Weber announced two days ago that they took on up to $350 million of additional debt and are going to be taken private. Today they announced their financial results for their quarter and year ended September 30th, 2022, and the results are bad.
For the quarter their net sales decreased 52% to $168 million, with a net loss of $152 million. For the year, they lost $330 million, and that includes at least one quarter that still benefitted from the effects of the pandemic.
With results like that, it’s not wonder that they’ve taken on more than $410 million of borrowing capacity over the past month and a half.
The pending plan to go private meant that there wasn’t much discussion on the call, and there were no analyst questions. One thing that was interesting though, is all of the CEOs of outdoor cooking companies are starting to comp their earnings to 2019. Using 2019 as a baseline, sales have increased for Weber by 22%, which is something they noted.
That’s the logical point of comparison, but it would have better if they acknowledged the anomaly of the pandemic while it was happening, rather than after the fact.