TTC
#Thank you, <UNK>.
Thanks for your patience too with what went on this morning.
Yes, good question, <UNK>.
At this point, we would probably characterize that just as you said a sense of it.
We will get more specific results as we wrap up the season and are able to look back at some industry results and so on.
With that said, I think it is our sense given the retail demand that I talked about just a minute ago that our marketshare is moving in the right direction with categories like walk power mowers and residential riders.
We think our marketshare will move in the right direction this fall with our new snow thrower offerings that I mentioned earlier.
We have a very strong position in the landscape contractor arena and marketshare is certainly very sound in the larger categories like the zero-turn riders.
Newer offerings in the spreader/sprayers clearly we are taking share there, but that is largely because we are entering a new category, but there is a lot to be excited about there as well.
And as I mentioned in the formal remarks earlier, we have some new features coming on that large category of the zero-turn riders in the third quarter that will be very exciting for our customers and for the channel.
Our sense is that is positive moving in the right direction and the same thing on the commercial side.
That is made up of different productlines, if you will.
We think the new hybrid fairway mower is certainly helping us in that category.
The new sprayer systems that we are bringing on are helping us in those categories.
And then last, I would just say with the acquisition of BOSS, and BOSS is a terrific company, it is a terrific addition to the portfolio, some of the new products they introduced at the truck show last quarter have been very, very well received.
So the combination of expecting a good preseason demand from the channel and end users will be accelerated by the new product offerings they have.
So I think all in, <UNK>, there is a lot to be encouraged about.
We will have more precision around that later in the season.
Well, first off, I would say that micro-irrigation is already an important part of those locales.
With that said, there is still a lot of acreage that is not micro-irrigated and is using other systems from probably to flood being the most inefficient.
So clearly, that as the regulatory environment changes, that will create opportunity.
If you are a farmer there and are only going to get so many acre feet of water then the ability to use that more precisely to maximize your productivity is going to matter.
I don't if it will be slow, but it is clearly moving in the right direction and as we have said before on the micro-irrigation side of the business, it is the right end of the continuum to be on.
We just need to manage water more precisely and these products do it better than any other.
I would say actually our marketshare in North America is somewhat higher than our worldwide share.
There are certain markets where we just don't have a strong presence; we continue to work on that.
We have ---+ North America would be one of our stronger markets; Western Europe, we opened the Romanian plant a few years back to give us a stronger presence in Eastern Europe.
We have talked about China in the past.
But the US actually would be, of the group, probably the strongest.
Well, I guess I would start off with, obviously, we understand what the Street does.
That is ultimately up to the Street, if you will.
I think the starting point for me would be we always ask our investors to look at the Toro Company kind of on an annual basis just because of the nature of larger quarters and smaller quarters and that kind of variability.
Things move back and forth.
To what degree will snow demand be earlier or later, we have the new factor of the BOSS snow products in the portfolio and managing channel demand and all of that.
So I think it is really saying right now at this point we will see what happens in the quarter, but we have sustained our annual number and we believe we are on track to do that and we expect a pretty good, as evidenced by that, a pretty good fourth quarter with the addition of BOSS now.
Probably the biggest impact to our gross margin overall is FX and what you are going to see is that is more heavily weighted toward the professional side of our business than the residential side.
I think that is probably the item that you need to factor into.
As I said earlier, it has turned out to be a more significant headwind than we had originally anticipated.
I think we would say they clearly are meeting, maybe exceeding our expectations.
When you bring something that is a newer technology, you are never quite sure.
Obviously, you do a lot of market research and voice of the customer, but you are still never quite sure.
This is a great platform that leverages less than 25 horsepower diesel with a hybrid technology and it is a combination of its fuel efficiency, coupled with that true hybrid drive system that I think customers are liking.
Some customers are more focused on the green aspects.
I think we are seeing that in Europe and that may be stronger than anticipated demand.
You always have the question when we bring out new products will they wait a while before they try it, see how it is, see how it performs.
That hasn't happened here; customers embrace this wholeheartedly.
So there is a lot to be excited about with this new product.
