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It’s the weekend before Halloween and there’s something spooky going on in Palatine, IL. I’m talking about the amount of debt that Weber has of course. They have so much leverage that their largest shareholder, BDT Capital, has made an acquisition offer stating that “the company’s current leverage position is unsustainable.”
In their offer, they also preemptively said that they won’t support a sale to anyone else. That leaves Weber with two options, take on more debt from BDT Capital, which could be unsustainable, or sell to BDT Capital. We’ll see what happens here, but I would guess that Weber won’t be a public company for long.
While Weber hasn’t announced when they’ll release earnings for the most recent quarter, we’ll get a peek at how the summer finished out for Camp Chef parent Vista Outdoor next Wednesday. They gave preliminary financial results this week, but we’ll have to wait for the conference call to decipher them because the results were very high level.
Vista Outdoor recently was named a top procurement organization based on some quantitative metrics. That no doubt has helped them weather the logistic challenges of the past few years. If they want to keep that performance going, they’ll have to do it without a top executive. It was announced this week that their CFO is leaving for the same role at Keurig Dr Pepper.
While some companies handle that news with a generic, sterile press release, it was good to see Vista Outdoor put out a nice press release about it. CEO Chris Metz even commented that this was “exact right next opportunity” for the outgoing CFO.
Solo Brands announced this week that they’ll release earnings the week following Vista Outdoor, right after Traeger. Whether intentional or not, they always seem to release within a day of each other.
Solo Stove has been on a new product release binge lately. They continued it this week with a flame resistant blanket through a collaboration with Rumpl. Meant to keep you warm and safe from a popping fire, it’s their latest attempt to lengthen the outdoor season.
Whether Weber sells their company or not, it’s clear that they are focused on gas grills. Last week we saw a dual-burner patent and this week one came out for an L-shaped smoker box for a gas grill. It’s designed to lengthen the time that it will produce smoke and it has an attached water pan to help the smoke stick to your food.
Despite California banning gas stoves, water heaters and furnaces, disposable propane tanks will live to fight another day. As we covered before, they seemed on track to be banned. Citing jobs created by developing a recycling infrastructure, the Governor vetoed the bill, so disposable 1 lb propane tanks will continue on.