Good day. Welcome to the Latham Group first quarter fiscal 2023 earnings conference call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note, this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Nicole Harlow , Investor Relations Representative. Please go ahead and begin.
Thank you. Earlier this morning, we issued our first quarter fiscal 2023 earnings press release, which is available on the investor relations portion of our website, where you can also find the slide presentation that accompanies our prepared remarks. On today's call are Latham's President and CEO, Scott Rajeski, and Interim CFO, Mark Borseth. Following their remarks, we will open up the call to questions. During this call, the company may make certain statements that constitute forward-looking statements. Such statements reflect the company's views with respect to future events as of today and are based on our management's current expectations, estimates, forecasts, projections, assumptions, beliefs, and information. These statements are subject to a number of risks that could cause actual events and results to differ materially.
Such risks and other factors are set forth in the company's annual report on Form 10-K and subsequent reports filed or furnished with the SEC, as well as the earnings release for this quarter posted to its investor relations website. The company expressly disclaims any obligation to update or review publicly any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise, except as required by applicable law. In addition, during today's call, the company will discuss non-GAAP financial measures, which we believe could be useful in evaluating our performance. Reconciliations of historical adjusted EBITDA to net loss and adjusted EBITDA margin to net loss margin calculated under GAAP can be found in our earnings press release and will be included in our Form 10-Q for Q1 of 2023.
Reconciliations of net debt and net debt leverage to the comparable GAAP measure can be found in the slide presentation that accompanies our prepared remarks, which can also be found on the investor relations website. I'll now turn the call over to Scott Rajeski.
Thanks, Nicole. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us for our first quarter fiscal 2023 earnings call. I'll begin today's call with a review of highlights from Q1 and a discussion of the momentum we're seeing in our dealer training and onboarding, direct-to-homeowner marketing, fiberglass material conversion, and autocover awareness strategies. I will turn it to Mark to review our financial results and outlook for 2023. We delivered net sales of $138 million and adjusted EBITDA of $11 million in the first quarter. As we discussed on our last earnings call, the pool market has returned to pre-2020 seasonality versus the demand patterns of the preceding three years.
In fact, Q1 2022 set a particularly high record for Q1 net sales for our business as we benefited from elevated backlogs and increased production levels following a period of supply chain issues and challenges. Despite this difficult year-over-year comparison, due to our strong operational execution, we delivered stronger than expected sales performance across all three product lines: in-ground swimming pools, covers, and liners. We recognize that 2023 will be another tough year for the pool market and have taken deliberate actions to adjust our cost structure. In November, we announced several cost reduction initiatives that we expect to yield annualized savings of about $12 million in fiscal 2023. This is further supported by our ongoing lean and value engineering work aimed at continuous improvement of our manufacturing processes.
We have also right-sized our inventory to align with current demand while still ensuring excellent delivery lead times across our product portfolio. All these efforts supported Q1 adjusted EBITDA of $11 million and adjusted EBITDA margin of 8%, exceeding our expectations on both an absolute dollar and margin basis. Turning to an update on our strategic initiatives. Late last year, we set an ambitious goal to recruit new dealers ahead of the selling season in 2023. I am pleased to say that we've achieved that milestone. We are also actively continuing to recruit new dealers throughout 2023. We'll continue to train and ramp them up. While most of these new dealers are small for now, they will, we believe, set us up well for future growth.
Our dealers continue to recognize the value proposition of fiberglass and more specifically of working with Latham as we invest in our lead generation efforts, dealer education and training. We continue to see strong demand for Latham University, where we've hosted numerous fiberglass boot camps year to date. Concerns of an economic slowdown in the interest rate environment continue to weigh on consumer spending, which is reflected in our Q1 results and fiscal 2023 guidance. However, our lead generation engine and digital tools continue to point to strong underlying consumer interest in pool ownership, giving us confidence in the long-term outlook of our business and industry. In light of our strong lead times and enhanced manufacturing capacity, we have been able to ramp up our lead generation efforts, which is translating into momentum in website activity and leads to dealers.
We saw strength across our website and digital tools and apps in Q1. The number of sessions, page views, and average session duration across our website all increased year-over-year. We grew users on our My Latham platform by 100% versus Q1 of 2022, and the number of submissions to our Pool Cost Estimator and downloads for our augmented reality app both grew over 40% year-over-year in the first quarter. This supports our ability to drive leads and orders. In fact, the number of leads we sent to dealers in Q1 of 2023 was actually greater than Q1 of 2022 levels. As we expand our dealer base and deepen our existing partnerships, enhance our manufacturing capabilities, and continue to execute our direct-to-homeowner strategy, we feel well positioned to drive consumer demand in a difficult macro environment.
We remain confident in the ability of fiberglass pools to outperform the total U.S. new pool installation market, as we again demonstrated in 2022. Fiberglass pools are vastly under-penetrated in the U.S. compared to more mature markets like Australia, where fiberglass represents 70% of in-ground swimming pools. In 2019, we acquired the largest pool manufacturer in Australia and New Zealand, Narellan, because we admired how they drove the conversion from concrete pools to fiberglass in Australia. Our North American market growth strategy is led by a similar focus on marketing the benefits of fiberglass pools versus concrete pools directly to both homeowners and dealers. We are still early in our journey of driving the conversion from concrete to fiberglass in the U.S., but we are seeing strong momentum driven by Latham.
We are pleased to report that fiberglass penetration grew to 21% share of U.S. in-ground pool installations in 2022. This was a gain of three points of share versus the prior year, despite U.S. in-ground pool installations being down 16%. We see this as a testament to the momentum we are building for fiberglass and reinforces our confidence in our strategy. Since we launched our rebrand and B2B2C strategy in 2019, we have now driven five points of share gain for fiberglass in three years. Another product line I'd like to highlight is covers. We've told you before about winter safety covers, which go on pools after the swimming season is over, help protect pools from winter weather, and provide Latham with a steady revenue stream for both new installations and replacements.
Winter safety covers need to be replaced every 8 to 10 years across all types of in-ground pools, whether they are Latham pools or not. Today, I'd like to also talk to you about automatic safety covers. Automatic safety covers help keep children and pets safe when the pool is not in use, they help keep pools clean, they lower homeowners' cost of maintenance and energy, water, and chemicals. In Q1, we grew automatic safety covers net sales even when compared to strong net sales levels of the prior year's first quarter. In fact, we doubled net sales for our automatic safety covers in fiscal 2022 versus fiscal 2019. We take pride in our auto covers. Each one of Latham's automatic safety covers is made to order to precisely fit a homeowner's exact pool dimensions.
Separately, we are excited about the launch of Measure by Latham, a new AI-powered digital measuring tool that will modernize and simplify the measuring experience for dealers for winter safety covers and for in-ground liners. This technological breakthrough allows dealers to measure the entire pool perimeter and to capture interior renderings of the pool shape and unique features. With Measure, dealers have precise specifications for winter safety covers and in-ground liners within minutes, saving them time and labor. We have launched the initial rollout of Measure by Latham for winter safety covers to select dealers. While we're now in the early innings, we believe Measure will be a growth opportunity for winter safety covers and in-ground liners as we look into 2024 and beyond.
Before I hand the call off to Mark, I'd like to touch on what gives us the confidence to reiterate our fiscal 2023 outlook today. First, we delivered Q1 performance that beat expectations in spite of a continued challenging macro environment in a difficult year-over-year comparison. Second, based on what we're seeing in the market, much of the softness in overall U.S. pool starts this year is in the concrete pool market, driven by weakness for newly constructed houses, especially in many states where we are under-penetrated. We view this as an exciting opportunity to convert what would otherwise be a concrete pool to fiberglass pools in those markets down the road as we target these homeowners, build their awareness of fiberglass, and support their pool purchase journey. Third, most importantly, we're seeing momentum in our website activity and lead generation tools.
Given the results that we are driving, we will continue to focus our efforts in lead generation to drive increased demand in the second half of the year and into 2024 as dealers start to plan for next year. I'll turn the call over to Mark to review our first quarter 2023 results in greater detail. Mark?
Thank you, Scott. Good morning, everyone. Please note that all comparisons we discuss today are on a year-over-year basis compared to the first quarter of fiscal 2022, unless noted otherwise. Net sales for the first quarter of fiscal 2023 were $138 million, which is down $54 million or 28% as compared to Q1 of 2022, a quarter in which we delivered 29% year-over-year growth. This year's 28% sales reduction was comprised of a 30% decline in volume, partially offset by a 2% increase in price. As expected, year-over-year comparisons reflect similar trends to what we saw in Q4 of 2022. Notably, a return to pre-2020 seasonality in the pool market. Q1 of 2022 was a tough comparison for us as those results benefited from elevated backlogs and increasing production levels.
You may recall in the second half of 2021, our lead times extended as we saw strong demand coupled with raw material supply shortages, which limited our production. As we took action to resolve our supply chain challenges, we entered Q1 of 2022 well positioned to fulfill customer orders at an accelerated rate, leading to a quarter in which we delivered 29% growth. In Q1 of this year, we experienced continued destocking in our packaged pools product line as our wholesale distribution partners normalize their inventory levels, which has taken on greater urgency as interest rates make inventory carrying costs more expensive. Lastly, macroeconomic challenges driven in part by those higher interest rates, persistent inflation, and ongoing recessionary concerns have continued. Looking at our net sales results across our product categories for the quarter.
In-ground pool sales declined 30% to $79 million, driven by the combination of continued wholesaler destocking in packaged pools and lower year-over-year fiberglass pool sales compared to the unseasonably strong sales levels in Q1 of 2022. Liners declined 44% to $26 million, also driven by strong sales in the year-ago period due to elevated backlogs and improved production levels. We're pleased to see our cover product line sales flat year-over-year at $33 million, reflecting the strength of our market-leading automatic safety covers. We see auto covers as a growth opportunity as we continue to drive awareness of the economic and environmental benefits of this product. We had anticipated that sales would decline sharply in Q1, we're pleased the actual level of sales that we delivered was above our expectations.
Gross profit of $33 million decreased by $38 million or 53% compared to Q1 of 2022, primarily driven by the lower level of sales. Gross margin decreased to 24.2% compared to 36.9% for the prior year period. More than two-thirds of the gross margin decline was driven by negative fixed cost leverage due to volume declines, driven in part by the pool market's return to pre-2020 seasonality and the sell-through of higher cost inventory due to inflation we experienced throughout 2022. We expect to see noticeable improvements in both of these headwinds going forward as we head into the peak pool selling season in Q2 and Q3, during which we see our highest level of net sales. With inflation moderating in several of our raw materials, our year-over-year comp becomes less of a drag on gross margin.
We also reduced inventory in the first quarter, negatively impacting our gross margin. We expect this to continue as we right-size our inventory to better align with current demand levels. We will of course, maintain sufficient inventory to maintain our industry-leading lead times. Selling, General, and Administrative expenses decreased to $33 million from $45 million in Q1 of 2022. This decrease was primarily driven by a $9 million decrease in non-cash stock-based compensation expense. SG&A, excluding non-cash stock-based compensation expense, decreased $3 million, reflecting benefits from the cost reduction actions taken in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2022. As a percentage of net sales, SG&A, excluding non-cash stock-based compensation, increased to 19.4% from 15.4% for Q1 last year.
As a result, Adjusted EBITDA for the first quarter was $11 million, a decrease of $37 million or 77% from Q1 of 2022. Adjusted EBITDA margin decreased to 8% from 25% in Q1 of 2022. Both our Adjusted EBITDA dollars and margin exceeded our expectations, driven by better net sales and the resulting impact on profit. We continue to work to improve margins by focusing on operational efficiency and prudently managing our costs. We took deliberate cost actions in response to the market conditions, including a reduction in our workforce and streamlining our cover and liner manufacturing footprint. We continue to manage our cost structure to align with the demand environment, including gating hiring, optimizing our production and staffing levels, and managing down our inventory. We are pleased to have begun production in both our Kingston and Oklahoma fiberglass manufacturing plants.
As part of our continued evaluation of the demand environment, we are slowing the production ramp-up in these two facilities while ensuring we are positioned to maintain lead times and capitalize on the long-term growth and distribution cost reduction opportunities these regions present. We continue to feel comfortable with our balance sheet health and remain disciplined in our capital allocation strategy. As of April 1, we had cash and cash equivalents of $55 million and $27 million of borrowing availability remaining on our $75 million revolver, giving us total liquidity of $82 million, which is more than sufficient as we head into the time of the year our operations typically generate the majority of our cash. Net cash used in operating activities was $14 million for Q1 '23 versus $57 million last year, driven by year-over-year decreases in working capital.
Total debt was $360 million at the end of Q1. As expected, we saw our net debt leverage ratio increase to 2.9x at the end of the quarter, primarily as a result of the year-over-year reduction in adjusted EBITDA. As we head into the peak pool building season and the time of year our business normally generates the majority of our cash, we would expect our net debt leverage ratio to moderate in the second half of the year. Looking at CapEx spend, capital expenditures were $10 million compared to $7 million in Q1 last year, primarily driven by investments in our Kingston and Oklahoma manufacturing facility projects.
With our solid Q1 performance, and as we gear up for pool building season, we are pleased to affirm fiscal year 2023 outlook for net sales of $565 million-$615 million, adjusted EBITDA of $90 million-$110 million, and capital expenditures of $35 million-$40 million. Our outlook reflects our first quarter performance, as well as continuing macroeconomic challenges driven by the interest rate environment and concerns of an economic slowdown weighing on consumer spending and demand. This is resulting in anticipated declines in the industry for new U.S. in-ground pool installations in 2023. We expect the normalization of packaged pool inventory in the wholesale distribution channel from elevated levels to remain a headwind at least through the first half of 2023.
At the same time, we continue to make progress executing our strategy to drive material conversion from concrete to fiberglass swimming pools, supported by our continued momentum on our lead generation efforts and digital tools, and would expect this to enable us to outperform the market again this year. We're also realizing the benefits from previously announced cost reduction actions and continuous improvement initiatives, and we continue to closely monitor, manage, and adjust our cost structure. Lastly, we continue to take a disciplined approach to capital investments with a focus on the completion of our Kingston and Oklahoma fiberglass manufacturing facilities, with the majority of spend weighted in the first half of the year. Scott, with that, I'll turn it back to you for closing remarks.
Thanks, Mark. Looking ahead, we remain confident in the long-term fundamentals and growth opportunities of our business. As I discussed earlier, U.S. fiberglass penetration expanded to 21% in 2022, proving fiberglass's ability to take share even in down markets as U.S. in-ground residential pool installations in 2022 were down 16% year-over-year. We continue to position ourselves well to capture opportunities with fiberglass with enhancements to our manufacturing capabilities. Notably, our new Kingston fiberglass manufacturing facility began producing the first pools in April, enabling us to continue to grow in the Eastern Canadian and U.S. Northeast and Upper Midwest regions, and to better balance our manufacturing footprint.
We are also now shipping orders out of our Oklahoma fiberglass manufacturing facility, which will allow us to better service existing dealers in the U.S. Southwest, as well as to significantly ramp up dealer recruiting efforts in that market. We are driving a similar awareness-driven strategy with our automatic safety covers, which has translated to momentum in net sales. As the installed pool base continues to grow and age over time, we see strong opportunities for the recurring revenue portion of our business, replacement covers and liners.
We believe we can further capitalize on growth opportunities in winter safety covers and in-ground liners as we continue with the launch of Measure by Latham. Our rollout plan is quickly ramping up for covers, and we will continue to accelerate it throughout two Q and three Q as we head into the key cover season in late three Q.
We continue to benefit from our lead generation efforts and are seeing strong performance across our website and digital tools. This indicates continued consumer interest in pool ownership that we can tap into over time. We are focused on deepening and expanding our relationships with dealers by enhancing our lead generation, hands-on training, and providing value-added resources. All of this gives us strong confidence in our long-term growth strategy, which we believe positions us to capitalize on the attractive trends in our industry over time. We will now open the line to questions.
Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. We ask that you please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. The first question will come from Rafe Jadrosich from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Hi, guys. Thank you for taking my questions. Just first, the top line came in ahead of your expectations, despite some of the other pool companies missing. Can you talk about where you outperformed versus your expectations coming into the year? What are you seeing in the market that's keeping you from raising the full year guide despite the speed?
Hey, good morning, Sean. This is Mark. Nice to hear from you. Thanks for your question. Yeah, we're pleased with the start that the team here delivered to get us off to the first quarter here in 2023. As we mentioned, we, you know, outperformed slightly in all of all 3 of our product lines. We feel good about that start. I think it's really a reflection of good work of the team here and some little stronger demand than we had expected. As far as our full year guide, we're very pleased to reaffirm where we're at. It's still early in the season, Sean. We're just now starting to get into the peak pool building season.
So we feel very confident about where we are. We're happy with the start. A little soon to start thinking about raising guides until we get further through the pool building season. Look, there's still the macroeconomic challenges out there continuing to raise higher interest rates, inflation. So look, there's some uncertainty. There's a long way to go in the year yet, but we feel really good about where we are to get started.
Okay, thanks. We're seeing new pool permits come down as much as 50% year-over-year in some regions. Based on the lead generation metric you provided, it looks like the interest in Latham's offering is still pretty high. Can you talk about what you're hearing from your dealers in terms of backlogs and those leads turning into actual product or projects?
Yeah, Sean. Good morning. This is Scott. I'll take this one. You know, I think when you look at the permitting data that's out there and published in various reports, you know, a lot of that is in what we would refer to as the Sand States, which we all know are kinda concrete dominant, you know, locations out there. For Latham, locations we're not, you know, we don't have high penetration in. As we're funneling leads to our dealers where they have capacity, you know, we're able to continue to drive that lead generation, improve the quality of the leads.
I think more importantly, as we look at where fiberglass sits from a value, a value proposition standpoint versus concrete, you know, lower upfront costs, the lower cost of ownership, you know, we're seeing consumers start to trade down from concrete to fiberglass, which is driving the acceleration that we showed in our results last year and also part of why we believe fiberglass will outperform the market here in 2023. You know, the backlog, I think backlog is another piece of the question in there. You know, I think we still see some dealers with good backlogs, you know, through the first half of the year, starting to think about the second half of 23 and why we're really trying to incrementally drive lead gen to them to make sure they stay full in the back half.
Just expanding a little bit, Kingston and Oklahoma coming online have given us the ability to now re-ramp up new dealer acquisition in those territories where we've been paused to start to fill those facilities by driving incremental demand in locations where we've been maybe longer lead times than we had wanted out of factories, not generating any digital work or efforts. I think good job across the board, as Mark said, with the team, you know, firing on all cylinders here. I'd say cautiously optimistic as we do come into the second half with the economy and certainly that's out there. We feel pretty good coming into what's the peak building season right now.
Great. Thank you.
You're welcome.
The next question will be from Matthew Bouley from Barclays. Please go ahead.
Hey, good morning, guys. Thanks for taking questions, and welcome back, Mark.
Yeah. Thanks, Matt.
Picking up on the fiberglass versus concrete, it sounded like when you guys speak of a decline in the industry this year, I think I heard you say at the top that, you know, you'd expect that to be more concentrated on the concrete side. You know, now you've got the final Pkdata for 2022. Just curious your thoughts on, you know, what is embedded from a market expectation perspective, you know, in terms of new pool starts this year within your guide and kind of your own expectation for fiberglass share gain within that. Thank you.
Matt, you know, I, you know, I think when we set the guidance for the full year, you know, we anticipated, you know, another tough year from a down market standpoint. You know, we don't have a lot of exposure to that concrete market, which is tied to new housing. I think our expectation is, you know, we'll see that category fall much more drastically and in line with probably what some others are saying out there from a market standpoint. Our view is that, you know, continuing to focus on the fiberglass conversion story, you know, 25%-30% lower upfront costs, as said just a few moments ago, you know, it's resonating.
When you look at the data we finally shared with you guys, you know, the market was down, you know, roughly 16% last year. We were able to, you know, grow fiberglass unit volumes in a down market, picking up 3 points of share. You know, this has been a metric I think we've been asked a lot about over the last couple of years. You know, we put it back out there, you know, 5 points of share gain, you know, going back to 2019. This is what's gonna drive our long-term growth strategy here, just continuing to focus on this on all fronts. With the new facilities coming online, back in good capacity, back in good supply chain standpoint, you know, we believe we will outperform the market again.
We've not come out and said specifically what do we think fiberglass growth will be or will there be growth in 2023, but we can clearly state we'll outperform and, you know, that's been the focus of what we've done, you know, not just in the last couple of years, but I think the last, you know, you know, six, seven years we've proven that with some of the data we've shared with you guys prior.
Awesome. That's great color. Thank you for that, Scott. Second one on the gross margin side and kind of, you know, cadence and seasonality and all that. I mean, it sounded like as, you know, we've sort of returned to normal seasonality this year that you guys expect to increase production volumes as you move into the, you know, summer months and all that. Just curious if you can put a finer point on that. You know, what do you think the impact of, you know, increasing production will be or the benefit will be, as you go through this year? What's the kind of resulting cadence that we should expect on the gross margin side? Thank you.
Hey, Matt, thanks. This is Mark. On that cadence, I think maybe a couple things just to start with. You know, the midpoint of our guide for the year, which we're reaffirming today, is an adjusted EBITDA margin of 17%, which is obviously better than what we delivered in the first quarter. I think we start with, you know, the seasonality concept that you mentioned. We like we saw in Q4, again in Q1, we're seeing a return to that, I would call it that pre-2020 seasonal pattern of the season. With Q1 and Q4, you know, being our lowest revenue quarters, we tend to see, you know, our lowest gross margins and our lowest EBITDA margins.
We're seeing that play out. We would expect that as we move into Q2 and Q3, the peak pool building seasons, Matt, that we would see improvements in both of those. The Q1 gross margin, we had a really tough comp coming off of Q1 of 2022, and a couple things really impacted us on the gross margin side. Negative fixed cost leverage. While we've been rightsizing our cost structure, as you know, with the actions we took in Q4, with that kind of a revenue decline, and we have a fixed cost structure in place to support, you know, the peak pool building season, you know, that gave us some headwinds in the first quarter.
I think the other thing we saw, Matt, was some really higher costed inventory running through our P&L versus last year as we experienced inflation throughout the year. Both of those things, the negative fixed cost leverage will mitigate as we move into the second and third quarter. As we start seeing, you know, moderating inflation and maybe even some deflation, the year-over-year impact of that higher cost material will also start to mitigate. We should see improvements going into the second and third quarter from both of those things. At the same time, Matt, we continue to manage and look at our cost structure, right? The macroeconomic challenges out there are continuing. We're gating hiring. We're looking at optimizing productions, staffing. We're taking the steps now.
While we're very happy to see Oklahoma and Kingston come up to speed on production, we are slowing the ramp there to better line up with demand. I think you put all those things together, we would expect to see margins improving as we go through forward for the balance of the year and get us to that guide that we reaffirmed.
Great. Mark, Scott, thank you guys, good luck.
You're welcome. Thanks.
The next question is from Susan Maklari from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning, everyone. My first question is-
Morning, Susan. Welcome.
Good morning. Welcome back, Mark.
Thank you. Nice to talk with you.
Yes, you too. My first question is, can you talk a bit about what you're hearing from the dealers and activity on the ground? Are you seeing that there's been any impact to consumers' ability or the willingness to take on these projects as lending standards tightened over the last month or two? How are they thinking about working through any of those headwinds from a dealer perspective?
Yeah. Susan, I'll take this one. You know, we've spent quite a bit of time with dealers over the last few months just trying to get a gauge as the season's ramping, what do they need. You know, the one thing they've asked for is, you know, "Hey, we would like to see more leads funneling," as they start to look at the second half of the year. You know, we've, you know, kind of doubled down on our efforts there on the digital, the lead gen we share with you guys and a lot of the metrics.
You know, I think the, the consumer who's buying, let's say, a Latham fiberglass pool, as we've spoke before, you know, higher income level, maybe, you know, in a better financial position situation, you know, people are staying in their homes a little bit longer now. What we're seeing is folks are sitting on a lot of equity, still sitting on cash. Still willing to plunk down, you know, that cash buyer mentality for a swimming pool in the backyard. Even with rising interest rates from a housing standpoint, we're hearing a lot of people saying, "I'm probably not gonna be moving now. I'm gonna be here for a while 'cause I'm sitting on a mortgage," you know, in the, you know, mid-2s, maybe 3%, liking where they are, liking the equity in their home.
You know, continue to invest, you know, $125,000 on the backyard makeover. You know, dealers feel pretty good. There are pockets, though, where some dealers have said, "Hey, look, you know, we've seen it slowing. You know, we know, we see folks get a little concerned on where pricing is for a pool in the backyard." I think that benefits us again, as consumers might have been looking at a concrete pool downshifting to that fiberglass pool. You know, let's say we've even seen someone who might wanted a fiberglass pool not being able to maybe make that reach versus a vinyl. They then step into a Latham vinyl pool, which we're completely okay with. I would say overall, our dealers, I think, still feel very upbeat.
I think the telling sign for us is the new dealer activity that we're seeing. Dealers willing to come into the industry right now, seeing opportunity, seeing demand in markets, seeing some dealers completely sold out for the year, not able to get a pool in the ground. The one last thing I'll share, which I thought was very creative. A lot of dealers advertising kind of what I call it, the BMW lease payment for how to get into a swimming pool. You know, you can be swimming for as little as $299 a month, you know, in your backyard this summer. They're getting creative with the financing angle, making it feel like a car payment in some cases, to get activity in the showroom.
Now granted, right, the interest rate on that loan and maybe the length of the loan may be, you know, much longer than a car payment, but it is making the pool affordability a little bit better for the consumer. As we've talked, you know, there's just that long-term interest in swimming pools in North America. A lot of backyards without a pool. You know, we're gonna continue to support the dealers with the training, all the initiatives we do, and try to get them full for the second half of the year leading into 2024.
Okay. That's very helpful color, Scott. I guess, you know, following up a bit on that, you mentioned that you do expect the inflation to moderate a bit as we go through this year. I guess, you know, as you do think about the competitive dynamics on the ground, how are you thinking about price cost going forward? The ability to hold on to some of that pricing that you've put in place in the last two or three years and, you know, anything on that side that we should be aware of?
Yeah. I'll take the pricing piece, and maybe Mark can comment on the price versus cost impact on the margins going forward. You know, I think as we've said, you know, the industry, we typically and historically have not rolled back prices, you know, as we look forward. Even though maybe we're seeing inflation or cost moderate across the board, they're still extremely elevated if you look back to 2019 type levels. You know, we still have the surcharge in place on fiberglass. We'll flex that as we see fit. You know, when you start looking at labor and sometimes even gas, oil, freight delivery, you know, we've seen a little bit of relief there, but still fairly elevated. We feel pretty good on where we will sit with our price at this point.
We will be selective, here and there, where we can on price, but I don't think we need to see any drastic, you know, peeling back of the price. That's kind of our current views right now. That's what's kind of, you know, laid out in our, in our guidance, the reaffirmation of the guidance. You know, Mark, maybe you wanna talk
Sure.
Margin piece on the cost side.
Yeah, sure can do. You know, in the first quarter here, we saw, you know, a 2% benefit from higher prices, which is much closer to kind of our historical level of annual pricing. As we see inflation moderating, maybe even a little bit of deflation, I think we would anticipate that we'd be able to stay ahead of things on a cost, price cost basis. If inflation picks back up again or that proves not to be the case, we're prepared to do what's necessary with pricing to stay ahead of the game.
Okay. Thank you for all that color, and good luck with everything.
Thanks, Susan.
Thanks.
Again, as a reminder, if you have a question, please press star then one. The next question is from Andrew Carter from Stifel. Please go ahead.
Hey, thanks. Good morning. First thing I wanted to ask about is, I think you said the leads were up from the prior year. Number one, I forget, I think we talked about this. I think you kind of redefined kind of leads that you're sending to your dealers. Is that the case, therefore, a higher quality comp? Within that, I don't know how much you can tell in the shoulder seasons, like probably since October through April, but what have you been seeing on conversion of the leads? Encouraging or really too early to tell for the season?
You know, you're right, Andrew, on the leads, right? It's not just the absolute number, but it's also focused on improving the quality of the leads. You know, we've not disclosed kinda conversion percentages or anything 'cause it does vary dealer by dealer. What we can say is, as we improve the quality of the lead, like the white-hot lead, there is a much higher probability of the conversion factor of those types of leads because the consumer, right, established their budget, they picked out their pool, they've established the My Latham account. You know, they're ready to make that purchasing decision, and maybe the last thing they've got to do is just talk to a dealer and finalize how they're gonna finance or pay for the pool.
You know, those that are getting those leads are seeing very high conversion rates, from a percentage standpoint. I think as, you know, Joel and the marketing team continue to fine-tune this engine, region by region, we're really dialing in the dynamics of how we do this, being very creative, to help the dealers, you know, right down as we've talked a lot to the zip code level. We like where we are. I think the dealers are starting to see the incremental activity. They're feeling good about it. You know, just it's one of those things we'll just continue to do, continue to drive it.
When you look at the numbers on the slide we shared with you guys, it, you know, we haven't given the absolute number, but it's substantial in terms of the numbers we're talking about. It will continue to ramp, you know, as we move through this season, trying to get that second half of 2023 filled going into the 2024 season.
Second question. I think if I understood this correctly, the Kingston, Oklahoma, you're kind of adjusting to a slower ramp just because of demand. I guess when you think about those two facilities, I guess Kingston in particular, it's a little bit of a game changer for your supply chain. Do those potentially open up additional optimization opportunities with the network? I imagine you're kind of thinking a different volume environment than you were two years ago. Is that a good way to think, or is this purely a, this opens up sales and puts you in a better competitive positioning? Thanks.
Yeah, no, Andrew, it's a, it's a good point because it's, I'd say it's all of the above. You know, we have been limited with our ability to kind of grow and expand in the Northeast, where we are capped from a capacity standpoint in the facility that was up there, as well as West Virginia. As I mentioned, you know, a few moments ago, you know, we really weren't able to actively be recruiting dealers. The cost to serve those markets was somewhat of a disadvantage to us and the dealer on freight and getting pools into that region. Getting that plant up, ramping it, recruiting new dealers into that market, you know, potential savings coming down the road from the freight, helping to drive the margin improvements as we ramp those facilities.
More importantly, I think the lead time of pools in those markets will shrink drastically, you know, from where we have been over the last, you know, say, 12 months. Same exact story in Oklahoma. Getting Oklahoma ramped, you know, not having to ship pools into that market from California, Tennessee, Florida, will be a cost advantage to us. Better lead times, better service, able to turn dealer acquisition back on. We do wanna be cautious with how we do ramp those facilities. We're happy to say, you know, both have come online, both are ramping really nice.
You know, I think we actually just heard yesterday, in one of my staff calls, the first pool that came out of Kingston last week got installed yesterday as well, which, you know, so you think about that, you know, from one week from when that first pool rolled off the line, you know, that pool's now in the ground, you know, with another satisfied Latham homeowner enjoying their Kingston fiberglass swimming pool out of Kingston.
Nice. I'll pass it on.
Thanks, Andrew.
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Scott Rajeski for any closing remarks.
Again, thanks, everyone, for your continued interest and support of Latham. You know, we look forward to meeting with many of you at upcoming conferences this spring and into the summer, and, providing further updates, you know, on the next earnings call. You know, hope everyone has a great day. Take care. Bye.
The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.
Bye-bye.