhere $8 million-$10 million. Every quarter, it is almost like clockwork, $2 million-$2.5 million. I expect that to continue for the foreseeable future. Lean is a little bit more mature. We have been at it for a number of years. We have a small central team, but then we have really lean-trained folks in all our facilities. We have about 160, 70 Kaizen events every year. Then we multiply the learnings and the findings across the plant network. So very stable contribution. Low-hanging fruits are gone, but it is project after project adding to it. I don't see that decreasing. Value engineering, we are, I don't want to say in the beginning of the journey, but we are probably 3, 4 years in. We have a handful of PhD-level material scientists in a central department that go out and change the attributes and quality and price of our products. Still some low-hanging fruits, a lot of excitement, a lot of traction. What I am especially proud of is, sometimes you have these central groups wanting to do good for the business, and they somewhat see resistance in the plant. That is not the case. We probably have more plants calling us than the other way around. So there is a lot of excitement, and I think there is still, especially in the world of value engineering, some exciting projects ahead of us. Got you. Given the overall, you are outgrowing the market, any thoughts on cost for ramp-up to meet that production opportunity? Where do you see that going in the next six, nine, 12 months kind of situation? We have the rooftop capacity. We had capacity, sufficient free capacity when the market a few years ago, and the peak of COVID was at 117,000 pools. Now we are at half of it. Since that period of time, we obviously took out some redundant capacity in the aftermath of COVID. But then we also built capacity, especially in the world of fiberglass. We now have a big plant in Canada, and through Lean, we have created capacity. So I want to say rooftop capacity is not our issue. We did, especially in Q2, had some challenges ramping up fast enough to the demand earlier this season. It is a good problem to have, some good learnings for next year. But I think the business as it stands can supply far in excess of we are currently supplying. So capacity is not of our concern. Again, we've got to staff, go prepared into the next season. I think you'll see, given the footprint that we have, especially on the capacity side, you'll see the benefit over time from cost leverage, through the share gains that we have achieved so far and that we're going to achieve in the periods to come. But also, ultimately, the market is going to rebound. The long-term average in the market is 100,000 pools. Long term, my stats go back 45 years, it's a little bit more than 100,000 pools, and today we're at 58. Right. I guess we talked a lot about the organic initiatives that are being taken place, the things that you guys are doing internally. Let's talk a little bit about the M&A opportunity. Where do you see opportunities across increasing product sets or in that avenue? Yeah, we're excited about the M&A opportunities. We have, looking back, bought about a company a year for the last one and a half decades. We look for adjacencies. We bought the Radiant business, which is partially above, partially in-ground pool if you're on a sloped yard. We bought the VARs. We've just earlier this year completed an acquisition of an Australian business, the Freedom Pools & Spas business. So we're excited about that. There are about 20, 25 companies on our radar screen which have a similar profile. Think getting us into a new geography, an adjacency in terms of product lines or targeting a competitor. We are the consolidator in the industry. We know all those companies. They are private companies. Most of the acquisitions, they're all self-source funded. Most of the acquisitions come to us because there's a milestone birthday of the owner. The next generation is not as interested. There are exciting companies on our radar screen. Again, we've bought about a company a year, and hopefully that's continuing, but there are ample opportunities to continue that journey. Excellent. I look up and I see that we're already at time. I do appreciate you guys coming through. Thank you guys so much. Thank you.