Yahoo Finance

Christopher Killoy

Thanks, Tom.
Ruger celebrated its 75th anniversary in 2024 as a tribute to our founder Bill Ruger and the thousands of hardworking men and women who have left their mark on Ruger since its humble beginnings in 1949. There were many events throughout the year that brought people together to honor our past and celebrate our future.
We kicked off the festivities in January 2024 with the 75th anniversary gala at the shot show. We were honored to co-host the event with our friends at Hornady ammunition who were also founded in 1949. Two American manufacturing companies that stood the test of time and are thriving after 75 years.
Maybe there will be a co-hosted Centennial anniversary gala at the 2049 shott show. I wouldn't bet against it.
Last year's National Ruger Day, which of course is October 22 or 10 '22, was another highlight. It was our biggest Ruger day yet with hundreds of events at ranges, shooting clubs, and retailers where Ruger fans came together to shoot and spend time with friends and neighbors. They share their passion for Ruger and our products.
The most satisfying and fitting way that we celebrate our 75th anniversary was with a flurry of new product introductions culminating with the December launch of the new RXM, a 9 millimeter pistol that was imagined, designed and developed in collaboration with Madpole Industries.
This partnership resulted in a truly innovative product that offers maximum flexibility and customization with a removable stainless steel fire control insert set inside an interchangeable Magpul enhanced handgun grip. Demand for the RXM has been tremendous.
Our roster of new product introductions in 2024 also includes the American Rifle Generation two family of rifles in standard ranch and Predator configurations.
Marlin models 1894, 1895, and 336 lever action rifles, including the dark series models available in 45/70 government and 30/30 Winchester with other calibers to follow. The LC car being chambered in 45 auto and 10 millimeter auto to go along with our original offerings in the 5.7 by 28 caliber.
The Mini 14 with side folding stock. And 75th anniversary commemorative models of some of our most popular classic firearms, including the Mark 4 target pistol, the 10/22 riffle, and the LCP Max pistol.
New product sales totaled $159 million or 32% of firearm sales in 2024. New product sales include only major new products that were introduced in the last 2 years.
On the strength of these offerings, particularly the American set of Fire rifle Gen 2 and the Marlin lever action rifles, the estimated sell-through of our products from distributors to retailers increased for both the fourth quarter and the full year, despite the decrease in adjusted NICS background checks during the same periods.
As a reminder, we use adjusted NICS as a proxy for overall consumer purchase activity at retail, and adjusted NICS does not distinguish between used gun sales and new gun sales. Some data suggests that used gun sales in 2024 represented a larger percentage of overall retail firearm sales in 2023, which would not be surprising given higher interest rates and rising consumer debt.
This would suggest that our market share gains are perhaps even greater than the adjusted NICS data would indicate. We enter 2025 with a strong debt-free balance sheet, reduced inventories are our independent distributors, and a full pipeline of recently launched new products, and many others still under development.
We remain focused on the long term goal of creating shareholder value. Our discipline pricing and market strategy promote consistency throughout the distribution channel. This allows both distributors and retailers to confidently invest in our inventory regardless of market fluctuations and volatility is and is essential to Ruger's long-term success and leadership in the firearms market.
In January we announced that Todd Sieffert will become President and Chief Executive Officer on March 1, allowing for a smooth transition before my planned retirement in May.
I want to take this opportunity to publicly welcome Todd to Ruger.
Todd attended the shot show last month and spent time with many of our employees and customers and a host of industry folks, many of whom he already knew from his past experience in the industry.
I've been very impressed with Todd and know he and the rest of the team will continue to deliver innovative and exciting new products to our consumers, profitability to our independent distributors and retailers, and long-term value to our shareholders.
Those are the highlights of 2024. Operator, may we please have the first question.

Question and Answer Session

Operator

Thank you.
(Operator Instructions)
Our first question comes from Mark Smith with Lake Street. He may proceed.

Mark Smith

Hi guys, first question for me, I wanted to dig in a little bit more into new products. Chris, I don't know if you can quantify or talk at all about maybe the impact that just RXM had during the quarter.

Christopher Killoy

Yeah, thank you, Mark. Yeah, RXM was a big impact in December. We had preplanned the launch of the RXM for a while. We had conducted a series of retailer summits is what we call meeting with key retailers throughout the US over the course of 2024. And at those summits under the under an NDA, we introduced and unveiled the RXM to those key retailers and solicited pre-orders so that when as we got closer to our actual launch date.
We shipped both to those key big independent retailers, some of the key national accounts, as well as our distributors, so product was in place at both wholesale and retail prior to our public unveiling in December. That made for I'll say smooth, a launch at all levels. We've got a lot of hype, our sales and marketing folks combined to do a great job getting the word out.
Social media really kind of blew up the internet with great reaction to the to this firearm. And as a result, we had quite a few of those products, those guns shipped in December. We don't disclose the exact amount, but it was a significant launch, the most we've ever had out in the marketplace at time of launch. And then because we had already ramped up the product.
We didn't see a dip at all. We just continued right through filling orders that came in from our distributors, over the next couple of weeks. So it was really a fun way to launch a really great product.

Mark Smith

And then correct me if I'm wrong, but it it seems like RXM really gives you a platform, for other frame sizes, other things that you can do with that fire control insert. I mean, is that how you view it and then you in this partnership with Magpul or are you guys able to move pretty quickly on new products?

Christopher Killoy

Yeah, Mark, as you as you let me know, we've had other projects with Magpul, like Stocks for 10/22 and some of our other rifle products, but this is the biggest and strongest collaboration we've ever had, and the folks at Magpul were a lot of fun to work with, really creative and. Good engineering, good marketing, and so we're going to continue to work with them on that.
In fact, we've got a meeting in the next couple of weeks to talk about some other new products that we can collaborate on. But to the point of the RXM. There's going to be continued rollout of new frame sizes, grip colors, things like that. So you'll see us flesh out that accessory pipeline for the different versions of the grip as well as different sizes.
So you'll see those different frame sizes coming out, and that's something that we have planned and are still working on. We're going to rule that out in a logical fashion and again our teams at both places, but Magpul and Ruger are very excited about it.

Mark Smith

Perfect. And then just one hit kind of balance sheet and cash flow as we look, out of this next year, are there any other, any new uses of cash that we should be looking at? It seems like, your plans, everything's in a good place, but any other uses of cash, and then, if you can give any insight into kind of your desire and appetite for continued share repurchases.

Christopher Killoy

Well, we've done both special dividends over time as well as share repurchases over time, and both of those, remain an option. Of course we're always open to if there was another strategic acquisition that came our way along the lines of Marlin for a few years back, that would make sense for us.
But one of the reasons is I think you know we're pretty conservative on our cash balance, having been fired by both Bank of America and Wells Fargo over the last, five year or six years during my tenure, we remain pretty cautious about the banking situation in the US. There are steps being taken now to shore that up with the FI Act at the at the federal level, but again, we're going to keep that conservative approach and we'll we'll probably have both share.
Purses and certainly our quarterly dividends and of course if we get to a certain balance we'll look at special dividends as well. That's something we always take a hard look at Number one, we want to make sure we're funding the business, with our capital expenditures, investing in new products.
That's probably our highest and best use, watching for acquisitions, and if neither of those makes sense, of course we return it to shareholders in either special dividends or share buybacks.

Mark Smith

Excellent. Thank you guys.

Christopher Killoy

Thanks Mark.

Operator

Thank you.
Our next question comes from Amel Gianniio with AIS Capital. You may proceed.

Rommel Dionisio

Thank you, Goran. Good morning. Just a question on gross margins. I realized, you mentioned the adverse product mixture, but then again on the flip side, you've had some strong success with new products which I imagine are coming in higher margin. What if you just give us a little more granularity on that, on those trends. Thanks.

Christopher Killoy

Thanks Rommel.
The biggest thing, we saw in, 2024 when we talk about our gross margin as it relates to product mix, was you'll recall that the 75th anniversary models, 10/22, Mark 4, and LCP in particular were really well done, well executed, but we priced them pretty competitively.
We stayed away from promotional programs and discounting. But we were pretty aggressive in pricing those 75th anniversary models, and that from a mixed standpoint was probably the biggest, I'll say mix related contributed to decrease gross margins and again they were very successful. They did the trick. They didn't disrupt inventory at retail or distributor level, so they really worked well with our strategy for 2024.

Rommel Dionisio

Okay, great. That's very helpful and I just want to personally wish you all the very best, Chris. I hope we chat again soon, but wish you all the best in your transition.

Christopher Killoy

Thanks Rama. We appreciate it. We appreciate your support and your.

Operator

Thank you. I would now like to turn the call back over to Chris Kaloy for any closing remarks.

Christopher Killoy

In closing, I would like to start by thanking all of you for attending our call this morning and for our shareholders for their continued investment in our company. And I would like to thank our loyal customers and the 1800 hardworking members of the Ruger team who design, manufacture, and sell rugged, reliable firearms every day in our American factories.
I hope you will be able to join us in our virtual 2025 annual meeting on Thursday, May 29. Further details will become available in April. And on a personal note, I want to thank everyone who has helped me since I joined this industry in 1989.
For the past 36 years, I've been fortunate to work with some truly great people. It's been a fun ride and I'm going to miss it, but I look forward to continuing to serve on the Ruger board of directors and supporting Todd and the Ruger team as we head into 2025.
Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. This concludes the conference.
Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.