SPY’s June 30 Quarter; Kind of More of the Same

As usual, I’ll start off my discussion of SPY by saying how much I like the brand and how I think they’ve done most of the right things in terms of operations and brand positioning. But then I move on to the financials (the June 30 quarter in this case) and bemoan, as I have before, how they are smaller in revenues than they need to be to get traction in the highly competitive sunglass market and support spending at the level required.

I don’t really even care about the $21.5 million payable to stockholders on the balance sheet. True, there’s some interest expense, but that’s been reduced since the debt holder reduced the interest rate last year. The only thing that debt does is prevent the company from being sold, which I think would have happened without that debt sitting there.

Revenues fell 0.75% to $8.12 million compared to $8.18 million in last year’s quarter. U.S. and Canadian revenues fell 1.64% from $7.03 to $6.91 million. In the rest of the world, they rose 4.67% from $1.16 to $1.21 million. They don’t discuss the impact of currencies, but I’d tend to look at that increase as being pretty good given the strength of the U.S. dollar. Here’s how they describe the sales decline.

“The period over period decrease in sales is principally attributable to lower sales of our prescription frames and goggle product lines which each decreased by $0.2 million, or 21.5% and 37.4% respectively… The decrease was partially offset by an increase in sales of our sunglasses, which increased by $0.2 million or 2.5%. Sales also included approximately $1.2 million and $0.3million of sales during the three months ended June 30, 2015 and June 30, 2014, respectively, which were considered to be closeouts.”

First, with just a little mental math you can see that the prescription frame business must be pretty small if a decline of $200,000 means that revenues fell by 21.5%. You can make the same argument for the 37.4% decline in goggles, though I’d be a bit more cautious given the seasonality of that business. Here’s the percentage of sales by product line from the 10Q.

What’s of more concern to me is the $1.2 million in closeout business compared to $0.3 million in last year’s quarter. I’ve previously commented that SPY seemed to be getting inventory issues under control, but now I’m not so sure. The June 30 balance sheet shows a 21.2% increase in inventory from $6.56 to $7.95 million.

The gross margin took a big hit falling from 55.5% to 49.5%. Here’s what they say about the decline.

“Gross profit as a percentage of net sales was 49.5% for the three months ended June 30, 2015, compared to 55.5% for the three months ended June 30, 2014. The decrease in our gross profit as a percent of net sales during the three months ended June 30, 2015 compared to the same period in 2014 was primarily due to: (i) higher sales of closeout products at reduced price levels and (ii) lower sales of higher margin prescription frames.”

That seems to confirm inventory is an issue.

They continue to reduce operating expenses, which fell from $4.4 to $4.1 million. Interestingly, they have given early notice that they are terminating the lease on their headquarters and, in December of this year, expect to move to a new facility. Rent will rise from around $29,000 a month to $48,000.

The fall in the gross margin meant that operating income went from a positive $101,000 to a loss of $42,000. Interest expense was down from $751,000 to $491,000 for the reason I mentioned above. There was still a net loss, but it was down from $742,000 to $516,000. That’s less than the decline in interest expense.

On the balance sheet, equity is negative at $17.7 million. Practically speaking, however, you can consider the notes due to shareholder as equity. The current ratio declined a bit from 1.49 to 1.27. Current assets were up around $1 million, but the current liabilities rose more on the back of an increase in the line of credit.

That’s kind of it. If I could dig into one thing, it would the rise in inventory and the closeouts. I’d like to know it doesn’t indicate an issue with product acceptance in the market.