Traeger released earnings yesterday and lowered guidance for the year. While we wrote an article that focused on their financial performance, now we’re going to get into their products.
New Traeger Grills
On Traeger’s earnings call CEO Jeremy Andrus said that there will be two new grills coming out in Q1 2023. They didn’t provide any details other than they’ve already shown the grills to key retail partners.
We’re not sure what the new grills will be but if we had to guess, one could be the Traeger Trailhead, which is a possible new portable pellet grill. The other is more of a wild guess, but it could be an updated Pro or Ironwood with an easy ash cleanout. They have had multiple patents on new ash management system and have said they like to have innovation trickle down grills. The Timberline was released earlier this year with an easy cleanout.
Update: Traeger to release a new Ironwood and the Flatrock griddle
Retail Activity
Destocking
While Traeger had a huge grill sales decrease of 64.2%, they said on the call that it’s not as bad as it looks. Their retailers are destocking, or selling their inventory without replenishing it, which lowers sales from Traeger but not to the consumer. This is something we also heard on Middleby’s earnings call.
Grocery Sales
Traeger has been actively adding grocery stores to sell their sauces and rubs. They’re on-track to gain 600 grocery store locations on the year, including stores like Kroger and Meijer (for the Michigan folks).
Pellets
In Q3 Traeger launched new 30 lb, value sized bags of their pellets. Previously they sold 30 lb bags at Costco, but now they have different blends at Home Depot. They see strong retention with their pellet buyers and good cross-sell between grills and pellets. One possible headwind they mentioned in the pellet space though, is there is a large retailer they work with that’s going to start selling house branded pellets.