Traeger reported their Q3 earnings and turned in a good quarter. It’s two quarters in a row that they’ve shown signs of improvement in their business.
Like the previous quarter, they’re doing it through increased promotional activity. Traeger has established itself as a premium brand, but given the struggles with the consumer, they’re adapting.
The growth at the grill business in the third quarter reflects strong sell-through at retail during the period. Our strategy to lean into promotions this year, given the soft industry demand backdrop, was successful and the consumer responded favorably to our Labor Day promotion. Given that our retail partners experienced better-than-anticipated sell-through at our peak season, channel inventories coming out of the second quarter we’re in a very clean position and the strong consumer demand in the third quarter drove upside and replenishment sales. I am pleased with the stronger-than-anticipated grills demand in the quarter.
Jeremy Andrus, CEO of Traeger
Despite this performance, we continue to view the consumer demand backdrop as mix for our category, and we think the consumer remains discerning in their purchasing behavior. While we saw healthy sell-through across our overall grill assortment, we continue to see outperformance in grills that are priced below $1,000, which we believe demonstrates that the consumer remains selective in their spending patterns. And while we did see a reduction in our grills’ ASP partially due to this mix shift as well as our promotional strategy. We are bringing new customers into the Traegerhood, and we are gaining market share.
While it can be a balance to maintain that premium image while discounting, there are other benefits to attracting new consumers. Traeger owners have proven to be very brand loyal, which helps to sell consumables and accessories, and also to evangelize the brand.
Struggles at MEATER
Traeger owns the MEATER brand, which sells wireless temperature probes. Much like last quarter, they’re seeing decreased sales at MEATER.
In the third quarter, the strong growth in our grills business was partially offset by softness in our accessories category, driven by a reduction in revenues at Meater. As we discussed last quarter, Meater is seen in pressure on its e-commerce sales, which we believe is largely attributable to a change in its demand creation strategy earlier this year, which proved ineffective. We are anticipating continued pressure on Meater in Q3 and sales results ended modestly lower than our expectations. The good news is that the third quarter is meters lowest volume period of the year and we have implemented strategies to drive improvement going forward.
Jeremy Andrus, CEO of Traeger
Traeger attributes the decrease in sales to demand creation, but it’s also become a much more competitive market for wireless temperature probes. We’ll see if Traeger’s strong ability to market will overcome the increased competition.
Have We Reached a Bottom?
With positive results at Middleby from replacement sales, and now positive indicators at Traeger, it’s starting to feel like the market has reached a bottom. There’s also a correlation between low interest rates, homes sales and grill purchases, so the news today the the Fed is lowering interest rates is another positive sign.
As we step back and think about where we are in sort of the life cycle recovery, I would say, first of all, this is a — I would characterize this category as very resilient as we look at decades of industry data. We certainly haven’t exaggerated move forward to the pandemic. And I think what we’re seeing right now is that we’re getting beyond that pull forward, and it’s colliding a little bit with a consumer — a weakened consumer who’s less focused on high ticket durables, less focused on home goods. And it’s our belief that the category is — it’s found bottom.
It’s — we think we found the trough — and then I think the question is, what is the timing of the trajectory of the recovery. What we know is that just looking at unit sell-through in prior decades and certainly just immediately prior to the pandemic between the trough and a normalized category, there’s a lot of growth. What that trajectory will look like, I think, is unclear. But given that it feels like we found bottom, we’re seeing interest rates come down.
We believe that will start to motivate more housing transaction, more investment in current homes. And these are some of the catalysts to driving the category. We believe that ’25 will be a better year for the category than ’24. And certainly, as lower interest rates become more attractive in in housing category like this and we get further from the pandemic, we just see growth in the category.Jeremy Andrus, CEO of Traeger
So look, we look at this and the category dynamics the macro and really intersecting with the investments and the initiatives in our business — and we think this certainly tees up a very successful next two to three years.