Latham Group, Inc. (SWIM) Q1 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Latham Group, Inc. (SWIM -3.49%)
Q1 2022 Earnings Call
May 12, 2022, 9:00 a.m. ET

Contents:

• Prepared Remarks
• Questions and Answers
• Call Participants

Prepared Remarks:

Operator

Good day, and welcome to the Latham Group first quarter 2022 earnings conference call. [Operator instructions] Please note today's event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Nicole Briguet, the company's investor relations representative. Please go ahead.

Nicole Briguet

Thank you, and welcome to Latham's Q1 fiscal 2022 earnings call. Earlier this morning, we issued our 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 CFO, Mark Borseth. Following their remarks, we will open the call up 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 earnings release posted on its investor relations website and will be provided in our Form 10-Q for the first quarter of fiscal year 2022.

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 adjusted EBITDA to net income calculated under GAAP can be found in our earnings press release and will be included in our Form 10-Q for Q1 2022. I'll now turn the call over to Scott Rajeski.

Scott Rajeski -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Thanks, Nicole. Good morning. Thank you for joining us for our first quarter 2022 earnings call. Just a few weeks ago, we celebrated the one year anniversary of our IPO, and I am proud of all that we've accomplished in that time.

We have consistently executed on our strategy, navigated a constantly changed environment, and delivered strong growth. We have entered 2022 in a position of strength, and I want to thank our employees, dealer partners and investors for their ongoing support. The first quarter was a strong one for Latham, and we are encouraged by the early excitement and anticipation we're seeing from both consumers and dealers, as we head into the peak pool building season. We've been on the road connecting with dealers and home owners across the country, further educating the market on the value proposition of fiberglass.

What we're seeing and hearing across the board is homeowner demand for pool ownership is strong, and awareness of the Latham brand and the benefits of fiberglass continues to grow. We continue to focus on dealer education, and we are pleased that our new world-class training center in Florida is now open. The hands-on training that we can provide at this center is in high demand and our schedule is quickly filling up for the rest of this year. This is just one of the many measures we are taking to help our dealers increase installation capacity, and we are excited to welcome new dealers, and quickly and successfully onboard them in a flexible, technologically advanced learning environment.

The homeowner interest in pools is there. And during the quarter, we continue to enhance our ability to meet demand. Our fiberglass production continued to improve as we brought on new material sources and expanded resident supply from our existing sources. As a result, North American fiberglass production increased about 50% sequentially in Q1 versus Q4 last year, and that came on top of a 35% sequential improvement in Q4 versus Q3 last year.

We continue to make progress on our fiberglass order backlog, especially on pools that were ordered at a lower price that we are charging now. Lead times improved across many of our fiberglass plants and models. Continuing to improve lead times is a key focus for us across the business, and I'm proud to say that we are tracking back toward normalized competitive lead time in all of our other product categories. We also turbocharged our employee recruitment efforts during Q1 and meaningfully filled open direct labor positions.

In turn, this enabled us to successfully navigate labor headwinds related to the Omicron variant, in January and February. Our branding and digital initiatives continue to differentiate us from subscale, regional manufacturers and remain an important driver of our ability to create demand and drive future growth. The work we have done with search engine optimization continues to strengthen our competitive leadership position in the market. Our website traffic remains strong with 700,000 sessions and 2.1 million paid views year-to-date.

This organic web traffic has also further improved our search rankings across all our product categories. In addition, we continue to develop pools that empower homeowners to build a pool that trains. We have made updates in the key product areas with fiberglass, enabling users to view different designs and select what that speaks to their style. All our work to further our branding and digital initiatives, coupled with our operational excellence efforts is helping to drive the awareness and adoption of fiber glass.

As a result of all of these efforts, Q1 net sales grew approximately 29% year over year, and adjusted EBITDA grew up 43% year over year, getting us off to a great start to the year. Q1 was a great demonstration of the team's ability to successfully execute tremendous growth while navigating the difficulties that come with today's disruptive global supply chain. Our business continues to face new short-term challenges each quarter, a few of which we expect to impact Q2. First, like many others, we continue to face an unprecedented supply chain environment, and we are not immune to short-term supply challenges.

To that end, during Q2, we were experiencing a temporary shortage of material that goes into the production of our unique fiber glass flake for several of our fiberglass color offerings. To address this, we are leveraging our vendor relationships to ramp up supply of this input, and we expect to return the full availability of this material in early Q3. We have a proven ability to respond quickly to supply chain challenges as our team has done a tremendous job showing up our revenue supply for our fiberglass pools, both through productivity initiatives and supply diversification efforts. Just as we saw throughout 2020 and 2021, we believe the breadth of our offerings and strong supplier and dealer relationships will enable us to navigate today's difficult supply chain environment.

Second, unseasonable weather in April impacted dealers' ability to install pools in the Northeast, Midwest and Canada. As it gets warmer, when we approach peak pool building months in Q2 and Q3, we expect installations to pick up quickly. Lastly, as many of you know, in April, we experienced a fire at one of our smallest fiberglass facilities in Odessa, Texas. Thankfully, none of our employees were on site at the time of the incident, and I am grateful to report there were no injuries.

I'm proud of our team's efforts to quickly redeploy assets and resources to mitigate the impact of this lost capacity. We have shifted production from this facility to our other fiberglass manufacturing sites, which have capacity to accommodate the additional orders, thanks to our ongoing expansion investments across our manufacturing footprint. We are currently in the process of cleaning up this site and evaluating future uses for the location. In the interim, we are using the Odessa facility for distribution purposes to service the region.

Although this will impact Q2 net sales and gross margin, we anticipate the Odessa incident will have minimal impact on the full year, as we quickly shifted production to our other fiberglass manufacturing facilities. Despite these near-term issues, we feel good about the actions we are taking to position ourselves for success, as we enter the peak pool building season in the back half of the year. We continue to see growth across our product portfolio, and our dealers continue to book orders through 2022 and even into 2023. Where our dealers have additional capacity or are expanding their installation crews, our digital marketing engine is ensuring a healthy supply of consumer lead to drive them to more pool installs.

We will continue to ramp up fiberglass volume growth in the second half of the year, as we realize the benefits of our resin supply actions and comp a period of softer volumes because of the raw material availability challenges we experienced in the back half of 2021. Our pricing actions and surcharges have enabled us to counter the impacts of cost inflation on raw materials, freight and labor. We continue to see cost inflation, although the rate of the increase does seem to be abating. We are comfortable with our current pricing levels as the value proposition of our product offerings remain intact, and we will remain nimble in addressing inflation, and are prepared to respond quickly to any future market changes.

Thanks to our strong focus on operational excellence, continued execution of our growth strategy, and the health of our industry, we are pleased to reiterate our fiscal 2022 guidance, which implies 35% to 40% year-over-year net sales growth and 32% to 46% year-over-year adjusted EBITDA growth. Looking further ahead, we continue to build our business for the long term. As demand for our products grows, we continue to expand our manufacturing capacity. We are in the final stages of installing a new state-of-the-art, highly automated line in Fort Wayne, Indiana, which will drive a more efficient manufacturing process for our steel panel package pools and have incremental capacity to support future growth.

I'm also pleased to share that the construction of our new Kingston facility remains on track to be in production in 2023. We have also started hiring efforts at the new Kingston facility. The dynamics of the large outdoor repair and remodel market remain attractive, as investments in the backyard continue. As the only pool company with a direct relationship with the homeowner and the market leader in every pool subcategory in which we compete in, we remain confident in our ability to deliver outsized growth.

The confidence in our future is shared by our board of directors who have approved the share repurchase program with an authorization of up to $100 million of our common stock over the next three years. With that, I'll turn the call over to Mark to review our financial results, outlook and capital allocation priorities in greater detail. Mark?

Mark Borseth -- Chief Financial Officer

Thank you, Scott, and good morning, everyone. Today, I'll review our results for the first quarter of fiscal 2022 and discuss our outlook for the year. First, an overview of Q1 results. Please note that all comparisons are on a year-over-year basis compared to the first quarter of fiscal 2021.

Net sales for the first quarter 2022 were up about $43 million or 29% year over year to $192 million. These results are on top of a very strong period of growth. As you recall, Q1 2021 sales grew 191% year over year. Price represented 24% of the 29% year-over-year net sales increase in Q1, as we continue to realize the benefits of our pricing actions.

Volume grew 5% versus Q1 of 2021, which, as I just mentioned, was a quarter of outsized growth and a tough comp. Net sales increased year over year in all three of our product lines in Q1. This growth was led by an $18 million increase for in-ground swimming pools, where we saw strong fiberglass sales growth, that was somewhat offset by softer packaged pool sales, which were impacted in part by a relatively full distribution channel. Liners increased about $16 million, and our cover business increased by about $9 million.

Gross profit increased $18 million or 35% to approximately $71 million, driven by an increase in net sales, which was partially offset by the addition of non-cash stock-based compensation expense of $1.2 million. Q1 gross margins, excluding non-cash stock-based compensation expense, expanded about 220 basis points versus last year to 37.5% of sales. Our pricing actions continue to offset inflation on raw materials, labor and freight, which, as Scott mentioned earlier, continues to increase, however, at the lower rates of increases than we've been seeing in prior quarters. Our average selling prices are increasing, particularly in our fiberglass business, thanks to the improved revenue supply and staffing levels, which led to increased production and sales as we look through our lower-priced fiberglass order backlog.

Q1 gross margins also benefited from the building of inventory from year-end to support the business, which aided Q1 gross margins by 230 basis points. We expect this benefit will reverse as inventory levels come down through the balance of the year. Gross margins were also impacted by negative fixed cost leverage, as we ramp up our infrastructure to support future volume growth. In Q1, selling, general and administrative expenses increased to about $45 million or 23.6% of sales from about $27 million or 18.3% of sales in Q1 of 2021.

This was primarily driven by a $14 million increase in non-cash stock-based compensation expense to $16 million. Excluding the increase in non-cash stock-based compensation expense, SG&A costs increased about $4 million or 13.9% versus prior year, providing some nice leverage to the bottom line. Of the $4 million increase, about 30% was related to ongoing public company costs, with the balance related to supporting the ongoing growth of the business. Excluding non-cash stock-based compensation expense, SG&A for Q1 was about $30 million or 15.4% of sales.

As a result, adjusted EBITDA increased by $14.4 million or 43% to $48 million, and our adjusted EBITDA margin increased 250 basis points to 25% of net sales. Turning to the balance sheet. As of April 2, 2022, we had cash and cash equivalents of $19 million, $65 million of availability on our revolver, and total debt of about $324 million. Net cash used in operating activities was a seasonally driven $57 million versus $41 million in the first quarter of last year as a result of both higher receivables tied to increasing levels of sales, and increased inventory.

The increased inventory was driven in part by a strategic decision to minimize the impact of any supply chain interruptions, as well as by cost inflation. As a result, our net debt leverage ratio was 2.1 times at the end of Q1 2022. Capital expenditures totaled about $7 million in the first quarter of fiscal 2022 compared to less than $5 million in the same quarter last year. The increase in capital spending was primarily related to our fiberglass capacity expansion initiatives.

In light of our share repurchase program announcement today, I'd like to take a minute to touch on our capital allocation priorities. As a growth business, our first and foremost priority is reinvesting in the business, as we see this as a means to drive continued opportunities to generate significant returns and value creation. We've been increasing our capex spend over time as we have accelerated investments in our fiberglass manufacturing capacity. Second, we have a history of accretive acquisitions, and we will continue to be opportunistic on executing selective tuck-in M&A and business development investments.

Third, pay down of debt. We have a strong balance sheet and low net debt to adjusted EBITDA leverage. Lastly, we announced the approval of a share repurchase program, which authorized us to purchase up to $100 million of our common stock over the next three years. Our strong cash flow generation and balance sheet position enables us to continue to prioritize organic growth investments in the business, as well as strategic M&A, while also providing us the flexibility to further drive shareholder value through a share repurchase program.

We would expect to opportunistically repurchase shares as windows of opportunity arise. Now, turning to our outlook. As you saw in the guidance provided in our earnings release this morning, we reiterated our outlook for 2022. Net sales of $850 million to $880 million, representing 35% to 40% year-over-year growth.

Adjusted EBITDA of $185 million to $205 million, representing 32% to 46% year-over-year growth, and capital expenditures in the range of $45 million to $60 million. In addition, at the midpoint of our net sales guidance range, we now expect first half net sales to represent about 46% to 48% of full year 2022 net sales. We delivered robust first quarter growth on top of strong year-over-year comparisons. Despite a few short-term challenges in Q2, we remain confident in our team's continued execution of our growth strategy, positioning us well to deliver another strong year.

Consumer demand for pools is strong, and we are well positioned to capture that demand, as we continue to advance our brand and digital strategy and drive the awareness and adoption of fiberglass. We believe we have taken necessary pricing actions to help counter inflationary pressures, and we've made significant progress in navigating resin supply challenges, resulting in improving production levels and lead times across many of our fiberglass plants and models. As a result, we remain confident in our full year guidance, as well as our three to five-year outlook. With that, I'll turn it back to Scott.

Scott?

Scott Rajeski -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Thanks, Mark. I'm so proud of all the progress we have made, and grateful for our experienced team that works to make us better every day. Our conviction in the success of our fiberglass conversion strategy remains strong, as we continue to drive education and spread awareness of the value proposition of fiberglass. Q1 was a great start to the year, and we look forward to seeing this continued positive impact of our reimagined pool line experience.

We'll now open the line for questions.

Questions & Answers:

Operator

[Operator instructions] Today's first question comes from Matthew Bouley with Barclays. Please go ahead.

Ashley Kim -- Barclays -- Analyst

Hi, this is Ashley Kim on for Matt today. Congrats on the strong quarter and thank you for taking my question.  So just with the Q1 margin coming in pretty strong, I think it implies a step down from these levels through the rest of the year, just looking at full year guidance. Should we think of that as mostly lost volume leverage in 2Q? Or anything else to kind of call out there with the cadence?

Mark Borseth -- Chief Financial Officer

Hey, good morning, Ashley. Nice to hear from you and thanks for your question. Very pleased with our first quarter results, as you mentioned, both top and bottom line growth and a very nice margin. A lot of good things happened for us there in the quarter.

We don't provide quarterly EBITDA guidance, but our full year context is some EBITDA margin expansion. We have a few short-term challenges in Q2 that we're going to work our way through, as we go through the year. And I think also as we look at our gross margin which was very strong in Q1, we had a nice pickup from some inventory build. We don't see repeating.

We'll probably get some of that back as we go through the balance of the year and worked on our inventories. But we feel very good about the full year guidance and our ability to deliver that.

Ashley Kim -- Barclays -- Analyst

And then just my second question, how do you think about investing through downturn, things like going after new dealers, capacity additions, marketing dollars? Would you kind of continue to invest through it in order to keep driving material conversion? Or what's kind of the outlook there?

Scott Rajeski -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Yes. So, I think, if there was a downturn -- we've got a very strong balance sheet, a healthy business. We generate a lot of cash flow. We would continue to invest.

And one of the things with the magic of what we could do, driving that fiberglass penetration story with a lower upfront cost of that product versus the concrete pool, total lower cost of ownership. We will continue to push the lead generation engine, drive -- lead the demands to our dealers, make sure we keep all of our dealer partners pretty full from a new construction standpoint. And just to remind everyone, we also have a pretty good recurring revenue business with the liner and cover segments of ours, which we can generate a lot of demand as well. So we would continue to invest our long-term thesis as we want to stay upfront of the demand and capacity.

We believe the secular trends in this industry are phenomenal out there. And as consumers want to continue to hunker down and invest in their backyard, we will do what we need to do to stay in the forefront to be the leading pool brand out there.

Ashley Kim -- Barclays -- Analyst

Thanks, Scott. Thanks, Mark. I'll leave it there.

Scott Rajeski -- President and Chief Executive Officer

You're welcome. Thanks, Ashley.

Mark Borseth -- Chief Financial Officer

Thanks, Ashley.

Operator

And the next question today comes from Susan Maklari with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Susan Maklari -- Goldman Sachs -- Analyst

Thank you everyone. Good morning. My first question is, can you give a little bit more context on the inflation side of things? I know that you mentioned that you are seeing those pressures somewhat abate. I guess just any context on how we should be thinking about the magnitude of that and how it will roll through the year?

Mark Borseth -- Chief Financial Officer

As we mentioned, inflation is not gone. We do see it continue to increase. It seems to be increasing at slower rates than we've previously seen. I think the other side of that, and we're expecting that to continue, Susan, I think the other side of that is, we are continuing to see the benefits of our pricing actions and realizing some of those, and some of that was reflected in our gross margin during the first quarter.

We feel really good about the pricing actions we've taken. We're staying ahead of the inflation curve as we sit here today, and we continue to monitor that situation very closely. It is very dynamic, and we'll continue to monitor it, and we'll be very nimble adjusting to it as we need to, going forward.

Susan Maklari -- Goldman Sachs -- Analyst

And then just following up a little bit, I guess, obviously, there's been a lot of concern about consumers and the overall sort of inflationary backdrop and a rising rate environment, all these sort of different macro crosswinds that are coming through. When you talk to your dealers on the ground, what are you hearing about the consumers' interest and willingness to spend on pools? What are dealers really concerned about today? And has their concern shifted any more recently as we've come into the year?

Scott Rajeski -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Yes. So, Susan, we've been stating with quite a few dealers recently, as we go back out there talking to folks. And I think the general view is for us in, I'll say, the short and medium term, we've not really seen a slowdown in the demand at the consumer level with our dealers. A lot of our dealers are booked out through 2022 for new pool installs.

Many are actually booking out into early 2023 as well. Now look, there's also pockets of the country where we have dealers that have capacity. They can still get pools in the ground this year. We have dealers who are continuing to add crews based on the demand.

And for our dealers who may be seeing a slowdown, that's where we're cranking up our lead generation engine to make sure we keep the leads flowing to them. There's plenty of demand out there. I think we feel strong with this fiberglass conversion story, which can help drive with the cost ratability of that project. Well, look, in general, I think, we do need to be cautious of it and watch it as interest rates and everything increase.

But the pool buying decision is one that's made over many months, if not years. We'll continue to drive the demand and leads to our dealers. And we feel really good where we sit with the long-term projections of the industry. We're still well off at peak at where we were before.

And I think there's still a lot of room to run in here for us in general.

Susan Maklari -- Goldman Sachs -- Analyst

And just following up on that really quickly. You made the comment that you've got backlogs all the way through this year and then even into the early parts of '23. Are those people that have put deposits down on their pools? Or how secure is that backlog? How should we think about exactly what that's indicating?

Scott Rajeski -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Yes. I think we've talked about this a couple of times on various calls. We really don't see cancellations in the industry to any extent. At least we don't -- we've not seen any change in the trajectory of cancellations.

There are some. But the power of it for us is, right -- if there was a cancellation, we can take that pool just to the next dealer and homeowner that's waiting for it. But again, at the consumer level, the homeowner level, right, they're putting down a significant deposit for that pool buying decision. Well, it could vary from 5%, 10%, 15%, 20%.

I think the consumer is unlikely to walk away from that cash deposit once they've made that decision. And I think more importantly, once they pull the family and the children are getting a pool, it's going to be tough to tell a kid not to walk away from it. So we don't worry about it. We think it's pretty solid and strong across the board.

And again, the ability to crank up that lead in, and then I can't stress this one off, the power of that SEO and driving the demand, we talk about how many homes are out that don't have a swimming pool, homes in existence where folks are out there replacing something else in their backyard, invest in their home line and outdoor lifestyle space. We don't worry about it right now at all.

Susan Maklari -- Goldman Sachs -- Analyst

OK. All right. That's very helpful color. Thank you.

Goodluck with everything.

Scott Rajeski -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Thanks, Susan.

Operator

Next questions comes from Josh Pokrzywinski with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Josh Pokrzywinski -- Morgan Stanley -- Analyst

Good morning, guys. So just a couple of questions here. I guess, first, could you just sort of refresh us on where we're at maybe versus the start of the pandemic on kind of where the all-in price to a consumer is for a fiberglass pool versus where you think a granite pool might be coming in? Just trying to see what kind of the relative inflation looks like and what maybe that gap has looked like over time?

Scott Rajeski -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Good question, Josh. And again, I'll say high level without giving specific dollar amounts because I think it varies region to region, fiberglass versus concrete or granite. I think -- overall, I think we still maintain the same gap in a pricing standpoint. I'm not going to say it's exactly 28%.

But let's just take in that 25% to 30% range from the data that I've seen. The average ticket price of a slowing pool to the consumer in the backyard has gone up over the last two to three years by, you could call it, again, just -- an average number, I'll throw out there, 20%, 25%. But the gap and the advantage we have versus concrete still hold, that thesis is still strong. It still resonates at the consumer level for us.

We just continue to see the conversion being driven there. And look, I think this is a point where the rating acquisition really plays well for us where it made a little bit more on the lower-priced entry-level pool. Still a great pool, great product. We're seeing really nice success there, where a homeowner didn't want to pay the higher ticket price.

We have that full product offering from that entry-level pool all the way up through the premium product of the fiberglass. We still maintain that advantage, which is very powerful for us in where we sit today.

Josh Pokrzywinski -- Morgan Stanley -- Analyst

And then, I know that a lot of the strategy around dealers have been kind of getting your best dealers to be able to sell even more. But if you had to break down sort of the volume growth that you guys have seen here, how much of that would you sort of attribute to kind of more sales per dealer versus bringing on more dealers over the past two years?

Scott Rajeski -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Yes. Over the past two -- the hard data, it's probably 50-50, right? So if you remember, as we moved through some of the challenges we had last year with resin and, I mean, we don't want to go back there, right, we focused on supporting our bigger and better dealers that were out there, right? We wanted to drop off the best dealers to make sure they did supply our product. So I'd say probably the majority of our revenue has come from driving incremental capacity with our existing dealer base. That doesn't mean that we've stopped the slowdown of signing up new dealers at the core thesis to us, and it's something we always do in bringing on new dealers.

And I would say, I think that's a big lever we're going to use to our advantage now. I think we've talked about the new training center opening up down in Florida. We're actually down there two weeks over our board meeting. And I'm telling at some point, we'll get all of you down there.

It is an extremely impressive facility, the work that the entire team has done to stand it up. We're sold out for all of our boot camps as we go through next year. Now, those boot camps are going to be new dealers coming into the pipeline for us, to teach them how to install fiberglass package pools, liners, auto covers, the full product array, as well as bringing in some dealers who've been with us for the last two or three years that we've brought on new, who were not able to come to a live hands-on training boot camp like we did in the past. We went to the virtual boot camp training.

So the fact that we're sold out through the rest of the year with those boot camps tells you we've got a good, healthy flow of new and existing dealers in the pipeline to continue to drive that capacity creation in the industry, to get more pools in the ground for the home owner.

Josh Pokrzywinski -- Morgan Stanley -- Analyst

Perfect. Appreciate it.

Scott Rajeski -- President and Chief Executive Officer

You're welcome, Josh.

Operator

[Operator instructions] Our next question is from Ryan Merkel with William Blair. Please go ahead.

Ryan Merkel -- William Blair and Company -- Analyst

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking the question. So my first question is on the outlook. Can you help us quantify the impact to 2Q either for sales or EBITDA from the three headwinds that you called out? And then sort of related, do you see most of the recovery in 3Q? Or does some of that recovery from these issues also bleed into 4Q?

Mark Borseth -- Chief Financial Officer

Coming on top of our really strong Q1, we're very pleased with posting up today. Scott did mention a couple of challenges that we face in Q2, that we believe are very short term in nature. But when we kind of think about those three things, whether it's the fire, which -- very unfortunate incident. So happy that nobody was injured there -- which we believe will have a minimal impact on the full year.

The really tough level that we experienced in the month of April as we kicked off Q2, and then some of the supply chain challenges that we're seeing and working our way through, and to be through by the end of the second quarter. I think at the end of the day, you could probably split those a third, a third, a third as we've looked at that and thought about those things. And again, we think of those as for a short-term impact in Q2. As a result of that, we combined our very strong Q1 with what we think we're going to see in Q2 here, and are providing some color around that first half split that we think is going to be in that 46% to 48% of midpoint guidance for the full year.

So you put those two things together, we think we're going to land there for the first half. For the balance of the year, I think the thing I would comment on there, Ryan, is, as we talked in our Q4 call, and we thought about volumes throughout the year, we did expect to see softer volume in the first half of this year coming off of the really strong performance we had last year in the first half, and then picking up pretty significantly in the second half of this year. Unfortunately, we had the tough resin availability challenge for us in the second half last year, so we're coming up on some softer comps in the second half. So we'd expect to see volumes pick up in the second half of this year, which then gets us to the full year outlook that we're very happy to stand behind today.

Ryan Merkel -- William Blair and Company -- Analyst

For my second question, maybe over to Scott back to all this worry about the consumer. Scott, I've been taking a lot of questions about how your business might perform in a downturn. So I think it would be helpful if you could discuss how each of your three product segments might perform if we see a consumer downturn? And then also, what could decremental margins look like if you see a sales decline? I'm not looking for anything specific, but maybe a range or even a way to think about it?

Scott Rajeski -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Yes. I'll just put a quick financial model together for you to answer this one. From a high level, I think that the important thing for one to understand here is, the business we've created is just so different from where we were three, four years ago, five years ago, 10 years ago. So I think we're much better positioned in terms of how we run the business overall, and the variability of the cost structure that we've created.

The diversity of the product offering and the regional offer we have -- we now also have the business down in Australia and New Zealand. So we're positioned a lot better than we've ever been. If you think about the different categories, product categories, that repair and replacement market for us is always a very healthy growing segment of the business. If you want a swimming pool and you need a new liner or a new cover, you really can't go without that very long, right? You want your pool operational.

So that business, we really don't typically see any kind of downturn as it goes. If anything, you might see an uptick where people are making the decision, hey, things are tough, I'm going to give my pool redone, so I'm going to be stuck at home. The -- let's say the in-ground category, which is fiberglass and the other packaged pool segment, again, I think the price point of those pools versus the competitive product, the concrete pool, we have a cost advantage right out of the gate upfront, and we have the lower cost of total cost of ownership. So I think what we would see is the switching power potentially from concrete to fiberglass and/or vinyl liner pool accelerate.

And again, the auto cover category, the cover category is just such a critical component from safety, the efficiency of operating your pool. I think we're in the early stages of really driving the penetration of that one, and we would continue to push that on our products. And even if pool starts, let's say, slow down, flattened out or a slight pullback, the thesis of our long-term growth model is to drive penetration against that other product, right? And we believe we can continue to grab, share and grow. And that's why, as we've been talking over the last year or so since we became public, we have such confidence in that 10% to 12% top line growth algorithm of ours.

Look, if it, let's say got all the way around and back to your point on the margins and all of that, I think we've got a lot of triggers we can pull from a variability, the breadth of our offering, all the programs we offer out there across the board from a cost containment, cost contingency, where we should be able to maintain pretty healthy margins across the board in pretty much any scenario that could be out there, other than, let's say, the doomsday scenario of a really deep recession now. But I think, again, we would whether every single scenario that we could come through. And that's what's creates up this team. And if you think about the last three years, how many challenges have been thrown at us, and how the team has performed and the result this business is posted over a three-year period, that's a testament to the strength of our team, our dealers and the brand we have here at Latham.

Ryan Merkel -- William Blair and Company -- Analyst

Really helpful. Thanks, guys.

Operator

And the next question today comes from Tom Wojs with Baird. Please go ahead.

Tom Wojs -- Robert W. Baird and Company -- Analyst

Hey, guys. Good morning. Maybe just on the demand side. As you kind of think about incoming orders and kind of the prospective buyer pool or buyer -- I guess, pun intended buyer pool for pools that's out there, have you seen any change in kind of the income level cohort with the new orders? So for example, are you seeing more orders from kind of higher income households or less from lower income house -- So just kind of wondering what the mix on the income level cohort looks like with new orders?

Mark Borseth -- Chief Financial Officer

Yes. Good question. We don't really see that detail of, let's say, the income levels for the consumer who's buying the pools from our dealers. But I can share with you a couple of key data points that I picked up with some time I've spent with some folks out there.

The average price point of let's say the pool going into the backyard, continues to increase. And look, there's a couple of anecdotal points where a few dealers have said, they've seen the average price point of the backyard pool install move up significantly by 20%, 25%, which could be an indicator that there is a strength at the higher income level or the higher net worth equity level of homeowners willing to double down and invest in the yards. But again, as the price point has moved up in general, we've not really seen a slowdown in that demand, and there's our dealers being sold out to '23. But I think it is an interesting question.

It is one we watch. But again, back to the breadth of our portfolio, we have a price point pool that starts at the lower level all the way up to the premium level. So even if you did see a slowdown, we would just shift someone from maybe a fiberglass pool to a vinyl pool, they want to be aluminum wall pools and still make sure we got a Latham pool in the backyard.

Tom Wojs -- Robert W. Baird and Company -- Analyst

And then just on the weather side, I guess, how does a floor kind of start to April kind of filter in for the rest of the season? I guess, is there any way just to think about how much of your business is in the Midwest, Northeastern and Canada? Just for perspective?

Scott Rajeski -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Yes. So look, every year or season in the pool industry, you've got to fight through weather, and it's just part of the business we're in. And there's always a slow start to the season and just back to '19 with the wet spring on record in the U.S., right? I said that probably a couple of times here over the months. And we're really just entering the peak pool building season.

As you come in to, let's say, the middle of May, folks are trying to get that first pool in for Memorial Day, the Memorial Day Barbecue, right? Then there's a big push in June for the 4th of July party. Then it's everyone -- you got the whole August, September build season. There's a lot of runway to make up if you get off with slow start, like what seems to be happening here in many areas of the country. So we don't worry about it.

I think that's the magic of our dealers. Though, they might have to start working a Saturday and a Sunday here and there to catch up, but they do that to get those pools and liners into the homeowner. So we don't -- I don't think we really worry about it because -- just look at what happened in '19 -- 2021, right, you keep pushing pools right up into Christmas. And I guess that's where the fiberglass product can continue to be installed deeper into the winter months than the other two types of products that are out there, which gives us that confidence that a slow start won't hurt us long term for the season.

Tom Wojs -- Robert W. Baird and Company -- Analyst

OK. OK. Good. Thanks a lot, guys.

Good luck on the rest of your [Inaudible]

Scott Rajeski -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Yup.

Operator

Our next question comes from Keith Hughes from Truist. Please go ahead.

Keith Hughes -- Truist Securities -- Analyst

Yes, two questions. I guess first on backlog. Where -- what can you quote dealers in terms of delivery time for most of your fiberglass shelves now versus what it was, say, six months there?

Scott Rajeski -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Keith, I'll answer it two ways. One, it really is region dependent where you sit. And what I'll say, there's parts of the country right now where we've worked through the backlog, we're in a really good position, where, if you the consumer, once you're on a dealer and you wanted a pool, we could -- and the dealer had the open slot, right -- That's the key thing. If the dealer had capacity, had an open slot and had a crew, I can ship you a pool tomorrow, in some locations.

So I would say in many places, we're kind of back to what I would call normal lead times where we used to sit. We used to quote it in a couple of weeks. Other places, again, if it's a particular model or a region where we're still churning through, it could be out still several months in particular regions where dealers have healthier backlogs, those that are sold out in the 2023. So it's really that dynamic.

And for the rest of the business, again, back to the team, we've done a tremendous job getting back what I would call our world-class leading service levels across the industry, covers, liners, the in-ground vinyl business. We're in a really good position across the board there. And it's not just us, I think it's the entire channel, the WD stock in the product, the dealer can walk in, get the components they need to quickly turn those pools around for the consumer. But fiberglass is a little extended out still in many of the regions of the country.

Keith Hughes -- Truist Securities -- Analyst

And did acquisitions quite relevant

Mark Borseth -- Chief Financial Officer

So we're -- as far as rating goes, look, we're very pleased with the way that business is performing. It's part of our in-ground pool product category, which I think is up around $111 million, $112 million, grew nicely in the quarter. We don't specifically break out Radiant -- I'd just remind everybody, it's a relatively small business. I think we disclosed that last year, total sales were somewhere in the $35 million range.

And as pleased as we are with that performance, they also are -- have a pretty full order book right now. So we're not really expecting any real significant growth synergies this year. It's probably going to be more 2023 before we start seeing that.

Keith Hughes -- Truist Securities -- Analyst

OK. Thank you.

Mark Borseth -- Chief Financial Officer

You're welcome, Keith.

Operator

And our next question comes from Ken Zener with KeyBanc. Please go ahead.

Ken Zener -- KeyBanc Capital Markets -- Analyst

Good morning, everybody.

Mark Borseth -- Chief Financial Officer

Good morning, Ken.

Scott Rajeski -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Hey, Ken.

Ken Zener -- KeyBanc Capital Markets -- Analyst

Well, I appreciate your patience with all these questions around a relatively new market to most of us on the public side of the cyclical concern. So just within that vein, obviously, you held the guidance for the year, that's good, kind of, at least in our world, is better on the gross margin and called out 2Q headwinds. So could -- just trying to understand the cadence here. You talked about an inventory lift in 1Q.

Mark, would you care to quantify the benefit of that?

Mark Borseth -- Chief Financial Officer

Yes. In the first quarter, look, we had some nice things going on in the gross margin. We continue to realize the benefits of our pricing actions. We're seeing ASPs increase.

We continue to stay out ahead of inflation. The inventory benefit that we mentioned was 230 basis points in the quarter. And look, we're going to give that back over the years as inventory levels come down.

Ken Zener -- KeyBanc Capital Markets -- Analyst

And could you perhaps -- I mean, generally speaking, I think about hard assets get better, fixed cost absorption. Is that the largest component of that 230 basis point risk. Is that how we should think about it?

Mark Borseth -- Chief Financial Officer

No, I think the way you want to think about that is, as we've made some decisions to increase our inventory levels since the end of the year to help support the business, we see some of our overhead being absorbed into the inventory sitting on the balance sheet. We do continue to invest in our manufacturing overhead capability, which gave us some negative fixed cost leverage, because we do want to stay ahead of demand here and make sure that we can address demand going forward. So it's really two different things. One is the benefit of the inventory build.

The other is the absolute size of our overhead going forward that gave us a little negative leverage in the quarter.

Ken Zener -- KeyBanc Capital Markets -- Analyst

And then, given what you talked about kind of headwinds in 2Q, is it reasonable to assume that there might be a little more pressure in 2Q versus that adjusted baseline ex the inventory build? Or is there some real seasonality to that we might expect? And just asking, last year, obviously, we saw increasing costs 2Q, 3Q, 4Q. So I'm not sure we have a clear sense on the operating cadence there.

Mark Borseth -- Chief Financial Officer

Yes, I think as we look at the challenges that Scott mentioned in Q2, we tend to think about those more as top line challenges and short term in nature. The supply chain challenge has the potential to impact our revenue a bit in Q2 as we work through that issue and come out clean in Q3. The same thing with the weather, right, more of a top line issue, which was an April event. I think the one that maybe impacts cost a bit, Ken, is the fire, right? We'll have to see how that impacts.

It will have some impact on the top line. We'll probably incur a few incremental dollars there as well in the second quarter, as we think about the guide for the second quarter as part of our first half color of 46% to 48% on the top line.

Operator

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, as we finish our question-and-answer session. I'd like to turn the conference back over to Scott Rajeski for his closing remarks.

Scott Rajeski -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Hey. Thanks. Everyone, thank you for joining us this morning. We're really excited for another great year, and I would look forward to speaking with you all on the next call.

Have a great day. Thanks, everyone.

Operator

[Operator signoff]

Duration: 54 minutes

Call participants:

Nicole Briguet

Scott Rajeski -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Mark Borseth -- Chief Financial Officer

Ashley Kim -- Barclays -- Analyst

Susan Maklari -- Goldman Sachs -- Analyst

Josh Pokrzywinski -- Morgan Stanley -- Analyst

Ryan Merkel -- William Blair and Company -- Analyst

Tom Wojs -- Robert W. Baird and Company -- Analyst

Keith Hughes -- Truist Securities -- Analyst

Ken Zener -- KeyBanc Capital Markets -- Analyst

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