With a record number of beginners teeing off in 2020, Callaway, the maker of golf balls,
clubs, bags and apparel, has been thriving.
Callaway had first quarter 2021 net revenue of $652 million
, a 47 percent increase from the year earlier, and a new record for the company.
On May 24, 2021, the stock closed at $34.86
, more than one hundred and thirty percent higher than the year earlier.
Callaway pre-Covid was already the number one brand in
sticks, I call it, which is putters, drivers and irons.
And you know, they were outpacing industry growth and then they were also number two in
balls behind Titleist.
So with Covid you saw an explosion of, let's say, new participants and those
new participants need new equipment.
Callaway has made moves off the fairway as well.
In March 2021, the company completed its merger with golf entertainment business, Top
golf, which blends technology with food and cocktails.
This is a transformative merger.
It creates an entity that doesn't really replicate anything that currently exists with
a leader in golf equipment merging with a leader in golf
entertainment.
In 2020, almost 37 million players teed off at a golf course or participated in
an off-course activity like a driving range.
Nearly a third of the U.S.
population watched, read about or played golf.
But with movie theaters, travel and concerts expected to rebound, will golf club makers like
Callaway and its rival, Acushnet, be able to maintain their momentum?
Callaway Golf Company got its start in 1982 under the name Hickory Stick
USA. In the Southern California town of Temecula, the tiny three person company
produced a revolutionary line of putters and wedges.
The following year, Ely Callaway, an entrepreneur and businessman with a background
in wine and textiles, bought a stake in the business.
By 1989, the renamed Callaway Golf Company had sales of $10
million and a spot as the number one driver on the senior PGA Tour.
In 1991, Callaway debuted on the New York Stock Exchange and introduced its
oversize metal driver named the Big Bertha Driver.
This product launch helped change the direction of the company and the game of golf for
millions
Big Bertha Driver represented the, you know, the advancement of golf, right?
It was the advancement of the new technology, an oversize head for the
driver, and that created, you know, a distance, further distance and power for the
golfer.
By 1995, Callaway's Golf drivers were the number one drivers in play on the world's
major professional tours.
And thanks to a booming economy, a surplus of new courses and a 21-year-old phenomenon
named Tiger Woods, the game of golf was also seeing a surge of new players.
He brought excitement and added diversity to the sport.
But I think he what he really did was added more youth.
In 1997, Woods claimed his first green jacket at the Masters.
The number of U.S. golfers had grown to 30 million by 2005.
In the two decades leading up to 2006, the number of courses nationwide
swelled by 44 percent.
But the 2008 financial crisis and an oversupply of courses led to a sudden drop in
demand for the sport.
Many of those golf courses were built as amenities to sell
real estate, and therefore they weren't thinking about the due
diligence of can this golf course survive and thrive
in this market?
In this trade area where there are already seven golf courses, they didn't
think about that because it wasn't part of their business plan.
By 2010, the number of golfers in the U.S.
had plunged to 26 million.
That decline impacted some of the biggest names in golf.
In 2016, Nike exited the golf business and announced it would stop making clubs,
balls and bags.
The following year, Adidas sold golf club maker, TaylorMade, to New York based equity firm
KPS Capital Partners.
Callaway was transitioning its business too, from a golf club manufacturer, to include
lifestyle products complementary to golf.
In 2017, Callaway bought backpack and golf club bag maker, Ogio,
and sports apparel brand Travis Mathew.
And in 2019 it added outdoor hiking apparel brand, Jack Wolfskin, to its roster.
As of June 3rd, 2021, Callaway had a market cap of $6.8
billion. In 2020, golf clubs made up 49 percent of net sales,
golf balls made up 12 percent, apparel made up 22 percent, and gear and
accessories, like golf bags, made up the remainder.
Callaway sells its products in over 120 countries.
With pro-games, college teams and even kids leagues impacted by the pandemic, many
sports enthusiasts in 2020 turned to golf.
It's wonderful that golf's intrinsic values—people
participating out in nature, people who are starved
for social interaction in a safe environment, that
golf fit perfectly into that situation.
There was a surge of people who came into the game who frankly
had nothing else to do.
Some of them were former players who hadn't been playing much.
You know, they played five times a year.
Suddenly they played every weekend.
They didn't have a kid's soccer game to go to.
They didn't have, they couldn't go to a concert.
They couldn't go to movies.
They didn't travel.
In 2020, golfers played almost 502 million rounds, thirteen percent more
than a year earlier.
That same year, three million golfers in the U.S.
hit the links for the first time, a record number of beginners, according to the National
Golf Foundation. Those trends impacted some of the biggest golf equipment companies in the
U.S., including privately held companies like Ping and TaylorMade and publicly traded
companies like Acushnet, the maker of Titleist golf balls, and of course, Callaway.
In 2020, Acushnet had net sales of $1.6 billion, a four percent
decrease from the year prior due to the pandemic and government ordered shutdowns.
But with increased demand around golf related products, the company saw first quarter 2021
net sales surge 42 percent from the previous year to $580
million.
When the pandemic really started being a dominant
factor in America in March and April, where you had a significant
number of businesses of all kinds shutting down to help control the
virus, roughly 50 percent of U.S.
golf courses were shut down during that two month period.
Callaway faced similar challenges and it may have also seen even bigger gains.
In 2020, Callaway had net sales of $1.5 billion, down six
percent from a year earlier.
While golf club sales in 2020 increased 2.4 percent, the company saw a decline of
seven percent in its golf ball business and a 16 percent drop in its apparel and gear
segment. Both with employees working from home and families having few travel options in the
first quarter of 2021, Callaway said net sales surged to $652
million, a 47 percent increase from a year earlier.
The company saw a 26 percent growth in golf club sales on a year-over-year basis, a
50 percent increase in golf ball sales and a 23 percent uptick in the sale
of apparel. While the company did face additional charges in 2020, like a 13
million dollar increase in shipping costs, it also benefited in recent years from golfers
moving away from buying clubs off the rack towards custom fittings.
People are getting made-to-order clubs, which means higher price point clubs, and it means
really good things for working capital.
So the sport is also the way the products are bought within the sport
are really improving.
And that's really good for margins going forward for the all industry participants,
including Callaway as well.
CNBC reached out to Callaway, but they declined our request for an interview.
There were more than 16,000 golf courses in the U.S.
at the end of 2020.
About 20 percent to 25 percent of golf courses in the U.S.
are private clubs.
Golf needs to do something to kind of fight that misperception that it's an
elitist sport that costs a lot of money.
Yes, it can cost a lot of money.
And yes, there are some elitist in it.
However, there are a lot of regular people as well.
While almost 25 million people played on a golf course in 2020.
Another 12 million people played on either a simulator, at a driving range or at a golf
entertainment center. Callaway has positioned itself to take advantage of that trend.
In March 2021, Callaway merged with golf entertainment business, Topgolf.
I think this is going to more than double our growth prospects, right.
And, you know, being able to take advantage of that
opportunity from a position of strength like we can right now, because, you know,
our business is flat out killing it.
Topgolf got its start in Watford, England in 2000 and opened its first U.S.
venue in Alexandria, Virginia, in 2005.
As of March 2021, it had over 60 locations and its four-level flagship
venue in Las Vegas features over 120 climate-controlled hitting bays, five
separate bars and a 900-person concert venue
Before the merger, if we were talking about Callaway, we were just talking about roughly
ten, their participation in a roughly $10 billion market of golf
equipment. And that's it.
But with the Topgolf merger, what that does is it opens up, it
widens the aperture of opportunity for Callaway Topgolf combined, where they
can attack a near $100 billion opportunity of stuff
related to golf.
According to Konik, Callaway's merger with Topgolf presents the company with big
opportunities.
Whether it's food and beverage, whether it's venue entertainment, whether it's
technology, software services, that's what really the merger does for the Callaway
entity combined. And it just opens up a huge revenue stream opportunity going
forward over the long term.
Topgolf had revenue in 2019 of $1.1 billion dollars.
The combined company will have a revenue mix of 30 percent golf equipment, 46 percent
, Topgolf and 24 percent soft goods like its apparel line.
And Konik thinks with fewer people expected to return to the office full-time and with
Americans getting older, the golf equipment industry, Callaway included, could see even
bigger gains in the future
In the United States, remember, there's a ton of baby boomers that are about to retire.
And those baby boomers, they're not probably playing soccer or running all over the place.
They're going to probably play a lot of golf and there's going to be a ton of new
participants to the sport.
As a result,
The game isn't for everybody.
It's really for people who, on one level, who don't need
immediate satisfaction, who don't, who are willing to work a little bit
to try and get to a level where they can enjoy the game.