Malibu Boats posts record second-quarter result
More boats and higher prices hand Malibu a blue-sky earnings resultUS-based ski and wakesports boat maker Malibu Boats has posted a record second-quarter earnings result as the showroom prices of its boats crept even higher over the three-month period.
The reason? During the quarter the US economy struggled with sharply rising inflation, much of it linked to the rising cost of fuel linked to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which in turn pushed prices up across the economy.
It meant Malibu could charge more for its boats, which helped it increase its second-quarter profit by almost 20 per cent compared with the same three-month period to December 31 last year.
Most of Malibu’s boats are built in the US, although a number of them are built in Australia at the company’s only overseas manufacturing operation at Albury, on the NSW/Victorian border.
Malibu does not separate Australian sales from the overall mix, but its ski and wake boat business grew 28.4 per cent to help it earn $US338.7 million ($A486.3 million) for the quarter.
“The increase in net sales was driven primarily by increased unit volumes across all three segments and inflation-driven year-over-year price increases,” Malibu said in a statement announcing the record earnings.
However, while earnings went up, so too did costs, mainly because of rising interest rates hitting its dealers, and because it built almost 2500 boats for the quarter, a 17 per cent rise, as it struggled to keep up with customer demand.
Also driving up prices was a consumer shift to larger, more premium models that are more profitable for Malibu to make.
Malibu also owns leisure boat brand Cobalt, and saltwater fishing specialist Pursuit.
In other good news, Malibu said it was starting to see its supply chain, which feeds the raw materials into its boat-building factories, starting to recover from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, meaning it could soon start to meet market demand for the first time since 2020.
“While macro conditions remain uncertain, we are beginning to see incremental improvements across the supply chain, which we believe will allow channel inventory to normalise in the second half of the fiscal year for our Malibu and Cobalt segments and in the first half of fiscal 2024 for our saltwater fishing segment,” it said.
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