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Text: These risks include, but are not limited to, the impact of seasonality and weather, general economic conditions and the level of consumer spending, the company's ability to capitalize on opportunity, or grow its market share and numerous other factors identified in our Form 10-K and other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
We have worked hard over the years to build the most experienced, industry-leading team, and I am very proud of their results.
Today, I would like to start by reviewing a few of our first quarter highlights.
Then, I will touch on how we are strategically approaching the important peak selling season, as well as discussing the meaningful opportunities in front of us to create growth and long-term shareholder value.
And finally, Mike will review the financial results in greater detail and provide some color on the balance of the year.
Let me start by reviewing the first quarter.
Our top priority continues to be the health and safety of our team, customers and community as we serve our customers boating needs.
We are pleased that our first quarter results greatly exceeded the very impressive results last year.
A year ago, we had very strong growth in the December quarter and set a record for revenue and earnings.
The MarineMax team significantly outperformed those results and raised the bar yet again.
We further strengthened our financial position during the quarter, while completing the very strategic acquisition of SkipperBud's, the largest acquisition for the company to date.
As we indicated on our last earnings call in October, we finished fiscal 2020 with the highest revenue and earnings in the company's history.
That momentum and industry demand has continued as shown by our results.
Our record results continue to demonstrate our team's ability to evaluate customers' needs, act quickly and implement the right changes in how we operate our business.
For the quarter we are particularly pleased with our continued solid performance in same-store sales, which increased over 20% which is on top of 24% same-store sales growth a year ago.
Importantly, our new unit growth was even stronger at 35%.
Furthermore in the quarter, we had meaningful growth across essentially all brand, categories and geographic region.
The marine industry continues to experience a significant acceleration in new customers.
This new foundational layer of customers to the boating lifestyle is comprised of the combination of new first-time buyers and people that decided to get back into boating, which should help support future growth as they migrate to larger or different types of products in the coming years.
Our team remains energized by the shift, and given our scale, we should continue to significantly benefit from this resurgence.
During the quarter we also leveraged our investments in technology, driving leads in marketing analytics, which is converting into sales.
We continue to make investments in world-class customer engagement tools that improve our teams' efficiency and effectiveness and help us to take share and lead the industry.
In the quarter, we added SkipperBud's and its affiliate Silver Seas Yacht to our family.
The acquisition added 20 locations, including 11 marina and storage operations.
We have successfully integrated the business and believe many opportunities exists to share best practices, brands and resources to drive even greater growth in the years to come.
From a profitability perspective, one of the best elements of the quarter was strong gross margin.
We benefited from increases in product margins, growth in our storage and service businesses, our asset light Fraser and Northrop & Johnson global charter businesses and our finance and insurance businesses.
Expanding our margins has been a long-term strategic focus and recent acquisitions have contributed to that strategy.
The combination of gross margin expansion and focused expense management resulted in considerable leverage and a record $1.04 of earnings per share for the quarter.
But, even more impressive is that we believe there is incremental growth ahead.
So now let me touch on how we are approaching the important peak selling season.
We are well positioned and prepared to serve our customers.
COVID had changed all aspects of customer expectations, including the historically important Boat Show.
Our team has adapted with greater digital capabilities and refocused marketing spend that leverages our stores and our online experience, generating exceptional results.
Beyond leaner industry inventory, we continue to invest in training and tools to ensure our team is able to pivot to continue to meet the needs of our customers digitally.
Our deep manufacturing relationships and nationwide shared inventory give us a competitive edge.
With the largest selling season ahead, we expect to build on a strong start to our fiscal year and deliver exceptional customer experiences.
Our strategy to create long-term shareholder value is focused on driving top line growth, operating leverage, disciplined capital management and building on our strong culture.
We continue to effectively execute on our multifaceted growth strategy, supported by our global market presence, premium brands, exceptional customer service and ongoing investments in technology.
Our focus on driving margins and improving costs continue to unlock significant leverage in our model.
Our performance illustrates the power of our business model, specifically our scale, premium locations, and cash flow generating capability.
MarineMax is a well-disciplined operator with a strong foundation from which to grow.
With that update, I will ask Mike to provide more detailed comments on the quarter.
For the quarter, revenue grew 35% to over $411 million due largely to same-store sales growth of 20%.
This exceptional growth was driven by even greater comparable new unit growth that exceeded 35%%.
While our AUP declined in the quarter from seasonally very strong sales of smaller product, the demand for larger product is also robust.
A big takeaway from our results this quarter is our ability to post very strong comps on top of already strong comps.
Our gross profit dollars increased over $43 million, while our gross margin rose 370 basis points to 30%.
Our record gross margin was due to a handful of factors.
Among these are improving margins on new and used boat sales, impressive service and storage performance of SkipperBud's, which has a long track record of performance in these categories, growth in our higher margin finance and insurance businesses, and growth in our brokerage business including our global Superyacht Services Organizations of Northrop & Johnson and Fraser Yachts.
We would note that the superyacht charter business has remained adversely impacted by travel bans around the globe.
Our higher margin businesses has been a focus of ours for some time, including our acquisition strategy, which is helping to drive these results.
Regarding SG&A, the majority of the increase was due to the increase in sales and the related commissions combined with the two mergers we have recently completed, SkipperBud's and Northrop & Johnson.
Interest expense dropped in the quarter due to lower interest rates and a sizable reduction in short-term borrowings given the cash we have generated.
Our operating leverage in the quarter was over 17% which drove very strong earnings growth setting another quarterly record with pre-tax earnings of almost $31 million.
Our record December quarter saw both net income and earnings per share more than double with earnings per share hitting $1.04, more than twice the level of last year's previous record.
Moving on to our balance sheet, we continue to build cash with about $121 million at quarter end versus $36 million a year ago.
Even after paying cash for both Northrop & Johnson in July and SkipperBud's, October 1.
As discussed last quarter, given the attractive interest rate environment, we explored and did secure mortgages on a portion of our sizable real estate portfolio.
Besides some slight rate arbitrage it further positions us to capitalize on opportunities as they develop.
Our inventory at quarter end was down 23% to $379 million.
However, excluding Skippers, our inventory is down closer to 36%.
I illustrate this point to show how well our team has pivoted to selling in a lean inventory environment as proven by the very strong unit-driven same-store sales growth this quarter.
Looking at our liabilities, despite added borrowings for Skipper's inventory, short-term borrowings decreased $171 million due largely to a reduction in inventories and increase in cash generation with the contribution from the roughly $53 million of mortgages that are outstanding.
Customer deposits, while not the best predictor of near-term sales because they can be lumpy, due to the size of deposits and whether a trade is involved or not, nearly tripled in size due to the timing of large yacht orders and more robust sales along with the contribution from Skipper's for future sales.
Our current ratio stands at 1.74 and our total liabilities to tangible net worth ratio is 1.42, both of these are very impressive balance sheet metrics.
Our tangible net worth was $339 million or about $14.92 per share.
Our balance sheet has always been a formidable strategic advantage, and today more than ever, it continues to protect us in uncertain times, while providing the capital for expansion as opportunities arise.
Turning to guidance, the December quarter exceeded expectations and the industry trends remained strong.
The industry estimates for 2021 retail units are beginning to rise from the low-single digits to the mid-single digits.
Since we usually outperform the industry and grow our AUP on an annual basis, we now expect our annual same-store sales growth to be in the high single digits.
This is up from the mid-to-high single digits we guided to earlier in the year.
Given the strength in earnings in December, our guidance also assumes modest operating leverage improvement above our previous guidance.
This expectations assumes we reached the low end of our historical targeted leverage of 12% to 17% given we have the bulk of the year still in front of us along with continued uncertainty.
Accordingly, we are raising our earnings per share guidance to the range of $4 to $4.20 for 2021 from our earlier guidance of $3.70 to $3.90.
Our guidance excludes the impact from any potential acquisitions that we may complete.
As we progress through the year, we will provide updates as needed to our guidance.
Looking at the remainder of 2021, remember that our March quarter is the easiest comparison with our toughest comparisons in the more meaningful summer quarters of June and September.
Our guidance uses the share count of about 22.8 million shares and an effective tax rate of 26%.
Our tax rate for the December quarter was meaningfully better than this, due primarily to equity compensation deductions which are hard to predict and are not typically forecasted when we give guidance.
Turning to current trends, January will close with positive same-store sales and our backlog is meaningfully higher than last year.
As we have said, industry trends remain strong and we are generally outperforming these elevated levels.
We continue to feel good as we enter the important summer selling season that's early in the year and a lot of work remains.
MarineMax continues to benefit and capitalize on the surge in demand and the desire of consumers to find a safe recreational activity.
Our team's performance to start the fiscal year has shown continued excellent execution, even on top of very impressive same-store sales a year ago.
We are creating exceptional customer experiences through our team's services, products and technology.
Most exciting is that we see significant opportunity in our brand expansion and also our higher margin businesses.
With about 30 locations globally, we believe our superyacht services business have considerable upside including their charter business, which should contribute in a much larger manner.
We remain committed to the long-term financial strength of the company by driving cash flow growth.
Importantly, our acquisitions are integrated and contributing immediately to our business.
Looking forward, we are focused on building our strong team culture, we are focused on executing on our growth strategy and we are focused on creating long-term shareholder value.

user
raises fy earnings per share view to $4.00 to $4.20.
marinemax - revenue increased 35%, or over $107 million, to $411.5 million for quarter ended december 31, 2020 from $304.2 million in comparable period last year.
qtrly same-store sales growth exceeds 20% driven by 35% comparable new unit growth.
marinemax sees fy earnings per share of $4.00 to $4.20.
q1 earnings per share $1.04.

assistant