Forward-Looking Statements

This annual report contains forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties. Forward-looking statements give our current expectations and projections relating to our financial condition, results of operations, plans, objectives, future performance and business. You can identify forward-looking statements by the fact that they do not relate strictly to historical or current facts. These statements may include words such as “anticipate,” “estimate,” “expect,” “forecast,” “project,” “plan,” “intend,” “believe,” “confident,” “may,” “should,” “can have,” “likely,” “future,” “optimistic” and other words and terms of similar meaning in connection with any discussion of the timing or nature of future operating or financial performance or other events.

The forward-looking statements contained in this annual report are based on assumptions that we have made in light of our industry experience and on our perceptions of historical trends, current conditions, expected future developments and other factors we believe are appropriate under the circumstances. As you read and consider this report, you should understand that these statements are not guarantees of performance or results. They involve risks, uncertainties (some of which are beyond our control) and assumptions. Although we believe that these forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, you should be aware that many factors could affect our actual financial results and cause them to differ materially from those anticipated in the forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements contained in this annual report include estimates regarding:

Factors that could affect our actual financial results and cause them to differ materially from those anticipated in the forward-looking statements include:

Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or should any of these assumptions prove incorrect, our actual results may vary in material respects from those projected in any forward-looking statements. A detailed discussion of these and other factors that may affect future results is contained in Item 1A of this Annual Report on Form 10-K. Stockholders, potential investors and other readers should consider these factors carefully in evaluating the forward-looking statements.

Any forward-looking statement made by us in this report speaks only as of the date on which it is made. Factors or events that could cause our actual results to differ may emerge from time to time, and it is not possible for us to predict all of them. We undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future developments or otherwise, except as may be required by law.

PART I

Item 1. Business

Overview

Generac is a leading energy technology solutions company that provides backup and prime power generation systems for residential and commercial & industrial (C&I) applications, solar + battery storage solutions, energy management devices and controls, advanced power grid software platforms & services, and engine- & battery-powered tools and equipment.  The Company is committed to sustainable, cleaner energy products poised to revolutionize the 21^st century electrical grid. As an energy technology solutions company that is “Powering a Smarter World”, our corporate purpose is to lead the evolution to more resilient, efficient, and sustainable energy solutions around the world.

We have a long history of providing power generation products across a variety of applications, and we maintain one of the leading market positions in the power equipment markets in North America and an expanding presence internationally. We believe we have one of the widest ranges of products in the power generation marketplace, including residential, commercial and industrial standby generators; as well as portable and mobile generators used in a variety of applications.  In recent years, the Company has been evolving its business model to focus on building out a residential and C&I ecosystem of energy technology products, solutions, and services.  As part of this evolution, we have made significant investments into rapidly growing new markets such as residential clean energy storage, solar microinverters, and energy monitoring & management devices, all of which are distributed energy resources (DERs) that can be aggregated into virtual power plants (VPPs) within grid services programs. In addition, a key strategic focus has been leveraging our leading position in the growing market for cleaner burning natural gas fueled generators to expand into applications beyond standby power, allowing us to participate in Energy-as-a-Service and microgrid projects for commercial and industrial applications.

We have also made investments in next-generation platforms and controls for both residential and C&I applications that facilitate the connection of our products to the grid. Expanding these capabilities will enable the increasing utilization of our equipment as DERs as the nascent market for grid services expands over the next several years. Our growing presence in grid services programs will enhance the value of our power generation and storage products that might otherwise sit idle, as they are now able to be dispatched and orchestrated as part of a distributed energy solution, thereby generating additional return-on-investment for the home or business owner while also delivering value to utilities and energy retailers by helping to balance, support and enhance the reliability of the electrical grid.  As the traditional centralized utility model evolves over time, we believe that a more decarbonized, digitized, and decentralized grid infrastructure will build-out, and Generac's energy technology solutions are uniquely and strategically positioned to participate in this next-generation grid referred to as "Grid 2.0".

As our traditional power generation markets continue to grow due to multiple mega-trends that are driving increased penetration of our products, we believe we are in an excellent position to execute on this opportunity given our competitive strengths.  In addition, our focus on more resilient, efficient and sustainable energy solutions has dramatically increased our served addressable market, and as a result, we believe that Generac is well-positioned for success over the long term.  

Company History

Generac was founded in 1959 to commercialize a line of affordable portable generators that offered superior performance and features. The Company’s success through the years has been built upon engineering expertise, manufacturing excellence and our innovative approaches to the market. This has driven our growth into becoming a leading provider of power equipment for a variety of applications within residential, commercial, and industrial markets.

In 1980, we expanded beyond portable generators into the industrial power generation market with the introduction of our first stationary generators that provided up to 200kW of power output. We introduced our first residential standby generator in 1989 and expanded our industrial product offering and global distribution system in the 1990s, forming a series of alliances that rapidly increased our sales. Our growth accelerated in the 2000’s as we expanded our purpose-built line of residential & commercial automatic standby generators and implemented our multilayered, omni-channel distribution philosophy. Throughout the 2000’s, a number of high-profile power outage events also helped to increase the awareness and need for back-up power and home standby generators. In 2006, the founder of Generac sold the company to affiliates of CCMP Capital Advisors, LLC, together with certain other investors and members of our management. In February 2010, we completed our initial public offering (IPO) of our common stock.

Soon after going public, we implemented our “Powering Ahead” enterprise strategy. This strategic plan accelerated the Company’s transition from primarily a North America focused, emergency backup generator company into a more diversified industrial technology company with the addition of new and adjacent product categories and an expanded global presence, primarily through a series of acquisitions. In 2018, we transitioned into a new enterprise strategy called “Powering Our Future”, which drove further share gains in new and existing markets, capitalized on Generac’s leadership in natural gas, established our connectivity strategy, and provided the initial foundation for the Company’s evolution into an energy technology solutions company, including some key initial acquisitions within the residential clean energy space. This ultimately led to the introduction of our new “Powering A Smarter World” enterprise strategy in 2021.  This current strategic plan continues the evolution of Generac’s business model that pairs traditional and emerging power generation and storage technologies with new monitoring, management and grid services capabilities to provide solutions for the dynamic challenges presented by today’s energy landscape.

Significant Investments in Energy Technology Solutions

We’ve been providing power generation and resiliency solutions for homes and businesses for decades. Leveraging that expertise in power generation, Generac has made significant investments in recent years to expand its capabilities into energy technology solutions, beginning with the March 2019 acquisition of Neurio Technology Inc., a leading energy data company focused on metering technology and sophisticated analytics to optimize energy use within a home or business. This was followed by the April 2019 acquisition of Pika Energy Inc., a designer and manufacturer of battery storage technologies that capture and store solar or other power sources for homeowners and businesses. In October 2020, the Company acquired Enbala Power Networks Inc., one of the leading providers of distributed energy optimization and control software that helps support the operational stability of the world's power grids. In July 2021, Generac added to its residential clean energy portfolio with the acquisition of Chilicon Power LLC, a designer and provider of grid-interactive microinverter and monitoring solutions for the solar market.  With these acquisitions, Generac has established itself as a credible leader in the rapidly growing residential clean energy market, focused on solar, battery storage and grid services applications.

Generac’s efforts in expanding its energy technology solutions also cover C&I and international markets as well. In June 2021, the Company acquired Deep Sea Electronics Limited, a UK-based designer and manufacturer of advanced controls for a range of power generation and micro-grid applications used around the world. In September 2021, Generac acquired Off Grid Energy Ltd., a UK-based designer and manufacturer of industrial-grade mobile energy storage systems serving predominantly European markets.  These acquisitions will help lay the ground work to further advance our energy technology strategies across C&I markets around the world.

In December 2021, Generac closed on the purchase of ecobee Inc., a leader in sustainable home technology solutions. In addition to smart home thermostatic controls and other smart home devices, ecobee offers its customers the ability to participate in “Energy Services” programs, which allow homeowners to reduce energy consumption and utility bills via intelligent HVAC controls. The acquisition represents a major step forward in the Company’s efforts to provide a broader residential energy ecosystem that includes intelligent monitoring and management solutions, as well as an increasingly sophisticated user interface platform to allow homeowners to take charge of their energy generation, storage, consumption, and management with the ultimate goal of creating a more sustainable energy infrastructure that is more decarbonized, digitized and decentralized.

For a complete summary of recent acquisitions, please see Note 1, “Description of Business,” to the consolidated financial statements in Item 8 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.

Products and Solutions

We design, manufacture, and distribute a broad range of energy technology products and solutions. We design and manufacture stationary, portable and mobile generators with single-engine outputs ranging between 800W and 3,250kW. We have developed a line of turn-key energy storage systems for use in residential solar-plus-storage applications, and in 2021, acquired microinverter capabilities for use in residential solar-only applications. We also have a line of industrial-grade mobile energy storage systems that serve the global rental markets. We have a growing selection of energy monitoring and management devices that serve to build out our residential energy ecosystem product offering. We participate in the market for grid services involving distributed energy optimization and control software. Other power products and solutions that we provide include light towers and a broad line of outdoor power equipment that we refer to as chore products, which includes a variety of property maintenance equipment powered by both engines and batteries. We classify our products into three categories based on similar range of power output geared for varying end customer uses: Residential products, Commercial & Industrial (C&I) products and Other products & services. The following summary outlines our portfolio of products and solutions, including their key attributes and customer applications.

Residential Products

Our residential automatic standby generators range in output from 7.5kW to 150kW, which predominantly operate on natural gas and liquid propane, and are permanently installed with an automatic transfer switch, which we also manufacture. Air-cooled engine residential standby generators range in outputs from 7.5kW to 26kW and serve as an emergency backup for small to medium-sized homes. Liquid-cooled engine generators serve as emergency backup for larger homes and small businesses and range in output from 22kW to 150kW.

We believe we have the broadest line of home standby generators in the marketplace and all of them are offered as Smart Grid Ready, which enables customers to connect and enroll their generator as a distributed energy resource in grid services applications. The deployment of our residential generators in grid services applications where available can improve grid resiliency, while also offering a direct financial incentive for homeowners to participate in these grid services programs, which can help to partially offset the purchase cost of the generator over the product's lifespan. This functionality leverages our remote monitoring system for home standby generators called Mobile Link™. This remote monitoring capability is a standard, WiFi-enabled feature on every home standby generator that we offer and allows our customers to check the status of their generator conveniently from their smart phone or tablet, and also provides the capability to similarly receive maintenance and service alerts.

Leveraging the technologies acquired in the 2019 acquisition of Pika Energy, we have developed a line of clean energy products marketed under the Generac brand and using the name PWRcell™. This clean energy storage solution consists of a system of batteries, an inverter, Photovoltaic (PV) optimizers, power electronic controls, and other components. This system captures and stores electricity from solar panels or other power sources and helps reduce home energy costs while also protecting homes from shorter duration power outages. PWRcell can range in size from 9kWh up to 36kWh of storage capacity. Our PWRcell energy storage systems also have Smart Grid Ready capabilities, empowering homeowners to contribute to grid stability and earn an incremental return on investment by connecting to grid services programs, which can help to partially offset the purchase cost of the system over the product's lifespan.

We introduced multiple new Generac-branded clean energy products in 2021 that we expect will come to market during 2022 as we continue to build out an increasingly broad range of residential clean energy solutions, giving our distribution partners access to a more diverse line up of products that can serve a variety of applications. PWRmicro, a grid-interactive microinverter equipped with 2-to-1 panel-to-inverter capability used in residential solar solutions, leverages the technology acquired via the 2021 purchase of Chilicon Power and allows Generac to participate in residential solar installations that do not include an energy storage system. PWRmanager is the second generation of our load management controls, allowing customers to remotely control certain loads in a house and thereby manage battery run times from their smart phones or tablets. PWRgenerator is a one-of-a-kind natural gas generator with DC output that is purpose-built to re-charge PWRcell energy storage systems. This innovative new product is fuel-efficient, quieter, and can enable indefinite grid independence for homeowners.

During 2021 we acquired ecobee, a leader in sustainable smart home solutions such as smart thermostats and a suite of home monitoring products, all designed with a focus on conservation, convenience, peace of mind and comfort. ecobee’s smart home energy management devices and complementary sensors intelligently optimize heating and cooling systems, often the largest energy consuming system within a home, to deliver significant energy savings for homeowners. In addition, the ability to combine ecobee’s cutting-edge technologies and software development expertise with Generac’s power generation, energy storage and energy management devices will allow us to create a clean, efficient, and reliable home energy ecosystem and user interface platform capable of connecting to our grid services distributed energy resource management software (DERMS) called Concerto.

We also entered the smart water heater controller market in 2021 via the acquisition of Apricity Code, an advanced engineering and product design company that has developed certain products which help homeowners reduce energy consumption and utility bills by intelligently managing the timing of a water heater’s energy consumption. These ecobee and Apricity grid edge devices expand our suite of products that can be deployed in grid services applications, offering increased energy savings and economic benefits to a larger segment of the population. We also added IoT propane tank monitoring solutions with the 2021 acquisition of Tank Utility to further optimize propane fuel logistics. This addition expands Generac’s connectivity functionality and provides incremental value to our dealers and peace of mind to our liquid propane powered home standby generator owners.

We also provide a broad product line of portable and inverter generators that range in size from 800W to 17.5kW. These products serve as an emergency home backup source of electricity and are also used for construction and recreational purposes. Our portable generators are targeted at homeowners, with price points ranging between the consumer value end of the market through the premium homeowner market; at professional contractors, starting at the value end through the premium contractor segment; and at the recreational market with our inverter generator products, which are quieter than traditional portable generators. In addition, we offer manual transfer switches to supplement our portable generator product offering.

We provide a broad product line of outdoor power equipment referred to as chore products, which are used in property maintenance applications for larger-acreage residences, commercial properties, municipalities, and farms. These products include trimmers, field and brush mowers, log splitters, stump grinders, chipper shredders, lawn and leaf vacuums, pressure washers and water pumps. We also offer commercial-grade, battery-powered turf care products through Mean Green Products, which was acquired in 2020. In addition to Generac’s efforts to expand Mean Green’s production and distribution capabilities, this acquisition will help to accelerate the electrification of our higher-powered lineup of chore products. Chore products are largely sold in North America through direct-to-consumer online catalogs, retail hardware stores, and outdoor power equipment dealers primarily under the DR® brand name.

Residential products comprised 65.8%, 62.6% and 51.9%, respectively, of total net sales in 2021, 2020 and 2019.

Commercial & Industrial Products

We offer a full line of C&I generators that are increasingly being fueled by cleaner sources of energy such as natural gas, liquid propane, and Bi-Fuel™, as well as other more traditional fuels such as diesel. We believe we have one of the broadest product offerings in the industry with power outputs ranging from 10kW up to 3,250kW. Through the Deep Sea acquisition in 2021, we have expanded our capabilities in the design and manufacture of advanced controls for a range of energy technology C&I applications, such as microgrids and Energy-as-a-Service. Our natural gas C&I stationary generators have Smart Grid Ready capabilities, enabling our customers to contribute to grid resiliency and generate an incremental return on investment by connecting and enrolling their generator as a distributed energy resource used in grid services applications where available. We believe as more grid services programs roll-out over time, we will be able to sell more equipment given the improved economics and value of our generators as DER’s.

Our light-commercial standby generators and related transfer switches include a full range of affordable systems from 22kW to 150kW, providing three-phase power sufficient for most small and mid-sized businesses such as grocery stores, convenience stores, restaurants, gas stations, pharmacies, retail banks, small health care facilities and other small-footprint retail applications. Our light-commercial generators predominantly run on cleaner-burning fuels such as natural gas and liquid propane.

We design and manufacture a broad product line of modelized and configured stationary generators and related transfer switches for various industrial standby, continuous-duty, and prime rated applications. Our single-engine industrial generators range in output from 10kW up to 3,250kW, include stationary and containerized packages, and can include our Modular Power Systems (MPS) technology that extends our product range up to much larger multi-megawatt systems through an integrated paralleling configuration. Over the past several years, we have introduced larger and higher-powered gaseous-fueled generators, with the highest output of 1,000kW for a single-engine set. Our industrial standby generators are primarily used as emergency backup for larger applications in the healthcare, telecom, datacom, commercial office, retail, municipal and manufacturing markets. In recent years, we've had a strategic effort aimed at utilizing our gaseous-fueled generators in "beyond standby" applications including distributed generation and microgrid projects and have developed purpose-built products for these applications that have grid-connected capability. The addition of Smart Grid Ready functionality and the significant expansion of our in-house advanced controls capabilities further enhances the potential utilization of our generators in these applications.

Our MPS technology combines the power of several smaller generators to produce the output of a larger generator, providing our customers with redundancy and scalability in a cost-effective manner. For larger industrial applications, our MPS products offer customers an efficient, affordable way to scale their standby power needs, while offering superior reliability given their built-in redundancy which allows individual units to be taken off-line for routine maintenance while retaining coverage for critical circuits.

We also offer a full line of industrial transfer switches to meet varying needs from light industrial applications all the way up to the most demanding critical installations. Over the last couple of years, we have significantly increased and upgraded our industrial transfer switch product offering, which we believe will help to enhance our attachment rate and related market share for these products. Generac’s innovative feature set and flexible platforms offer a variety of switching technologies for customized solutions to meet any project needs.

We also provide a broad product line of light towers, mobile generators, and mobile energy storage systems, which provide temporary lighting and power for various end markets, such as road and commercial construction, energy, mining, military, and special events. These products are typically sold to national and regional rental companies who then rent the equipment to the end user. We believe the addition of mobile energy storage systems obtained through our acquisition of Off Grid Energy in 2021 will enable us to capture share of the rapidly expanding Battery Energy Storage System (or BESS) market in the future. Also in 2021, we unveiled a hybrid mobile solution that pairs an energy storage system with a diesel generator to reduce emissions and noise pollution, as well as a mobile battery-powered light tower, both of which we expect will come to market during 2022. We also manufacture commercial mobile pumps and dust-suppression equipment for a wide variety of applications, as well as various gaseous-engine control systems and accessories, which are sold to gas-engine manufacturers and aftermarket customers.

C&I products comprised 26.7%, 28.3% and 39.5%, respectively, of total net sales in 2021, 2020 and 2019.

Other Products and Services

Our “Other Products and Services” category primarily consists of aftermarket service parts and product accessories sold to our customers, installation and maintenance services, extended warranty programs, grid services revenue from utilities, remote monitoring subscription revenues, and other service offerings.

Included in this “Other Products and Services” category are revenues from our new Generac Grid Services team, which was formed in September 2021 and builds upon our 2020 Enbala acquisition. The formation of Generac Grid Services formalizes and accelerates our efforts in the market for grid services by creating a focused team that collaborates across the enterprise to sell turn-key hardware and software solutions used by utilities and energy retailers that enable the connection of DERs to help support the operational stability of the world’s power grids. DERs include Generac’s Smart Grid Ready residential and C&I natural gas generators, PWRcell™ energy storage systems, and other grid edge devices such as smart thermostats and smart water heater controls. These assets, and others like them from a range of OEMs, can be connected to Generac Grid Services’ Concerto energy-balancing software platform, which provides a highly flexible approach for creating controllable and dispatchable energy resources from flexible loads, energy storage and renewable energy. The platform gives utilities and energy retailers the flexibility to operate virtual power plants in real-time and to better manage the escalating complexities of increasingly variable energy assets. The Concerto software platform also enables Generac to enter into performance contracts, in which the Company recruits, aggregates, and manages a fleet of DERs with the purpose of selling power to utilities and energy retailers.

The acquisition of ecobee further enhances our efforts in grid services. In addition to smart home energy management product sales, ecobee recognizes services revenue resulting from the value its platform provides in connecting its devices to grid services programs, enabling direct monitoring and control of a significant portion of the home’s electrical load. The addition of this capability increases Generac’s share of the value provided within grid services markets and meaningfully enhances Generac’s software development capabilities. ecobee also offers other on-demand Home Services on a subscription basis.

Other products and services comprised 7.5%, 9.1% and 8.6%, respectively, of total net sales in 2021, 2020 and 2019.

Mega-Trends, Strategic Growth Themes, and Additional Business Drivers

During 2021, we unveiled our new “Powering A Smarter World” strategic plan, which serves as the framework for the significant investments we have made and will continue to make to capitalize on the long-term growth prospects of Generac. Our enterprise strategy is based on the combination of several key mega-trends that we believe will drive several significant strategic growth themes for our business.

Key Mega-Trends:

Strategic Growth Themes:

Power quality issues continue to increase.  Power disruptions are an important driver of consumer awareness for back-up power and have historically influenced demand for generators, both in the United States and internationally. Increased frequency and duration of major power outage events, that have a broader impact beyond a localized level, increases product awareness and may drive consumers to accelerate their purchase of a standby or portable generator during the immediate and subsequent period, which we believe may last for six to twelve months following a major outage event for standby generators. Energy storage systems offer similar resiliency advantages to consumers and can benefit from these same awareness drivers, at least for short duration power outages. The optional standby market for C&I power generation is also driven by power quality issues and the related need for back up power. Baseline outage activity in each of the past five years has been above the long-term average as climate change has driven an increase in severe weather activity, while an aging and underinvested electrical grid infrastructure remains highly vulnerable to such activity. Additionally, rapid growth in renewable power sources such as solar and wind is resulting in increased intermittency of supply, further impairing the reliable supply of electricity at a time when demand is starting to increase meaningfully with the electrification of a wide range of consumer and commercial products, including transportation, HVAC systems, and other major appliances. Further, in California, Public Safety Power Shutoff events are taking place whereby public utilities are turning off power supply to their customers under certain circumstances to prevent their transmission equipment from starting wildfires. Taken together, we expect these factors to continue driving increased awareness of the need for backup power and demand for Generac’s products within multiple categories.

Home standby penetration opportunity is significant.  Many potential customers are still not aware of the costs and benefits of automatic backup power solutions. With only approximately 5.5% penetration of the addressable market of homes in the United States (which we define as single-family detached, owner-occupied households with a home value of over $125,000, as defined by the U.S. Census Bureau's 2019 American Housing Survey for the United States), we believe there are significant opportunities to further penetrate the residential standby generator market both domestically and internationally. We believe by expanding our distribution network, continuing to develop our product lines, and targeting our marketing efforts, we can continue to build awareness and increase penetration for our home standby generators. Additionally, Smart Grid Ready capabilities have the potential to turn an asset previously utilized only in emergency power outage situations into a source of recurring revenue for the homeowner and a contributor to grid stability for utilities and grid operators, therefore driving incremental interest in the product category.

Solar, storage, and monitoring markets developing quickly.  During 2019, we entered the rapidly developing energy storage, monitoring and management markets with the introduction of PWRcell™ and PWRview™. In 2021, we expanded our capabilities in the residential solar market with the introduction of the PWRmicro, a grid-interactive microinverter which is expected to be available in 2022.  In addition, we believe ecobee’s technologies combined with Generac’s product offering will allow us to create a clean, efficient, and reliable home energy ecosystem and platform that will save homeowners money and help grid operators meet the challenges of an electrical grid under increasing stress by providing solutions to better balance supply and demand. We believe the electric utility landscape will undergo significant changes in the decade ahead due to rising utility rates, grid instability and power quality issues, environmental concerns, and the continuing performance and cost improvements in renewable energy and batteries. On-site power generation from renewable sources such as solar and wind, and cleaner-burning natural gas generators is projected to become more prevalent as will the need to monitor, manage, and store this power – potentially developing into a significant market opportunity. We expect to further advance our growing capabilities in clean energy by increasing our product development, sourcing, distribution, and marketing efforts, as we leverage our significant competencies in the residential standby generator market to accelerate our market position in the emerging residential solar, storage, monitoring and management markets.

Grid services and Energy-as-a-Service open new revenue streams.  We expect the evolution of the traditional electrical utility model toward decarbonized, digitized, and decentralized solutions will continue to drive the need for grid operators to access and control distributed energy resources (DERs). This will require highly intelligent software platforms that are able to optimize an increasingly complex supply and demand equation, such as our Concerto software platform. As the grid services market matures, Generac will continue to explore new opportunities beyond the traditional software-as-a-service subscription model, including but not limited to the aggregation and sale of power from a fleet of DERs in performance-based contracts, wholesale power market participation, turn-key solutions that combine hardware and software with services, and other monitoring and management services. Additionally, growing interest in our products across a variety of residential and C&I “beyond standby” applications is driving an increase in demand for subscription-like models for end customers, in which Generac will partner with third parties to deliver peace of mind and resiliency solutions while also enabling contributions to grid stability with minimal upfront capital outlays. The significant advancements made in recent years in the connectivity of our products is core to these newer capabilities, which play a key role in the evolution of Generac into an energy technology solutions company.

Natural gas generators driving strong growth.  Natural gas will continue to be an important and cleaner transition fuel of the future as the world continues to shift towards lower emission power generation sources. Demand for natural gas generators continues to represent an increasing portion of the overall C&I market, which we believe will continue to grow at a faster rate than traditional diesel fueled generators. We also continue to explore and expand our capabilities within new gaseous generator market opportunities, including continuous-duty, prime rated, distributed generation, demand response, microgrids and overall use as a distributed energy resource in areas where grid stability is needed. Many of these applications are made possible by our natural gas generators having Smart Grid Ready capabilities, which allows for end users to participate in grid services programs, helping to offset the purchase price of the equipment over the product’s lifespan. Expanding our natural gas product offering into larger power nodes is also a part of this growth theme in taking advantage of the continuing shift from diesel to natural gas generators.

Rollout of 5G will require improved network quality.  As the number of “connected” devices continues to rapidly increase and wireless networks are now being considered critical infrastructure in the United States, network reliability and up-time are necessary for our increasingly connected society. This will require highly resilient cell tower sites across the network, and therefore necessitates the need for backup power sources on site at these cell towers. Generac is the leading supplier of backup power to the telecommunications market in the United States, where approximately half of all existing tower sites have yet to be hardened with backup power. As more mission-critical data is transmitted over wireless networks, we believe this penetration rate must increase considerably to maintain a higher level of reliability across the network. Increased adoption of high-speed wireless networks around the globe may lead to similar demand trends internationally as growing cell tower density and the need for onsite backup power expand the market opportunity for our international telecom operations. We have relationships with key Tier 1 carriers and tower companies globally in addition to having the distribution partners to support the global market from a service standpoint. We believe these factors coupled with Generac’s ability to customize solutions to each customer’s need help us to maintain our strength within the global telecommunications market.

Other Business Drivers

Impact of residential investment cycle.  The market for a number of our residential products is affected by the residential investment cycle and overall consumer confidence and sentiment.  When homeowners are confident of their household income, the value of their home and overall net worth, they are more likely to invest in their home. These trends can have an impact on demand for residential generators and energy storage systems. Trends in the new housing market, highlighted by residential housing starts, can also impact demand for these products. Demand for outdoor power equipment is also impacted by several of these factors, as well as weather patterns.  Finally, the existence of renewable energy mandates, investment tax credits and other subsidies can also have an impact on the demand for solar and energy storage systems. 

Impact of business capital investment and other economic cycles.  The global market for our commercial and industrial products is affected by different capital investment cycles, which can vary across the numerous regions around the world in which we participate. These cycles include non-residential building construction, durable goods and infrastructure spending, as well as investments in the exploration and production of oil & gas, as businesses or organizations either add new locations or make investments to upgrade existing locations or equipment. These trends and market conditions can have a material impact on demand for these products. The capital investment cycle may differ for the various commercial and industrial end markets that we serve including light commercial, retail, office, telecommunications, industrial, data centers, healthcare, construction, oil & gas and municipal infrastructure, among others. The market for these products is also affected by general economic and geopolitical conditions in the countries where we serve, as well as credit availability in those regions.

Enterprise Strategy

The mega-trends and strategic growth themes that we have identified help to inform our new enterprise strategy, “Powering A Smarter World,” and our purpose statement, “Leading the evolution to more resilient, efficient, and sustainable energy solutions.” As we continue to execute our strategic plan into the future, we are focused on building out residential and C&I ecosystems of connected energy solutions to help address a growing electricity supply/demand imbalance problem by focusing on three key objectives: (i) improve energy resilience and independence, (ii) optimize energy efficiency and consumption, and (iii) protect and build critical infrastructure.  These objectives are further explained as follows:

Improve energy resilience and independence. Increase power reliability through onsite generation and storage solutions that provide resiliency for homes, businesses and communities.

Homes, businesses, and communities are experiencing a deterioration in the reliable supply of electricity  due to a number of factors including: climate change impacts driving more severe and volatile weather leading to increased power outages; a legacy power infrastructure that’s still predominantly a one-way system that is capacity constrained given heavy reliance on fossil fuels; the power infrastructure still being impaired by underinvestment making it more susceptible to power outages; and regulatory and legislative actions implementing penalties for carbon intensity coupled with incentives for adoption of more intermittent renewable power sources.  Our residential and C&I product offering begins with power generation and storage products including home standby generators, energy storage systems, grid-interactive microinverters, and natural gas C&I generators.  These onsite generation and storage solutions provide peace of mind and protection against rising power quality issues by delivering energy resilience and independence for end users and their communities.  In fact, our new PWRgenerator that was launched in 2021 is a DC generator that is purpose built to charge our PWRcell energy storage system.  With this capability, an end user could conceivably be completely independent from the grid by using sustainable solar energy to power their home, with the PWRgenerator used to recharge the PWRcell should the battery be depleted at certain points of the day. Importantly, many of these onsite solutions come standard as “Smart Grid Ready” capable of participating in grid services programs, which provide additional return on investment opportunities for end users while at the same time helping to support grid reliability, resiliency and sustainability.

Optimize energy efficiency and consumption. Enable sustainable and more efficient power generation and consumption through monitoring, management and lower-carbon solutions.

Coinciding with electricity supply reliability issues are a number of factors expected to drive increasing demand for electricity over the next several years. The “electrification of everything” broadly encompasses this global trend, including the electrification of transportation, via both electric vehicle adoption and expanding charging infrastructure, the electrification of the home, including HVAC systems and other appliances, and the electrification of commercial and industrial systems. These global electrification trends will require utilities and energy retailers to meaningfully increase their supply and quality of electricity, while at the same time working to achieve carbon-reduction goals, which is expected to contribute to a further supply/demand imbalance and additional power quality issues.   As part of our expanding ecosystems of energy technology solutions, we continue to build out our residential monitoring and management capabilities, which improve energy efficiency and optimize consumption by end users.  This includes recently adding ecobee’s smart home energy management devices, Apricity’s water heater controllers, and Tank Utility’s propane tank monitoring solutions, along with the introduction of our second-generation load control device called PWRmanager. In the future, we expect to simplify and integrate our residential product offering into a single ecosystem, leveraging our software development capabilities and the substantial resources brought by the ecobee acquisition. This singular system-level platform is intended to serve as the user interface for consumers to monitor and manage all of their DERs, thereby empowering the user to optimize energy efficiency and consumption. Within our global C&I product category, we are developing bi-directional natural gas generators and system-level micro-grid controls that provide the user interface platform for businesses to better optimize their energy efficiency and consumption.

Protect and build critical infrastructure. Offering innovative solutions that enable and protect next-generation power, communications, transportation and other critical infrastructure.

The critical power infrastructure around the world is becoming more sensitive to the growing electricity supply/demand imbalance. Generac’s suite of solutions can be connected and synchronized within the Concerto distributed energy resource management system, providing utilities and energy retailers the flexibility to access and control these DERs in real-time to better manage the escalating complexities of their electrical grids.  When utilized in these applications, our residential and C&I ecosystems of DERs essentially provide backup power to utilities and energy retailers, enabling the adoption of renewable energy sources by helping solve the intermittency challenges presented by renewable power generation. We believe the next generation of critical power infrastructure will be decarbonized, digitized and decentralized, and we view the implementation, aggregation and management of distributed energy resources as an important aspect to creating the future “Grid 2.0”. Additionally, the rollout of 5G networks globally and the growing consideration of these wireless networks as critical infrastructure makes our backup power solutions for telecommunications applications essential elements of a wireless network that cannot afford to experience power failure. Finally, our broad offering of global mobile solutions, including mobile power products, mobile energy storage systems and hybrid generators, play a key role in the completion of infrastructure construction projects, such as roads, highways, bridges, and airports.

See “Item 7, Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations – Business Drivers and Operational Factors” for additional drivers that influence demand for our products and other factors affecting the markets that we serve.

Distribution Channels and Customers

We distribute our products through a variety of different distribution channels to increase awareness of our product categories and brands, and to ensure our products reach a broad, global customer base. This omni-channel distribution network includes independent residential dealers, industrial distributors and dealers, national and regional retailers, e-commerce partners, electrical/HVAC/solar wholesalers (including certain private label arrangements), solar installers, catalogs, equipment rental companies, and equipment distributors. We also sell direct to certain national and regional account customers, which include utilities, telecommunications providers and original equipment manufacturers, as well as to individual consumers or businesses who are the end users of our products.

We believe our global distribution network is a competitive advantage that has strengthened over the years as a result of adding, expanding and developing the various distribution channels through which we sell our products. We offer a broad set of tools, programs, factory support, and sales leads to help our distribution partners be successful. Our network is well balanced with no single customer providing more than 6% of our sales in 2021. 

At over 8,000 strong, we have the industry's largest network of factory direct independent generator dealers in North America. Our residential dealer network is made up of electrical and HVAC contractors across the US and Canada. These dealers sell, install and service our residential and light commercial generators to end users. Over the years, we have made significant investments to grow this dealer network, and we will continue to make those investments in the future given the importance of this channel. We continue to focus on a variety of initiatives to market and sell our home standby products and better align our dealer network with Generac more effectively. These initiatives have helped to improve customer lead quality and develop our dealers, thereby increasing close rates and lowering our cost per lead. In 2021, we implemented the next generation of our “Power Play” guided sales process for residential dealers, making enhancements in several areas targeted to improve the customer experience and overall close rates. Additionally, our remote monitoring platform allows our residential generator dealers to monitor their installed base of customers through a feature that we call “Fleet”, enabling them to offer a more proactive experience to service a customer’s generator.

Since 2020, we have been leveraging these dealer development practices to assist in growing our base of solar contractors that sell, install and service our PWRcell energy storage systems. We continue to train and certify solar installers to offer our products, and we have built out our Power Play selling system to also offer energy storage solutions. Leveraging our decades of expertise in partnering with our residential generator dealers, we believe we can continue to expand our solar installer network and increase mind-share for Generac’s products, helping us to win in the clean energy market. In addition, we have been developing distribution relationships with national solar providers to offer our equipment in their portfolio of products and services.

Our industrial network consists of a combination of primary distributors that cover a particular region, as well as a network of support dealers serving the global market. Over the past five years, we have been expanding our dealer network globally through acquisitions and organic means, in order to expand our international sales opportunities. Additionally, in 2020, we acquired our industrial distributor in northern California to give us direct coverage of the west coast of the United States and accelerate our efforts in this part of the country. The industrial distributors and dealers provide industrial and commercial end users with ongoing sales, installation, service and product support. Our industrial distributors and dealers help maintain the local relationships with commercial electrical contractors, specifying engineers and national account regional buying offices. We also sell to certain Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) companies and other companies that specialize in managing more complex power generation projects, including microgrid projects and Energy-as-a-Service applications.

Our retail distribution channel includes thousands of locations across the globe and includes a variety of regional and national home improvement chains, retailers, clubs, buying groups, hardware stores and farm supply stores. These physical retail locations are supplemented by a growing presence of e-commerce retailers, along with a number of catalog retailers. The retail channel primarily sells our residential standby, portable and light-commercial generators, as well as our outdoor power equipment and ecobee’s smart home energy management devices. The placement of our products at retail locations drives significant awareness for our brands and the automatic home standby generator product category.

Our wholesaler network distributes our residential and light-commercial generators, energy storage systems, and smart home energy management devices. The channel consists of selling branches of both national and local distribution houses for electrical, HVAC and solar products on a wholesale basis, which in turn typically sell to electricians and solar installers who are not in our dealer network.

On a selective basis, we have established private label and licensing arrangements with third party partners to provide residential, light-commercial and industrial generators under different brand names. These partners include leading home equipment, electrical equipment and construction machinery companies, each of which provides access to incremental channels of distribution for our products.

The distribution for our C&I mobile products includes international, national, regional and specialty equipment rental companies, equipment distributors and construction companies, which primarily serve non-residential building construction, road construction, energy markets and special events.

We also sell direct to certain customers that are the end users of our products covering a number of end market verticals both domestically within the US and around the world. This includes telecommunication, retail, banking, energy, utilities, healthcare, convenience stores, grocery stores, restaurants, and other commercial applications. Additionally, certain of our residential products are sold direct to individual consumers, who are the end users of the product. In the grid services space, Generac Grid Services sells software, equipment, and power direct to utilities and energy retailers.

Research and Development

Our focus on a broad range of energy technology products and solutions drives technological innovation, advanced engineering capabilities, and specialized manufacturing competencies. Research and development (R&D) has been a core competency for Generac since our inception, and today includes a staff of over 1,000 engineers working on numerous projects at various facilities around the world, including our technology centers located in Bedford, Massachusetts, Suzhou, China, and Mexico City, Mexico. These activities are focused on developing new technologies and product enhancements, as well as maintaining product competitiveness by reducing manufacturing costs, improving safety characteristics, reliability and performance while ensuring compliance with regulatory standards. We have significant experience using natural gas engines and have developed specific expertise with fuel systems and emissions technology. In the residential and light commercial markets, we have developed proprietary engines, cooling packages, controls, fuel systems and emissions systems.

We have made several acquisitions over the last few years that significantly enhanced our R&D capabilities. This includes substantial technical resources in energy storage, monitoring and power conversion for residential applications, as well as in the C&I mobile energy storage space. These resources add proficiency in power electronics and battery management software, and we have also added considerable expertise in designing and prototyping energy efficiency products. We have significantly increased our software development capabilities across a variety of applications, including system-level controls, remote monitoring, and distributed energy resource management systems. By combining advanced software development with the expansion of our electrical engineering resources, we expect to accelerate our energy technology efforts.

We also have engineering and product management resources focused on evaluating and developing alternative technologies that are emerging and could become commercially viable over the long term. As we continue to evaluate new technologies that are more decarbonized, digitized, and decentralized, we believe that our expertise in energy technology solutions provides us with the capability to develop new products and services that will allow continued diversification and differentiation in our end markets.

Intellectual Property

We are committed to research and development, and we rely on a combination of patents and trademarks to establish and protect our proprietary rights. Our patents protect certain features and technologies we have developed for use in our products including fuel systems, air flow, electronics and controls, noise reduction, air-cooled engines, energy management, energy monitoring, energy storage, and load management. We believe the existence of these patents and trademarks, along with our ongoing processes to register additional patents and trademarks, protect our intellectual property rights and enhance our brands and competitive position. We also use proprietary manufacturing processes that require customized equipment. With our continuous focus on research and development, we expect to develop new intellectual property on an ongoing basis.

Manufacturing

We operate numerous manufacturing plants, distribution facilities and inventory warehouses located throughout the world. We store finished goods at third-party logistics providers in the United States that accommodate material storage and rapid response requirements of our customers. See “Item 2 – Properties” for additional details regarding the locations and activities of our principal operations.

In recent years, we have added and continue to add manufacturing capacity through investments in automation, improved utilization, and the expansion of our manufacturing footprint through organic means as well as through acquisitions. Key examples of organic expansion include the significant additions to our manufacturing footprint in recent years with new facilities in Trenton, South Carolina for home standby generators, and Hidalgo, Mexico for the production of C&I generators. As demand for our products has increased significantly over the last few years, our ability to increase capacity has been and will be critical to executing our strategic growth priorities. We believe our vertical integration and scale in home standby generators provides a material benefit in our ability to maintain industry-leading output with state-of-the-art manufacturing processes.

Suppliers of Raw Materials, Components and Equipment

Our primary raw material inputs are steel, copper and aluminum, all of which are purchased from third parties and, in many cases, as part of machined or manufactured components. In certain instances, we purchase complete equipment or systems from third-party suppliers, including from a variety of contract manufacturers. Given our increasing focus on energy technology solutions, advanced electronic components and micro-processors have become a larger consideration within our supply chain. Within the clean energy market, batteries are a significant supply chain input for our energy storage systems. Over multiple decades, we have developed an extensive network of reliable suppliers in the United States and around the world. We believe our Strategic Global Sourcing function is a competitive strength with deep supplier relationships. We continuously evaluate the quality and cost structure of our purchased components and equipment and assess the capabilities of our supply chain. Components and equipment are sourced accordingly based on this evaluation. Our supplier quality engineers conduct on-site audits of major supply chain partners and help to maintain the reliability of critical sourced components and equipment.

Since the beginning of 2020, we have experienced a number of supply chain challenges resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic that impacted our operations to varying degrees. This includes inbound and outbound logistics delays and increased employee absences at several of our production facilities. Additionally, there continues to be significant raw material and other cost pressures, ongoing logistics challenges, and various supply chain constraints, which are resulting in higher input costs and delays for certain of our products throughout 2021.

See “Item 7. Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” for additional information regarding the impact of COVID-19 and rising input costs on our business.

See “Item 1A. Risk Factors” for additional factors that can influence our supply of raw materials, components and equipment.

Competition

The market for power generation equipment, energy storage systems, grid services solutions and other engine powered products is competitive. We face competition from a variety of large diversified industrial companies as well as smaller generator manufacturers, along with mobile equipment, engine powered tools, solar inverter, battery storage and grid services providers, both domestic and internationally.

Specifically in the generator market, most of the traditional participants compete on a more focused basis, targeting specific applications within their larger diversified product mix. We are the only significant market participant with a primary focus on power equipment with a key emphasis on standby, portable and mobile generators with broad capabilities across the residential, light-commercial and industrial markets. We believe that our engineering capabilities and core focus on generators provide us with manufacturing flexibility and enables us to maintain a first-mover advantage over our competition for product innovation. We also believe our broad product offering, diverse omni-channel distribution model and strong factory support provide additional advantages as well.

The Company in recent years has been evolving its business model toward more of a focus on clean energy products, solutions and services, which has introduced a new set of competitors. 

A summary of the primary competitors across our main product classes is as follows:

Residential products – Kohler, Briggs & Stratton, Cummins, Honda, Champion, Techtronics International, Husqvarna, Ariens, LG Chem, Tesla, Enphase, Solar Edge, Google, and Honeywell, along with a number of smaller domestic and foreign competitors; certain of which also have broad operations in other manufacturing businesses.

C&I products – Caterpillar, Cummins, Kohler, IGSA, Wacker, MultiQuip, Terex, Doosan, Atlas Copco, Himoinsa, FG Wilson, and Co-map; certain of which focus on the market for diesel generators as they are also diesel engine manufacturers. Also, we compete against other regional packagers that serve local markets throughout the world.

Other products – Relative to service parts and extended warranty revenue, all of the above named companies are primary competitors. Relative to grid services optimization software, Autogrid and Energy Hub, along with other grid service solution providers.

In a continuously evolving market, we believe our scale and broad capabilities make us well positioned to remain competitive. We compete primarily on the basis of brand reputation, quality, reliability, pricing, innovative features, breadth of product offering, product availability and factory support.

Government Incentives and Regulation, including Environmental Matters

Generac’s growing presence in energy technology solutions has increased our exposure to renewable energy mandates, investment tax credits and other demand-creation subsidies from certain existing and potential government incentives. These incentives cover a wide range of products and solutions, including microinverters, solar plus storage systems, grid services, and grid-edge devices, and the availability, size, and outlook for such incentives can impact the markets for these products and solutions.

As a manufacturing company, our operations are subject to a variety of federal, state, local and foreign laws and regulations covering environmental, health and safety matters. Applicable laws and regulations include those governing, among other things, emissions to air, discharges to water, noise and employee safety, as well as the generation, handling, storage, transportation, treatment, and disposal of waste and other materials. In addition, our products are subject to various laws and regulations relating to, among other things, emissions and fuel requirements, as well as labeling, storage, transport, and marketing. 

Our products sold in the United States are regulated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), California Air Resources Board (CARB) and various other state and local air quality management districts. These governing bodies continue to pass regulations that require us to meet more stringent emission standards, and all of our engines and engine-driven products are regulated within the United States and its territories. In addition, certain products in the United States are subject to safety standards as established by various other standards and rule making bodies, or state and local agencies, including the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC).

Similarly, other countries have varying degrees of regulation for our products, depending upon product application and fuel types.

Environment, Social, and Governance Program

In 2021, we published our inaugural Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) Report that aligned with leading global sustainability disclosure standards. Additionally, we have established an internal ESG Steering Committee comprised of subject matter experts from across the Company, which receives board-level oversight from our Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee. A copy of the Company's 2021 ESG Report is available from our Investor Relations webpage at Generac.com. The information provided within our 2021 ESG Report is not part of this report, and is therefore not incorporated herein by reference.

Human Capital

"Our People" is one of the foundational elements to our “Powering a Smarter World” enterprise strategy and is a corporate value as well. We foster a culture of diversity and engagement to strengthen our company while supporting individual achievement, equity, inclusivity and good corporate citizenship globally. We believe our success is directly tied to our employees’ professional growth and personal well-being, combined with strong families and communities. 

Some examples of key human capital programs and initiatives that we are focused on include:

Health, wellness and safety – Employee health and safety is the Company’s top priority. Generac’s Healthy & Thriving Total Rewards are based on the four pillars of balance, security, well-being and community. These programs are designed to meet the varied and evolving needs of our diverse workforce. We maintain an employee wellness program, incentivize healthy-living activities, continue to provide emergency paid COVID-19 leave benefits to help employees care for themselves and their families, and we develop and administer company-wide policies to ensure the safety of each employee and compliance with government agency and other standards.

Diversity and inclusion – At Generac, people with diverse backgrounds and points of view work together to support our customers around the globe.  As an inclusive workplace, our employees embrace diversity in all forms, celebrate differences, and treat others with equality and respect.  We have hosted a series of culture-changing listening and learning sessions and, we have expanded our DEI training library for managers. We have launched employee-led Business Employee Resource Groups (BERG) to facilitate networking and connections with peers and leadership, and we partner with community job agencies representing disabled clients and workforce release programs to provide job opportunities to those who face barriers to employment.

Talent development & employee engagement – We prioritize and invest in creating opportunities to help employees build careers at Generac. We hold internal career events as well as partner with local educational resources to offer on the job learning, collaborative work experiences and formal learning programs on lean methodology and project management skills to support progressions and advancement of our workforce. Further, we maintain an ongoing global employee engagement initiative with targeted action plans by region, function, and business group. Action plans and their progress are measured by global employee engagement surveys.

As of December 31, 2021, we had 9,540 employees (8,955 full time and 585 part-time and temporary employees). Of those, 5,125 employees were directly involved in manufacturing at our manufacturing facilities.

Domestically, we have had an “open shop” bargaining agreement for the past 50 years. The current agreement, which expires October 16, 2026, covers our Eagle, Wisconsin facility. Additionally, our plants in Mexico, Italy and Spain are operated under various local or national union groups. Our other facilities are not unionized.

Available Information

The Company’s principal executive offices are located at S45 W29290 Highway 59, Waukesha, Wisconsin, 53189 and the Company’s telephone number is (262) 544-4811. The Company’s website is www.generac.com. The Company’s annual reports on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, current reports on Form 8-K, and amendments to those reports are available free of charge through the “Investor Relations” portion of the Company’s web site, as soon as reasonably practicable after they are filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The information provided on these websites is not part of this report and is therefore not incorporated herein by reference.

Information About Our Executive Officers

The following table sets forth information regarding our executive officers:

Aaron P. Jagdfeld has served as our Chief Executive Officer since September 2008, as a director since November 2006 and was named Chairman in February 2016. Prior to becoming Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Jagdfeld worked for Generac for 15 years. He began his career in the finance department in 1994 and became our Chief Financial Officer in 2002. In 2007, he was appointed President and was responsible for sales, marketing, engineering and product development. Prior to joining Generac, Mr. Jagdfeld worked in the audit practice of the Milwaukee, Wisconsin office of Deloitte and Touche. Mr. Jagdfeld holds a Bachelor of Business Administration in Accounting from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater.

York A. Ragen has served as our Chief Financial Officer since September 2008. Prior to becoming Chief Financial Officer, Mr. Ragen held Director of Finance and Vice President of Finance positions at Generac. Prior to joining Generac in 2005, Mr. Ragen was Vice President, Corporate Controller at APW Ltd., a spin-off from Applied Power Inc., now known as Enerpac Tool Group. Mr. Ragen began his career at Arthur Andersen in the Milwaukee, Wisconsin office audit practice. Mr. Ragen holds a Bachelor of Business Administration in Accounting from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater.

Russell S. Minick began serving as our Chief Marketing Officer in August 2016. In addition to his CMO responsibilities, Mr. Minick was appointed President of our Energy Technology business in January 2021. Prior to these appointments, he served as our Executive Vice President, Residential Products since October 2011, with this responsibility being expanded in January 2014 to Executive Vice President, North America. Prior to joining Generac, Mr. Minick was President & CEO of Home Care Products for Electrolux from 2006 to 2011, President of The Gunlocke Company at HNI Corporation from 2003 to 2006, Senior Vice President of Sales, Marketing and Product Development at True Temper Sports from 2002 to 2003, and General Manager of Extended Warranty Operations for Ford Motor Company from 1998 to 2002. Mr. Minick is a graduate of the University of Northern Iowa, and holds a degree in marketing. On February 11, 2022, Mr. Minick gave notice of his intention to retire from the Company following an appropriate transition of his responsibilities, and in any event by no later than May 1, 2022.

Tom Pettit began serving as our Chief Operations Officer in February 2020. From 2017 until February 2020, Mr. Pettit was Executive Vice President and Chief Integrated Supply Chain Officer of nVent Electric plc, a leading global provider of electrical connection and protection solutions and a former subsidiary of Pentair plc (“Pentair”), a global industrial company. Mr. Pettit previously served as the Operations Vice President of Pentair from 2015 until 2017, and as the Chief Operating Officer for BioScrip, Inc., a provider of infusion and home care management solutions, from 2014 until 2015. Mr. Pettit holds a B.S. in General Engineering from West Point Military Academy and an MBA from the University of Hawaii.

Erik Wilde began serving as our Executive Vice President, Industrial, Americas in July 2016. Mr. Wilde was Vice President and General Manager of the Mining Division for Komatsu America Corp., a manufacturer of construction, mining, and compact construction equipment, from 2013 until he joined Generac. Prior to that role, he held leadership positions as Vice President of the ICT Business Division and Product Marketing at Komatsu America Corp. beginning in 2005. Mr. Wilde holds a Bachelor of Business Administration in Management from Boise State University and an M.B.A. from the Keller Graduate School of Management.

Patrick Forsythe has served as our Chief Technical Officer since January 2021. He previously served as our Executive Vice President of Global Engineering since July 2015. Prior to re-joining Generac, Mr. Forsythe was Vice President, Global Engineering & Technology of Hayward Industries from 2008 to 2015, Vice President, Global Engineering at Ingersoll Rand Company (and the acquired Doosan Infracore International) from 2004 to 2008, and Director of Engineering at Ingersoll Rand Company from 2002 to 2004. Prior to 2002, Mr. Forsythe worked in various engineering management capacities with Generac from 1995 to 2002. Mr. Forsythe holds a Higher National Diploma (HND) in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Ulster (United Kingdom), a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering, and an M.S. in Manufacturing Management & Technology from The Open University (United Kingdom).

Raj Kanuru is our Executive Vice President, General Counsel & Secretary and is the Company’s principal legal and compliance officer, roles that he has held since joining Generac in 2013. Prior to joining Generac, Mr. Kanuru served as in-house counsel at Caterpillar Inc. for almost 14 years within various leadership roles, including in the Securities, Regulatory and Tax group, at Caterpillar Financial, and in Caterpillar’s Energy & Transportation group. From 2009 to 2013, Mr. Kanuru served as Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary of Progress Rail Services Inc., and its subsidiaries (a Caterpillar company). He began his legal career as a senior associate in the tax consulting practice of Arthur Andersen LLP. Mr. Kanuru holds a Bachelor of Science in Finance degree from Birmingham-Southern College and received his Juris Doctor degree from the University of Alabama.

Kyle Raabe has served as our President, Consumer Power since November 2019.  Prior to rejoining Generac, Mr. Raabe was Senior Vice President of North American Sales, Demand Planning and Sales Operations from 2018 through 2019 and Vice President of Sales for the Commercial Security and Safety groups from 2015 through 2018 at The Master Lock Corporation, a manufacturer of locks, combination padlocks and other security products.  Prior to working at The Master Lock Corporation, Mr. Raabe led multiple groups at Generac Power Systems from 2007 through 2015 as Director of Wholesale and Dealer Distribution, Vice President Wholesale Distribution Sales and Vice President, Industrial Distribution Sales.  Before joining Generac, Kyle served at Veolia North America, Environmental Services leading Midwest Regional Service Operations.  Mr. Raabe holds a BA, Biological Science from Lawrence University. 

Item 1A. Risk Factors

You should carefully consider the following risks. These risks could materially affect our business, results of operations or financial condition, cause the trading price of our common stock to decline materially or cause our actual results to differ materially from those expected or those expressed in any forward-looking statements made by us. These risks are not exclusive, and additional risks to which we are subject include, but are not limited to, the factors mentioned under “Forward-Looking Statements” and the risks of our businesses described elsewhere in this Annual Report.

Risk factors related to COVID-19

The duration and scope of the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic are uncertain and may continue to adversely affect our operations, supply chain, distribution, and demand for certain of our products and services.

The global outbreak of COVID-19 and related variants has created significant uncertainty within the global markets that we serve. We have operations, customers and suppliers in countries significantly impacted by COVID-19. Governmental authorities around the world have taken a variety of measures to slow the spread of COVID-19, including travel bans or restrictions, increased border controls or closures, quarantines, shelter-in-place orders and business shutdowns and such authorities may impose additional restrictions in the future. We have also taken actions to protect our employees and to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 within our business. There can be no assurance that the measures implemented by governmental authorities or our own actions will be effective or achieve their desired results in a timely fashion. 

The impact of COVID-19 has resulted in disruptions to our manufacturing operations and supply chain, and may continue to do so, which could negatively impact our ability to meet customer demand. Our forward-looking statements assume that our production facilities, supply chain and distribution partners continue to operate during the pandemic. To date, we have been able to operate the majority of our facilities. If we were to encounter a significant work stoppage, disruption, or outbreak due to COVID-19 at one or more of our locations or suppliers, we may not be able to satisfy customer demand for a period of time.

Furthermore, the impact of COVID-19 on the economy, demand for our products and impacts to our operations, including the measures taken by governmental authorities to address it, may precipitate or exacerbate other risks and/or uncertainties, including specifically many of the risk factors set forth in this Annual Report, including inflationary costs, disruptions due to labor shortages, supply chain disruptions, and risks related to the fair market value of intangible assets that could lead to an impairment, which may have a significant impact on the Company's operating results and financial condition, although we are unable to predict the extent or nature of these impacts at this time. 

Risk factors related to our business and industry

Decreases in the availability and quality, or increases in the cost, of raw materials, key components and labor we use to make our products could materially reduce our earnings.

The principal raw materials that we use to produce our products are steel, copper and aluminum as well as batteries and advanced electronic components. We also source a significant number of component parts from third parties that we utilize to manufacture our products. The prices of those raw materials and components are susceptible to significant fluctuations due to trends in supply and demand, commodity prices, currencies, transportation costs, government regulations and tariffs, price controls, economic conditions and other unforeseen circumstances beyond our control. In fact, we have recently seen such trends significantly impact our business resulting in higher costs and shortages in materials, components and labor, and such impacts may continue for the foreseeable future. We typically do not have long-term supply contracts in place to ensure the raw materials and components we use are available in necessary amounts or at fixed prices. In the short term, we have been unable to fully mitigate raw material or component price increases through product design improvements, price increases to our customers, manufacturing productivity improvements, or hedging transactions, and if our mitigation efforts continue to not be fully effective in the short or long term, our profitability could be adversely affected. We have implemented multiple rounds of price increases in 2021 to combat rising input costs. However, these price increases will be fully realized throughout 2022 as the higher pricing works through backlog. Also, our ability to continue to obtain quality materials and components is subject to the continued reliability and viability of our suppliers, including in some cases, suppliers who are the sole source of certain important components. It has been challenging to consistently obtain adequate, cost efficient or timely deliveries of certain required raw materials and components, or sufficient labor resources while we ramp up production to meet higher levels of demand, and if this trend continues, we may be unable to manufacture sufficient quantities of products on a timely basis. This could cause us to lose additional sales, incur additional costs, delay new product introductions or suffer harm to our reputation.

Our business could be negatively impacted if we fail to adequately protect our intellectual property rights or if third parties claim that we are in violation of their intellectual property rights.

We consider our intellectual property rights to be important assets, and seek to protect them through a combination of patent, trademark, copyright and trade secret laws, as well as licensing and confidentiality agreements. These protections may not be adequate to prevent third parties from using our intellectual property without our authorization, breaching any confidentiality agreements with us, copying or reverse engineering our products, or developing and marketing products that are substantially equivalent to or superior to our own. The unauthorized use of our intellectual property by others could reduce our competitive advantage and harm our business. Not only are intellectual property-related proceedings burdensome and costly, but they could span years to resolve and we might not ultimately prevail. We cannot guarantee that any patents, issued or pending, will provide us with any competitive advantage or will not be challenged by third parties. Moreover, the expiration of our patents may lead to increased competition with respect to certain products.

In addition, we cannot be certain that we do not or will not infringe third parties' intellectual property rights. We currently are, and have previously been, subject to such third party infringement claims, and may continue to be in the future.  Any such claim, even if it is believed to be without merit, may be expensive and time-consuming to defend, subject us to damages, cause us to cease making, using or selling certain products that incorporate the disputed intellectual property, require us to redesign our products, divert management time and attention, and/or require us to enter into costly royalty or licensing arrangements.

We may incur costs and liabilities as a result of product liability claims.

We face a risk of exposure to current and future product liability claims alleging to arise from the use of our products and that may purportedly result in injury or other damage. Although we currently maintain product liability insurance coverage, we may not be able to obtain such insurance on acceptable terms in the future, if at all, or obtain insurance that will provide adequate coverage against potential claims. Product liability claims can be expensive to defend and can divert the attention of management and other personnel for long periods of time, regardless of the ultimate outcome. A significant unsuccessful product liability defense could have a material adverse effect on our financial condition and results of operations. In addition, we believe our business depends on the strong brand reputation we have developed. If our reputation is damaged, we may face difficulty in maintaining our market share and pricing with respect to some of our products, which could reduce our sales and profitability.

Demand for the majority of our products is significantly affected by unpredictable power outage activity that can lead to substantial variations in, and uncertainties regarding, our financial results from period to period.

Sales of our products are subject to consumer buying patterns, and demand for the majority of our products is affected by power outage events caused by thunderstorms, hurricanes, ice storms, blackouts, public safety power shutoffs, and other power grid reliability issues. The impact of these outage events on our sales can vary depending on the location, frequency and severity of the outages. Sustained periods without major power disruptions can lead, and in the past have led, to reduced consumer awareness of the benefits of standby and portable generator products and can result and have previously resulted  in reduced sales growth rates and excess inventory. There are smaller, more localized power outages that occur frequently that drive a baseline level of demand for back-up power solutions. The lack of major power outage events and fluctuations to the baseline levels of power outage activity are part of managing our business, and these fluctuations could have, and previously have had, an adverse effect on our net sales and profits. Despite their unpredictable nature, we believe power disruptions create awareness and accelerate adoption for our home standby products.

Demand for our products is significantly affected by durable goods spending by consumers and businesses, and other macroeconomic conditions.

Our business is affected by general economic conditions, and uncertainty or adverse changes, such as the prolonged downturn in U.S. residential investment and the impact of more stringent credit standards, have previously led and could lead again to a decline in demand for our products and pressure to reduce our prices. Our sales of light-commercial and industrial generators are affected by conditions in the non-residential construction sector and by the capital investment trends for small and large businesses and municipalities. If these businesses and municipalities cannot access credit markets or do not utilize discretionary funds to purchase our products as a result of the economy or other factors, our business could suffer and our ability to realize benefits from our strategy of increasing sales in the light-commercial and industrial sectors through, among other things, our focus on innovation and product development, including natural gas engine and modular technology, could be adversely affected. In addition, consumer confidence and home remodeling expenditures have a significant impact on sales of our residential products, and prolonged periods of weakness in consumer durable goods spending has previously had, and could again have a material impact on our business. We currently do not have any material contracts with our customers which call for committed volume, and we cannot guarantee that our current customers will continue to purchase our products at the same level, if at all. If general economic conditions or consumer confidence were to worsen, or if the non-residential construction sector or rate of capital investments were to decline, our net sales and profits would likely be adversely affected. Changes in government monetary or fiscal policies may negatively impact our results, including increases in interest rates which could negatively affect overall growth and impact sales of our products.  Additionally, timing of capital spending by our national account customers can vary from quarter-to-quarter based on capital availability and internal capital spending budgets. Also, the availability of renewable energy mandates and investment tax credits and other subsidies can have an impact on the demand for energy storage systems.  Our global operations are exposed to political and economic risks, commercial instability and events beyond our control in the countries in which we operate.  Such risks or events may disrupt our supply chain and not enable us to produce products to meet customer demand.

The industry in which we compete is highly competitive, and our failure to compete successfully could adversely affect our results of operations and financial condition.

We operate in markets that are highly competitive. Some of our competitors have established brands and are larger in size or are divisions of large diversified companies which have substantially greater financial resources than we do. Some of our competitors may be willing to reduce prices and accept lower margins in order to compete with us. In addition, we could face new competition from large international or domestic companies with established brands that enter our end markets. Demand for our products may also be affected by our ability to respond to changes in design and functionality, to respond to downward pricing pressure, and to provide shorter lead times for our products than our competitors. If we are unable to respond successfully to these competitive pressures, we could lose market share, which could have an adverse impact on our results. For further information, see “Item 1—Business—Competition”.

Our industry is subject to technological change, and our failure to continue developing new and improved products and to bring these products rapidly to market could have an adverse impact on our business.

New products, or refinements and improvements to our existing products, may have technical failures, delayed introductions, higher than expected production costs or may not be well accepted by our customers. If we are not able to anticipate, identify, develop and market high quality products in line with technological advancements that respond to changes in customer preferences, demand for our products could decline and our operating results could be adversely affected.

We rely on independent dealers and distribution partners, and the loss of these dealers and distribution partners, or of any of our sales arrangements with significant private label, national, retail or equipment rental customers, would adversely affect our business.

We depend on the services of independent distributors and dealers to sell our products and provide service and aftermarket support to our end customers. We also rely on our distribution channels to drive awareness for our product categories and our brands. In addition, we sell our products to end users through private label arrangements with leading home equipment, electrical equipment and construction machinery companies; arrangements with top retailers and equipment rental companies; and our direct national accounts with telecommunications and industrial customers. Our distribution agreements and any contracts we have with large national, retail and other customers are typically not exclusive, and many of the distributors with whom we do business offer competitors’ products and services. Impairment of our relationships with our distributors, dealers or large customers, loss of a substantial number of these distributors or dealers or of one or more large customers, or an increase in our distributors' or dealers' sales of our competitors' products to our customers or of our large customers' purchases of our competitors' products could materially reduce our sales and profits. Also, our ability to successfully realize our growth strategy is dependent in part on our ability to identify, attract and retain new distributors at all layers of our distribution platform, including increasing the number of energy storage distributors, and we cannot be certain that we will be successful in these efforts. For further information, see “Item 1—Business—Distribution Channels and Customers”.

We are unable to determine the specific impact of changes in selling prices or changes in volumes or mix of our products on our net sales.

Because of the wide range of products that we sell, the level of customization for many of our products, the frequent rollout of new products, the different accounting systems utilized, and the fact that we do not apply pricing changes uniformly across our entire portfolio of products, we are unable to determine with specificity the effect of volume or mix changes or changes in selling prices on our net sales.

Policy changes affecting international trade could adversely impact the demand for our products and our competitive position.

Changes in government policies on foreign trade and investment can affect the demand for our products, impact the competitive position of our products or prevent us from being able to sell products in certain countries. Our business benefits from free trade agreements, and efforts to withdraw from, or substantially modify such agreements, in addition to the implementation of more restrictive trade policies, such as more detailed inspections, higher tariffs, import or export licensing requirements, exchange controls or new barriers to entry, could have a material adverse effect on our results of operations, financial condition or cash flows. For example, we are experiencing increased tariffs on certain of our products and product components. However, these tariffs have not ultimately had a material adverse effect on our results due to the implementation of various mitigation efforts in conjunction with our supply chain and end market partners.

Risk factors related to our operations

The loss of any key members of our senior management team or key employees could disrupt our operations and harm our business.

Our success depends, in part, on the efforts of certain key individuals, including the members of our senior management team, who have significant experience in the energy products and solutions industry. If, for any reason, our senior executives do not continue to be active in management, or if our key employees leave our company, our business, financial condition or results of operations could be adversely affected. Failure to continue to attract these individuals at reasonable compensation levels could have a material adverse effect on our business, liquidity and results of operations. If we needed to replace any of these individuals in the near future, the loss of the services of any of our key employees could disrupt our operations and have a material adverse effect on our business if we do not have effective succession plans in place.

Disruptions caused by labor disputes or organized labor activities could harm our business.

We may from time to time experience union organizing activities in our non-union facilities. Disputes with the current labor union or new union organizing activities could lead to work slowdowns or stoppages and make it difficult or impossible for us to meet scheduled delivery times for product shipments to our customers, which could result in loss of business. In addition, union activity could result in higher labor costs, which could harm our financial condition, results of operations and competitive position. A work stoppage or limitations on production at our facilities for any reason could have an adverse effect on our business, results of operations and financial condition. In addition, many of our suppliers have unionized work forces. Strikes or work stoppages experienced by our customers or suppliers could have an adverse effect on our business, results of operations and financial condition.

We may experience material disruptions to our manufacturing operations.

While we seek to operate our facilities in compliance with applicable rules and regulations and take measures to minimize the risks of disruption at our facilities, a material disruption at one of our manufacturing facilities could prevent us from meeting customer demand, reduce our sales and/or negatively impact our financial results. Any of our manufacturing facilities, or any of our equipment within an otherwise operational facility, could cease operations unexpectedly due to a number of events, including:

In addition, a significant portion of our manufacturing and production facilities are located in Wisconsin within a 100-mile radius of each other. We could experience prolonged periods of reduced production due to unforeseen events occurring in or around our manufacturing facilities in Wisconsin. In the event of a business interruption at our facilities, in particular our Wisconsin facilities, we may be unable to shift manufacturing capabilities to alternate locations, accept materials from suppliers or meet customer shipment needs, among other severe consequences. Such an event could have a material and adverse impact on our financial condition and results of our operations.

We are vulnerable to supply disruptions from single-sourced suppliers.

We single-source certain types of parts in our product designs. Delays in our suppliers' deliveries have impaired, and may continue to impair, our ability to deliver products to our customers. A wide variety of factors could cause such delays including, but not limited to, lack of capacity, economic downturns, availability of credit, logistical challenges, labor or material shortages, trade restrictions, weather events, political instability, wars, terrorism, civil unrest, disease or natural disasters.

We may not realize all of the anticipated benefits of our acquisitions or those benefits may take longer to realize than expected. We may also encounter significant unexpected difficulties in integrating acquired businesses.

Our ability to realize the anticipated benefits of our acquisitions will depend, to a large extent, on our ability to integrate the acquired businesses with our business. The integration of independent businesses is a complex, costly and time-consuming process. Further, integrating and managing businesses with international operations may pose challenges not previously experienced by our management. As a result, we may be required to devote significant management attention and resources to integrating the business practices and operations of any acquired businesses with ours. The integration process may disrupt our business and, if implemented ineffectively, could preclude realization of the full benefits expected by us. Our failure to meet the challenges involved in integrating an acquired business into our existing operations or otherwise to realize the anticipated benefits of the transaction could cause an interruption of, or a loss of momentum in, our activities and could adversely affect our results of operations.

In addition, the overall integration of our acquired businesses may result in material unanticipated problems, expenses, liabilities, competitive responses, loss of customer relationships, and diversion of management's attention, and may cause our stock price to decline. The difficulties of combining the operations of acquired businesses with ours include, among others:

Many of these factors will be outside of our control and any one of them could result in increased costs, decreases in the amount of expected revenues and diversion of management's time and energy, which could materially impact our business, financial condition and results of operations. In addition, even if the operations of our acquired businesses are integrated successfully with our operations, we may not realize the full benefits of the transaction, including the synergies, cost savings or sales or growth opportunities that we expect. These benefits may not be achieved within the anticipated time frame, or at all, and additional unanticipated costs may be incurred in the integration of our businesses. All of these factors could cause dilution to our earnings per share, decrease or delay the expected accretive effect of the acquisition, and cause a decrease in the price of our common stock. As a result, we cannot be assured that the combination of our acquisitions with our business will result in the realization of the full benefits anticipated from the transaction.

A significant portion of our purchased components are sourced in foreign countries, exposing us to additional risks that may not exist in the United States.

We source a significant portion of our purchased components overseas, primarily in Asia and Europe. Our international sourcing subjects us to a number of potential risks in addition to the risks associated with third-party sourcing generally. Such risks include:

These factors have had in the past and are currently having an adverse effect on our ability to efficiently and cost effectively source our purchased components overseas. In particular, if the U.S. dollar were to depreciate significantly against the currencies in which we purchase raw materials from foreign suppliers, our cost of goods sold could increase materially, which would adversely affect our results of operations. In addition, we are experiencing higher logistics costs due to the current challenging supply chain environment.

Risk factors related to legal and regulatory matters

As a U.S. corporation that conducts business in a variety of foreign countries, we are subject to the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and a variety of anti-corruption laws worldwide. A determination that we violated any of these laws may affect our business and operations adversely.

The U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) generally prohibits U.S. companies and their intermediaries from making improper payments to foreign officials for the purpose of obtaining or keeping business. The United Kingdom Bribery Act (UKBA) prohibits domestic and foreign bribery of the private sector as well as public officials. Any determination that we have violated any anti-corruption laws could have a material adverse effect on our financial position, operating results and cash flows.

Costs associated with lawsuits, investigations or adverse rulings in enforcement or other legal proceedings may have an adverse effect on our results of operations.

We are subject to a variety of legal proceedings and legal compliance risks. We currently face risk of exposure to various types of claims, lawsuits and government investigations, and may continue to face such risks in the future. We are currently and, may in the future be, involved in various claims and lawsuits related to product design, safety, manufacture and performance liability, contracts, employment issues, environmental matters, intellectual property rights, tax, securities, regulatory compliance, and other legal proceedings that arise in and outside of the ordinary course of our business.  The industries in which we operate are also periodically reviewed or investigated by regulators, and we are subject to and may continue to be subject to such investigations and claims, including by the CPSC and EPA, which could lead to enforcement actions, fines and penalties or the assertion of private litigation claims.  It is not possible to predict with certainty the outcome of such claims, investigations and lawsuits, and we could in the future incur judgments, fines or penalties or enter into settlements of lawsuits and claims that could have an adverse effect on our reputation, business, results of operations or financial condition in any particular period. 

The nature of our operations means that legal and compliance risks will continue to exist and additional legal proceedings and other contingencies, the outcome of which cannot be predicted with certainty, may arise from time to time. In addition, subsequent developments in legal proceedings or investigations may affect our assessment and estimates of loss contingencies recorded as a reserve and require us to make payments in excess of our reserves, which could have an adverse effect on our reputation, business and results of operations or financial condition.

Our operations are subject to various environmental, health and safety laws and regulations, and non-compliance with or liabilities under such laws and regulations could result in substantial costs, fines, sanctions and claims.

Our operations are subject to a variety of foreign, federal, state and local environmental, health and safety laws and regulations including those governing, among other things, emissions to air; discharges to water; noise; and the generation, handling, storage, transportation, treatment and disposal of waste and other materials. In addition, under federal and state environmental laws, we could be required to investigate, remediate and/or monitor the effects of the release or disposal of materials both at sites associated with past and present operations and at third-party sites where wastes generated by our operations were disposed. This liability may be imposed retroactively and whether or not we caused, or had any knowledge of, the existence of these materials and may result in our paying more than our fair share of the related costs. Violations of or liabilities under such laws and regulations could result in substantial costs, fines and civil or criminal proceedings or personal injury and workers' compensation claims.

Our products are subject to substantial government regulation.

Our products are subject to extensive statutory and regulatory requirements governing, among other things, emissions, noise, labeling, transport, product content, product safety, and data privacy, including standards imposed by the EPA, CARB, CPSC and other regulatory agencies around the world. Also, as we increase our connectivity with our products and customers, we may be required to comply with additional data privacy and cybersecurity regulations. These laws are constantly evolving and many are becoming increasingly stringent. For example, recent CARB regulations that will prohibit future sales in California of certain small off-road engines may negatively affect the long-term sales of certain products we sell today in that state. In addition, some cities or municipalities have imposed, or are considering, limiting natural gas connections to new buildings or imposing additional permitting restrictions which could adversely affect the sales of certain products we sell in such jurisdictions. Changes in applicable laws or regulations, or in the enforcement thereof, could require us to redesign or recall our products and could adversely affect our business or financial condition in the future. Developing and marketing products to meet such new requirements could result in substantial additional costs that may be difficult to recover in some markets. In some cases, we may be required to modify our products or develop new products to comply with new regulations, particularly those relating to air emissions and carbon monoxide. Typically, additional costs associated with significant compliance modifications are passed on to the market. We have also recently been, and continue to be, subject to product recall actions and related applicable regulatory compliance inquiries by regulatory authorities. The failure to comply with existing and future regulatory standards or requirements could adversely affect our position in the markets we serve, our reputation, business, results of operations or financial condition in any particular period.

Risk factors related to cybersecurity

Failures or security breaches of our networks or information technology systems could have an adverse effect on our business.

We rely heavily on information technology (IT) both in our products and services for customers and in our IT systems used to run our business. Further, we collect and store sensitive information in our cloud-based data centers and on our networks. Government agencies and security experts have warned about growing risks of hackers, cyber-criminals, malicious insiders and other actors targeting confidential information and all types of IT systems. These actors may engage in fraudulent activities, theft of confidential or proprietary information and sabotage or ransomware.

Our IT systems, our connected products, and our confidential information may be vulnerable to damage or intrusion from a variety of attacks including computer viruses, worms or other malicious software programs. The risk of such attacks may increase as we integrate newly acquired companies or develop new connected products and related software. These attacks pose a risk to the security of our products, systems and networks and those of our customers, suppliers and third-party service providers, as well as to the confidentiality of our information and the integrity and availability of our data. While we attempt to mitigate these risks through board oversight, controls, due diligence, employee training and communication, third party intrusion testing, system hardening, email and web filters, regular patching, multi-factor authentication, surveillance, encryption, and other measures, we remain vulnerable to information security threats.

We have experienced cyber security threats and vulnerabilities in our systems and those of our third-party providers, and we have experienced viruses and attacks targeting our IT systems and networks. Such prior events, to date, have not had a material impact on our financial condition, results of operations or liquidity. Despite the precautions we take, we have had, and could have again, an intrusion or infection of our systems or connected products.  While such intrusions or infections to date have not resulted in the significant disruption of our business, or a loss of proprietary or confidential information, we cannot guarantee the same for future intrusions or infections. Similarly, an attack on our IT systems or connected products could result in theft or disclosure of trade secrets or other intellectual property, a breach of confidential customer or employee information, or product failure or misuse. Any such events could have an adverse impact on sales, harm our reputation and cause us to incur legal liability and increased costs to address such events and related security concerns. As the threats evolve and become more potent, we may incur additional costs to secure the products that we sell, as well as our data and infrastructure of networks and devices.

Risk factors related to our capital structure

We have indebtedness which could adversely affect our cash flow and our ability to make payments on our indebtedness.

As of December 31, 2021 we had total indebtedness of $980.1 million. Our level of indebtedness increases the possibility that we may be unable to generate cash sufficient to pay, when due, the principal of, interest on or other amounts due in respect of our indebtedness. While we maintain interest rate swaps covering a portion of our outstanding debt, our interest expense could increase if interest rates increase because debt under our credit facilities bears interest at a variable rate based on LIBOR or other base rate. In connection with our term loan amendment in December 2019, language was added to the agreement to include a benchmark replacement rate, selected by the administrative agent and the borrower, as a replacement to LIBOR. The Company has worked with its lenders to amend other LIBOR based debt agreements to add a replacement rate. If we do not have sufficient earnings to service our debt, we may be required to refinance all or part of our existing debt, sell assets, borrow more money or sell securities, none of which we can guarantee we will be able to do. Our Term Loan matures on December 13, 2026, and our ABL Facility expires on May 27, 2026.

The terms of our credit facilities restrict our current and future operations, particularly our ability to respond to changes in our business or to take certain actions.

Our credit facilities contain, and any future indebtedness of ours or our subsidiaries would likely contain, a number of restrictive covenants that impose operating and financial restrictions on us and our subsidiaries, including limitations on our ability to engage in acts that may be in our best long-term interests. These restrictions set limitations on, among other things, our ability to:

The operating and financial restrictions in our credit facilities and any future financing agreements may adversely affect our ability to finance future operations or capital needs or to engage in other business activities. A breach of any of the restrictive covenants in our credit facilities would result in a default. If any such default occurs, the lenders under our credit facilities may elect to declare all outstanding borrowings, together with accrued interest and other fees, to be immediately due and payable, or enforce their security interest, any of which would result in an event of default. The lenders will also have the right in these circumstances to terminate any commitments they have to provide further borrowings. Our existing credit facilities do not contain any financial maintenance covenants.

We may need additional capital to finance our growth strategy or to refinance our existing credit facilities, and we may not be able to obtain it on acceptable terms, or at all, which may limit our ability to grow.

We may require additional financing to expand our business. Financing may not be available to us or may be available to us only on terms that are not favorable. The terms of our senior secured credit facilities limit our ability to incur additional debt. In addition, economic conditions, including a downturn in the credit markets, could impact our ability to finance our growth on acceptable terms or at all. If we are unable to raise additional funds or obtain capital on acceptable terms, we may have to delay, modify or abandon some or all of our growth strategies. In the future, if we are unable to refinance our credit facilities on acceptable terms, our liquidity could be adversely affected.

Our total assets include goodwill and other indefinite-lived intangibles. If we determine these have become impaired, our net income could be materially adversely affected.

Goodwill represents the excess of cost over the fair market value of net assets acquired in business combinations. Indefinite-lived intangibles are comprised of certain tradenames. At December 31, 2021, goodwill and other indefinite-lived intangibles totaled $1,538.0 million. We review goodwill and other intangibles at least annually for impairment and any excess in carrying value over the estimated fair value is charged to the statement of comprehensive income. Future impairment may result from, among other things, deterioration in the performance of an acquired business or product line, adverse market conditions and changes in the competitive landscape, adverse changes in applicable laws or regulations, including changes that restrict the activities of an acquired business or product line, and a variety of other circumstances including any of the risk factors noted above. A reduction in net income resulting from the write-down or impairment of goodwill or indefinite-lived intangibles could have a material adverse effect on our financial statements. Refer to the Critical Accounting Policies in Item 7 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K for further information regarding the Company’s process for evaluating its goodwill for impairment.

Item 1B. Unresolved Staff Comments

None.

Item 2. Properties

We own or lease manufacturing, distribution, R&D, and office facilities globally totaling over five million square feet. We also have inventory warehouses that accommodate material storage and rapid response requirements of our customers. The following table provides information about our principal facilities exceeding 20,000 square feet:

In addition to the countries represented above, the Company has other operations or sales offices in the United Arab Emirates, Romania, Russia, Bahrain, and Colombia.

As of December 31, 2021, substantially all of our domestically-owned and a portion of our internationally-owned properties are subject to collateral provisions under our senior secured credit facilities.

Item 3. Legal Proceedings

See Note 18, "Commitments and Contingencies," to the consolidated financial statements in Item 8 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K for further information on the Company's legal proceedings. 

Item 4. Mine Safety Disclosures

Not Applicable.

PART II

Item 5. Market for Registrant’s Common Equity, Related Stockholder Matters and Issuer Purchases of Equity Securities

Shares of our common stock are traded on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) under the symbol “GNRC.”

Purchases of Equity Securities By the Issuer and Affiliated Purchasers

The following table summarizes the stock repurchase activity for the three months ended December 31, 2021, which consisted of stock repurchases made as authorized under previously announced stock repurchase programs, as well as the withholding of shares upon the vesting of restricted stock awards to pay related withholding taxes on behalf of the recipient:

For equity compensation plan information, refer to Note 17, “Share Plans,” to the consolidated financial statements in Item 8 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K. For information on the Company’s stock repurchase plans, refer to Note 13, “Stock Repurchase Programs,” to the consolidated financial statements.

Stock Performance Graph

The line graph below compares the cumulative total stockholder return on our common stock with the cumulative total return of the Standard & Poor’s S&P 500 Index, the S&P MidCap 400 Index and the Russell 2000 Index for the five-year period ended December 31, 2021. The graph and table assume that $100 was invested on December 31, 2016 in each of our common stock, the S&P 500 Index, the S&P MidCap 400 Index and the Russell 2000 Index, and that all dividends were reinvested. Cumulative total stockholder returns for our common stock, the S&P 500 Index, the S&P MidCap 400 Index and the Russell 2000 Index are based on our fiscal year.

Holders

As of February 16, 2022, there were 830 registered holders of record of Generac’s common stock. A substantially greater number of holders of Generac common stock are “street name” or beneficial holders, whose shares are held of record by banks, brokers and other financial institutions.

Dividends

We do not have plans to pay dividends on our common stock in the foreseeable future. However, in the future, subject to factors such as general economic and business conditions, our financial condition and results of operations, our capital requirements, our future liquidity and capitalization, and other such factors that our Board of Directors may deem relevant, we may change this policy and choose to pay dividends. Our ability to pay dividends on our common stock is currently limited by the terms of our senior secured credit facilities and may be further restricted by any future indebtedness we incur. Dividends from, and cash generated by our subsidiaries will be our principal sources of cash to repay indebtedness, fund operations, repurchase shares of common stock and pay dividends. Accordingly, our ability to pay dividends to our stockholders is dependent on the earnings and distributions of funds from our subsidiaries.

Securities Authorized for Issuance Under Equity Compensation Plans

For information on securities authorized for issuance under our equity compensation plans, refer to “Item 12 - Security Ownership of Certain Beneficial Owners and Management and Related Stockholder Matters,” which is incorporated herein by reference.

Recent Sales of Unregistered Securities

None.

Use of Proceeds from Registered Securities

Not applicable.

Item 6. [Reserved]

Item 7. Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations

The following discussion and analysis of our financial condition and results of operations should be read together with “Item 1 – Business,” the consolidated financial statements and the related notes thereto in Item 8 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K. This discussion contains forward-looking statements, based on current expectations and related to future events and our future financial performance, that involve risks and uncertainties. Our actual results may differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements as a result of many factors, including those set forth under “Item 1A. - Risk Factors.”

Overview

Generac is a leading energy technology solutions company that provides backup and prime power systems for residential and commercial & industrial (C&I) applications, solar + battery storage solutions, energy management devices and controls, advanced power grid software platforms & services and engine- & battery-powered tools and equipment.  The Company is committed to sustainable, cleaner energy products poised to revolutionize the 21^st century electrical grid.   

Further information regarding our business is provided in “Part I, Item 1. Business” of this Annual Report.

Business Drivers and Operational Factors

“Part I, Item 1. Business” of this Annual Report contains information regarding business drivers, including key mega-trends and strategic growth themes under the subheading “Mega-Trends, Strategic Growth Themes, and Additional Business Drivers.” 

 Factors Affecting Results of Operations

We are subject to various factors that can affect our results of operations, which we attempt to mitigate through factors we can control, including continued product development, expanded distribution, pricing, cost control and hedging. Certain operational and other factors that affect our business include the following:

Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.     As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to evolve, we continue to work to ensure employee safety, monitor customer demand, proactively address supply chain or production challenges, and support our communities during this challenging time. We manufacture and provide essential products and services to a variety of critical infrastructure customers around the globe, and as a result, substantially all of our operations and production activities have been operational during the pandemic. We have implemented changes in our work practices, maintaining a safe working environment for production and office employees at our facilities, while enabling other employees to productively work from home.

The COVID-19 pandemic has influenced various trends we are currently experiencing involving supply chain and operations constraints. While we are deemed an essential, critical infrastructure business and our facilities currently remain operational, this continues to be a fluid process and subject to change. We have experienced and may continue to experience labor shortages and increased employee absences at our production facilities. If we were to encounter a significant work stoppage, disruption, or COVID-19 outbreak at one or more of our locations or suppliers, we may not be able to satisfy customer demand for a period of time. Additionally, the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the global supply chain and logistics network, and we are continually monitoring scheduled material receipts to mitigate any delays. To date, we have not experienced significant interruptions to our supply chain as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, but this could be subject to change if one or more of our suppliers can no longer operate in this environment. We have maintained business continuity by utilizing safety stock inventory levels and executing air freight strategies.  We have experienced inbound and outbound logistics delays and increased costs, resulting in longer lead times and higher prices to our customers.

We continue to experience a broad-based increase in demand for residential products, specifically home standby generators, created by a significant increase in the awareness, importance and need for backup power security as people are working, learning, shopping, entertaining, and spending more time at home. Additionally, as economic activity continues to recover across the globe, we are experiencing a return to growth for our domestic and international C&I products.

The further extent of the impact of COVID-19 on our business is dependent on future developments, including the duration of the pandemic, our ability to continue to operate during the pandemic, actions taken by domestic and foreign governments to contain the spread of the virus, and the related length of its impact on the global economy and our customers. Refer to the COVID-19 related risk factor disclosed in "Item 1A. Risk Factors" of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.

Effect of commodity, currency, component price fluctuations, and resource availability.    Industry-wide price fluctuations of key commodities, such as steel, copper and aluminum, along with other components we use in our products, as well as changes in labor costs required to produce our products, can have a material impact on our results of operations. Acquisitions in recent years have increased our use of advanced electronics components and battery cells, as well as further expanded our commercial and operational presence outside of the United States. These international acquisitions, along with our existing global supply chain, expose us to fluctuations in foreign currency exchange rates and regulatory tariffs that can also have a material impact on our results of operations. Additionally, specifically in 2021, there continue to be significant raw material and other cost pressures, ongoing logistics challenges, and various supply chain constraints, which are resulting in higher input costs and delays for certain of our products that are reducing our margins. In 2021, we have implemented multiple price increases throughout the year to help mitigate the impact of rising costs. However, the full impact of these price increases will not be realized until 2022 as the higher pricing works through backlog.

We have historically attempted to mitigate the impact of any inflationary pressures through improved product design and sourcing, manufacturing efficiencies, price increases and select hedging transactions. Our results are also influenced by changes in fuel prices in the form of freight rates, which in some cases are accepted by our customers and in other cases are paid by us.

Seasonality.    Although there is demand for our products throughout the year, in each of the past five years, approximately 19% to 22% of our net sales occurred in the first quarter, 22% to 25% in the second quarter, 25% to 28% in the third quarter and 27% to 31% in the fourth quarter, with different seasonality depending primarily on the occurrence, timing and severity of major power outage activity in each year. Major outage activity is unpredictable by nature and, as a result, our sales levels and profitability may fluctuate from period to period. The seasonality experienced during a major power outage, and for the subsequent quarters following the event, will vary relative to other periods where no major outage events occurred. 

Elevated power outage activity and the emergence of the "Home as a Sanctuary" trend driven by the COVID-19 pandemic led to a significant increase in demand for home standby generators.  This increased demand has resulted in extended lead times for these products as of December 31, 2021, and as a result, our net sales during 2022 are expected to experience an increasing trend on a quarterly basis as we increase our production capacity for home standby generators throughout the year.  

Factors influencing interest expense.    Interest expense can be impacted by a variety of factors, including market fluctuations in LIBOR, interest rate election periods, interest rate swap agreements, repayments or borrowings of indebtedness, and amendments to our credit agreements. In connection with our term loan amendment, in December 2019, language was added to the agreement to include a benchmark replacement rate, selected by the administrative agent and the borrower, as a replacement to LIBOR that would take affect at the time LIBOR ceases. Additionally, as part of our ABL Facility amendment in May 2021, language was added to the ABL Facility agreement to include a benchmark replacement rate, selected by the administrative agent and the borrower, as a replacement to LIBOR that would take affect at the time LIBOR ceases. Interest expense slightly decreased during 2021 compared to 2020, primarily due to lower LIBOR rates partially offset by increased borrowings on our ABL Facility. Refer to Note 12, “Credit Agreements,” to the consolidated financial statements in Item 8 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K for further information.

Factors influencing provision for income taxes and cash income taxes paid.    On December 22, 2017, the U.S. government enacted the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which significantly changed how the U.S. taxes corporations. Since enactment, the U.S. Treasury Department (Treasury) issued several new regulations and other guidance which we have incorporated into our final tax calculations. 

As of December 31, 2021, the tax-deductible goodwill and intangible assets amortization from our acquisition by CCMP Capital Advisors, LLC in 2006 were fully amortized. As a result, beginning in 2022, this tax amortization will no longer exist, resulting in a higher cash tax obligation on a go-forward basis.

Components of Net Sales and Expenses

Net Sales

Our net sales primarily consist of product sales to our customers. This includes sales of our power generation equipment, energy storage systems, and other power products to the residential, commercial and industrial markets, as well as service parts to our dealer network. Net sales also include shipping and handling charges billed to customers, with the related freight costs included in cost of goods sold. Additionally, we offer other services, including extended warranties, remote monitoring, grid optimization, installation and maintenance services. These services accounted for less than two percent of our net sales for the year ended December 31, 2021. Refer to Note 2, “Summary of Accounting Policies - Revenue Recognition,” to the consolidated financial statements in Item 8 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K for further information on our revenue streams and related revenue recognition accounting policies.

We are not dependent on any one channel or customer for our net sales, with no single customer representing more than 6% of our sales, and our top ten customers representing less than 23% of our net sales for the year ended December 31, 2021.

Costs of Goods Sold

The principal elements of costs of goods sold are component parts, raw materials, freight, factory overhead and labor. Component parts and raw materials comprised approximately 74% of costs of goods sold for the year ended December 31, 2021. The principal component parts are engines, alternators, batteries, electronic controls, and steel enclosures. We design and manufacture air-cooled engines for certain of our generators up to 26kW, along with certain liquid-cooled, natural gas engines. We source engines for certain of our smaller products and all of our diesel products. For certain natural gas engines, we source the base engine block, and then add a significant amount of value engineering, sub-systems and other content to the point that we are recognized as the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) of those engines. We design and manufacture many of the alternators for our units. We also manufacture other generator components where we believe we have a design and cost advantage. We source component parts from an extensive global network of reliable, high quality suppliers. In some cases, these relationships are proprietary.

The principal raw materials used in the manufacturing process that are sourced are steel, copper and aluminum. We are susceptible to fluctuations in the cost of these commodities, impacting our costs of goods sold. We seek to mitigate the impact of commodity prices on our business through a continued focus on global sourcing, product design improvements, manufacturing efficiencies, price increases and select hedging transactions. We are also impacted by foreign currency fluctuations given our global supply chain. There is typically a lag between raw material price fluctuations and their effect on our costs of goods sold.

In 2021, we have seen a significant increase in commodity costs. We have implemented multiple price increases throughout 2021 to help mitigate the impact of these rising commodity costs. However, the full impact of these price increases will not be realized until 2022 as the higher pricing works through backlog.

Other sources of costs include our manufacturing and warehousing facilities, factory overhead, labor and shipping costs. Factory overhead includes utilities, insurance, support personnel, depreciation, general supplies, and maintenance. Although we attempt to maintain a flexible manufacturing cost structure, our margins can be impacted when we cannot timely adjust labor and manufacturing costs to match fluctuations in net sales.

Operating Expenses

Our operating expenses consist of costs incurred to support our sales, marketing, distribution, service parts, warranty, engineering, information systems, human resources, accounting, finance, risk management, legal and tax functions, among others. These expenses include personnel costs such as salaries, bonuses, employee benefit costs, payroll taxes, and share-based compensation cost, and are classified into three categories: selling and service, research and development, and general and administrative. Additionally, the amortization expense related to our finite-lived intangible assets is included within operating expenses as well as acquisition related costs.

Selling and service.    Our selling and service expenses consist primarily of personnel expense, marketing expense, standard assurance warranty expense and other sales expenses. Our personnel expense recorded in selling and services expenses includes the expense of our sales force responsible for our broad customer base and other personnel involved in the marketing, sales and service of our products. Standard warranty expense, which is recorded at the time of sale, is estimated based on historical trends. Our marketing expenses include media advertising, promotional expenses, co-op advertising costs, direct mail costs, printed material costs, product display costs, market research expenses, and trade show expenses. Marketing expenses are generally related to the launch of new product offerings, opportunities to create market awareness for our products, and general brand awareness marketing efforts.

Research and development.    Our research and development expenses include mechanical engineering, electronics engineering, and software development costs and they support numerous projects covering all of our product lines. They also support our connectivity, grid services, remote monitoring, and energy management initiatives. We operate engineering facilities with extensive capabilities at many locations globally and employ over 1,000 personnel with focus on new product development, existing product improvement and cost containment. We are committed to research and development, and rely on a combination of patents and trademarks to establish and protect our proprietary rights. Our research and development costs are expensed as incurred.

General and administrative.    Our general and administrative expenses include personnel costs for general and administrative employees; accounting, legal and professional services fees; information technology costs; insurance; travel and entertainment expense; and other corporate expenses.

Acquisition related costs.    Acquisition related costs are external costs incurred to effect a business combination including legal fees, professional and advisory services, stamp tax, and insurance premiums.

Amortization of intangibles.    Our amortization of intangibles expense includes the straight-line amortization of finite-lived tradenames, customer lists, patents and technology, and other intangibles assets.

Other (Expense) Income

Other (expense) income includes the interest expense on our outstanding borrowings, amortization of debt financing costs and original issue discount, and cash flows related to interest rate swap agreements. Other (expense) income also includes other financial items such as losses on extinguishment of debt, loss on pension settlement, investment income earned on our cash and cash equivalents, and gains/losses on the sale of certain investments.

Results of Operations

A detailed discussion of the year-over-year changes from the Company's fiscal 2019 to fiscal 2020 can be found in the Management's Discussion and Analysis section of the Company's fiscal 2020 Annual Report on Form 10-K filed February 23, 2021. 

Year ended December 31, 2021 compared to year ended December 31, 2020

The following table sets forth our consolidated statement of operations data for the periods indicated:

The following sets forth our reportable segment information for the periods indicated:

The following table sets forth our net sales by product class for the periods indicated:

Net sales.    The increase in Domestic segment sales for the year ended December 31, 2021 was primarily driven by strong growth in shipments of residential products highlighted by home standby generators. In addition, PWRcell^TM energy storage systems experienced very robust growth as the Company continues to expand in the clean energy market. This was supplemented by a return to growth for C&I products which was led by a substantial increase in shipments for telecom national account customers and C&I mobile products compared to the prior year.

The increase in International segment sales for the year ended December 31, 2021 was due to a broad-based increase in market activity primarily in the European and Latin American regions that are seeing a sharp increase in demand as end markets recover from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, the impact of acquisitions and foreign currency added $68.5 million of revenue growth.

Total contribution from non-annualized acquisitions for the year ended December 31, 2021 was $94.9 million.

Gross profit.    Gross profit margin for the year ended December 31, 2021 was 36.4% compared to 38.5% for the year ended December 31, 2020. The gross profit margin decrease was primarily driven by higher input costs due to rising commodity prices, labor, logistics and plant start-up costs, which were partially offset by the early benefits of pricing actions implemented throughout the year and favorable sales mix from higher shipments of home standby generators.

Operating expenses.    Operating expenses increased $160.4 million, or 33.5%, as compared to the prior year. The increase was primarily driven by additional variable expenses from the significant increase in sales volumes, higher employee and marketing costs, and the impact of acquisitions and related transaction costs.

Other expense.    The decrease in Other expense, net was driven by a $4.4 million gain recorded on the sale of certain long-term investments. 

Provision for income taxes.    The effective income tax rates for the years ended December 31, 2021 and 2020 were 19.5% and 22.2%, respectively. The decrease in the effective tax rate was primarily due to larger deductions related to net stock compensation and net deductible acquisition transaction expenses partially offset by a discrete tax item created by a legislative tax rate change in a foreign jurisdiction which revalued certain deferred tax liabilities. 

Net income attributable to Generac Holdings Inc.    Net income attributable to Generac Holdings Inc. was $550.5 million as compared to $350.6 million in the prior year period. The increase was primarily driven by increased sales volumes and other items noted above.

Adjusted EBITDA.    Adjusted EBITDA is defined and reconciled to net income in, "Non-GAAP Measures - Adjusted EBITDA" included below in Item 7 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K. Adjusted EBITDA margins for the Domestic segment for the year ended December 31, 2021 were 25.1% of net sales as compared to 27.0% of net sales for the year ended December 31, 2020. The Adjusted EBITDA margin decrease was driven by higher input costs due to rising commodity prices, labor, logistics, and plant start-up costs in the current year, which were partially offset by favorable sales mix, the early benefits of pricing actions, and improved operating leverage from the substantial revenue growth for the segment. 

Adjusted EBITDA margins for the International segment, before deducting for non-controlling interests, for the year ended December 31, 2021 were 11.5% of net sales as compared to 5.1% of net sales for the year ended December 31, 2020. The margin improvement was primarily due to the positive impact of recent acquisitions, favorable sales mix, improved operating leverage, and pricing actions. 

Adjusted net income.    Adjusted Net Income is defined and reconciled to net income in, "Non-GAAP Measures - Adjusted Net Income" included below in Item 7 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K. Adjusted Net Income of $618.9 million for the year ended December 31, 2021 increased 50.2% from $412.2 million for the year ended December 31, 2020, due to the factors outlined above and higher cash income tax expense in the current year period.

Liquidity and Financial Position

Our primary cash requirements include payment for our raw materials and components, salaries & benefits, facility and lease costs, operating expenses, interest and principal payments on our debt and capital expenditures. We finance our operations primarily through cash flow generated from operations and, if necessary, borrowings under our ABL credit facility (ABL Facility).

Our credit agreements originally provided for a $1.2 billion term loan B credit facility (Term Loan) and include a $300.0 million uncommitted incremental term loan facility. As of December 31, 2021, there was $780 million outstanding under the Term Loan. The Term Loan matures on December 13, 2026 and bears interest at rates based upon either a base rate plus an applicable margin of 0.75% or adjusted LIBOR rate plus an applicable margin of 1.75%. The Term Loan does not require an Excess Cash Flow payment (as defined in our credit agreement) if our secured leverage ratio is maintained below 3.75 to 1.00 times. As of December 31, 2021, our secured leverage ratio was 0.88 to 1.00 times, and we were in compliance with all covenants of the Term Loan. There are no financial maintenance covenants on the Term Loan.

Our credit agreements also provide for a $500.0 million ABL Facility, which matures on May 27, 2026 and bears interest at rates based upon either a base rate plus an applicable margin of 0.00% to 0.25% or adjusted LIBOR rate plus an applicable margin of 1.00% to 1.25%, in each case, based on average availability under the ABL Facility. As of December 31, 2021, there was $100 million outstanding under the ABL Facility, leaving $399.5 million of availability, net of outstanding letters of credit. We were in compliance with all covenants of the ABL Facility as of December 31, 2021.

As of December 31, 2021, we had $546.8 million of available liquidity comprised of $147.3 million of cash and cash equivalents and $399.5 million available under our ABL Facility. We have no maturities on our Term Loan and ABL Facility until 2026. We believe we have a strong liquidity position that allows us to execute our strategic plan and provides the flexibility to continue to invest in future growth opportunities. 

In September 2018, our Board of Directors approved a $250.0 million stock repurchase program, which expired in October 2020. In September 2020, the Board of Directors approved another $250 million stock repurchase program, which commenced on October 27, 2020. During the year ended December 31, 2021, the Company repurchased 350,000 shares of its common stock for $126.0 million, all funded with cash on hand. Since the inception of all stock repurchase programs (starting in August 2015), the Company has repurchased 9,026,706 shares of its common stock for $431.5 million (at an average cost per share of $47.81), all funded with cash on hand.

We have an arrangement with a finance company to provide floor plan financing for selected dealers. This arrangement provides liquidity for our dealers by financing dealer purchases of products with credit availability from the finance company. We receive payment from the finance company after shipment of product to the dealer, and our dealers are given a longer period of time to pay the finance company. If our dealers do not pay the finance company, we may be required to repurchase the applicable inventory held by the dealer. We do not indemnify the finance company for any credit losses they may incur.

Total dealer purchases financed under this arrangement accounted for approximately 12% of net sales for the years ended December 31, 2021 and 2020. The amount financed by dealers which remained outstanding was $115.9 million and $55.6 million as of December 31, 2021 and 2020, respectively.

Long-term Liquidity

We believe that our cash and cash equivalents, cash flow from operations, and availability under our ABL Facility and other short-term lines of credit will provide us with sufficient capital to continue to grow our business in the future. We may use a portion of our cash flow to pay principal on our outstanding debt, as well as repurchase shares of our common stock, impacting the amount available for working capital, capital expenditures, acquisitions, and other general corporate purposes. As we continue to expand our business, we may require additional capital to fund working capital, capital expenditures or acquisitions.

Cash Flow

Year ended December 31, 2021 compared to year ended December 31, 2020

The following table summarizes our cash flows by category for the periods presented:

The decrease in net cash provided by operating activities was primarily due to increased working capital investment and higher income taxes paid in the current year, partially offset by higher sales volumes and resulting higher operating earnings in the current year. The higher working capital investment was primarily driven by further elevated inventory levels at the end of the year resulting from extended logistics in-transit times, ongoing supply chain constraints, increasing production rates and continued investments in the ramping of our new manufacturing facility in Trenton, SC.

Net cash used in investing activities for the year ended December 31, 2021 primarily consisted of cash payments of $713.5 million related to the acquisition of businesses and $110.0 million for the purchase of property and equipment, which were partially offset by cash proceeds on sale of an investment of $5.0 million. Net cash used in investing activities for the year ended December 31, 2020 primarily consisted of cash payments of $64.8 million related to the acquisition of businesses and $62.1 million for the purchase of property and equipment.

Net cash used in financing activities for the year ended December 31, 2021 primarily consisted of $347.7 million of debt repayments ($239.1 million of short-term borrowings and $108.6 million of long-term borrowings), $126.0 million of stock repurchases, $58.9 million of taxes paid related to equity awards, $27.2 million as a purchase of additional ownership interest of PR Industrial S.r.l. and its subsidiaries (Pramac), and $3.8 million of contingent consideration for acquired businesses. These payments were partially offset by $272.8 million cash proceeds from short-term borrowings, $150.1 million cash proceeds from long-term borrowings and $38.8 million of proceeds from the exercise of stock options.

Net cash used in financing activities for the year ended December 31, 2020 primarily consisted of $282.5 million of debt repayments ($277.7 million of short-term borrowings and $4.8 million of long-term borrowings), $14.9 million of taxes paid related to equity awards, and $4.0 million of contingent consideration for acquired businesses. These payments were partially offset by $257.9 million of cash proceeds from borrowings ($257.6 million from short-term borrowings and $0.3 million from long-term borrowings) and $13.1 million of proceeds from the exercise of stock options.

Senior Secured Credit Facilities

Refer to Note 12, “Credit Agreements,” to the consolidated financial statements in Item 8 and the “Liquidity and Financial Position” section included in Item 7 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K for information on our senior secured credit facilities.

Covenant Compliance

The Term Loan contains restrictions on the Company’s ability to pay distributions and dividends. Payments can be made to the Company or other parent companies for certain expenses such as operating expenses in the ordinary course, fees and expenses related to any debt or equity offering and to pay franchise or similar taxes. Dividends can be used to repurchase equity interests, subject to limitations in certain circumstances. The Term Loan restricts the aggregate amount of dividends and distributions that can be paid and, in certain circumstances, requires pro forma compliance with certain fixed charge coverage ratios or gross leverage ratios, as applicable, in order to pay certain dividends and distributions. The Term Loan also contains other affirmative and negative covenants that, among other things, limit the incurrence of additional indebtedness, liens on property, sale and leaseback transactions, investments, loans and advances, mergers or consolidations, asset sales, acquisitions, transactions with affiliates, prepayments of certain other indebtedness and modifications of our organizational documents. The Term Loan does not contain any financial maintenance covenants.

The Term Loan contains customary events of default, including, among others, nonpayment of principal, interest or other amounts, failure to perform covenants, inaccuracy of representations or warranties in any material respect, cross-defaults with other material indebtedness, certain undischarged judgments, the occurrence of certain ERISA, bankruptcy or insolvency events, or the occurrence of a change in control (as defined in the Term Loan). A bankruptcy or insolvency event of default will cause the obligations under the Term Loan to automatically become immediately due and payable.

The ABL Facility also contains covenants and events of default substantially similar to those in the Term Loan, as described above. 

Contractual Obligations

The following table summarizes our expected payments for significant contractual obligations as of December 31, 2021, using the interest rates in effect as of that date:

(1) The Term Loan matures on December 13, 2026. The ABL Facility provides for a $500.0 million senior secured ABL revolving credit facility, which matures on May 27, 2026. As of December 31, 2021, there was $100 million outstanding under the ABL Facility classified as long-term debt. 

(2) Short-term borrowings consist of borrowings by our foreign subsidiaries on local lines of credit. 

Capital Expenditures

Our operations require capital expenditures for facilities and related improvements, technology, research & development, tooling, equipment, capacity expansion, IT systems & infrastructure and upgrades. Specifically, capital expenditures in 2021 included the addition of the Trenton, South Carolina, manufacturing facility. Capital expenditures were $110.0 million, $62.1 million, and $60.8 million for the years ended December 31, 2021, 2020 and 2019, respectively, and were funded through cash from operations. 

Critical Accounting Policies

In preparing the financial statements in accordance with U.S. GAAP, management is required to make estimates and assumptions that have an impact on the asset, liability, revenue and expense amounts reported. These estimates can also affect our supplemental information disclosures, including information about contingencies, risk and financial condition. We believe, given current facts and circumstances, that our estimates and assumptions are reasonable, adhere to U.S. GAAP, and are consistently applied. Inherent in the nature of an estimate or assumption is the fact that actual results may differ from estimates and estimates may vary as new facts and circumstances arise. We make routine estimates and judgments in determining net realizable value of accounts receivable, inventories, property and equipment, prepaid expenses, product warranties and other reserves. Management believes our most critical accounting estimates and assumptions are in the following areas: goodwill and other indefinite-lived intangible asset impairment assessment; business combinations and purchase accounting; and income taxes.

Business Combinations and Purchase Accounting

We account for business combinations using the acquisition method of accounting, and accordingly, the assets and liabilities of the acquired business are recorded at their respective fair values. The excess of the purchase price over the estimated fair value of assets and liabilities is recorded as goodwill. Assigning fair market values to the assets acquired and liabilities assumed at the date of an acquisition requires knowledge of current market values, the values of assets in use, and often requires the application of judgment regarding estimates and assumptions. While the ultimate responsibility resides with management, for material acquisitions we retain the services of certified valuation specialists to assist with assigning estimated values to certain acquired assets and assumed liabilities, including intangible assets, tangible long-lived assets, and contingent consideration. Acquired intangible assets, excluding goodwill, are valued using certain discounted cash flow methodologies based on future cash flows specific to the type of intangible asset purchased. This methodology incorporates various estimates and assumptions, the most significant being projected revenue growth rates, profit margins, forecasted cash flows, discount rates and terminal growth rates. The initial measurement of contingent consideration and the corresponding liability is evaluated using the Monte Carlo Method. For this valuation method, management develops projections during the earn-out period utilizing various potential pay-out scenarios. Probabilities are applied to each potential scenario and the resulting values are discounted using a rate that considers weighted average cost of capital as well as a specific risk premium associated with the riskiness of the earn-out itself, the related projections, and the overall business. Refer to Note 1, “Description of Business,” and Note 3, "Acquisitions," to the consolidated financial statements in Item 8 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K for further information on the Company’s business acquisitions.

Goodwill and Other Indefinite-Lived Intangible Assets

Refer to Note 2, “Summary of Accounting Policies – Goodwill and Other Indefinite-Lived Intangible Assets,” to the consolidated financial statements in Item 8 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K for further information on the Company’s policy regarding the accounting for goodwill and other intangible assets. The Company performed the required annual impairment tests for goodwill and other indefinite-lived intangible assets for the fiscal years 2021, 2020 and 2019, and found no impairment.

When preparing a discounted cash flow analysis for purposes of our annual impairment test, we make a number of key estimates and assumptions. We estimate the future cash flows of the business based on historical and forecasted revenues and operating costs. This, in turn, involves further estimates, such as estimates of future growth rates and inflation rates. In addition, we apply a discount rate to the estimated future cash flows for the purpose of the valuation. This discount rate is based on the estimated weighted average cost of capital for the business and may change from year to year. Weighted average cost of capital includes certain assumptions such as market capital structures, market betas, risk-free rate of return and estimated costs of borrowing.

In our October 31, 2021 impairment test calculation, the Latin America reporting unit had an estimated fair value that exceeded its carrying value by approximately 23%. 

The carrying value of the Latin America goodwill was $45.7 million. Key financial assumptions utilized to determine the fair value of the reporting unit include revenue growth levels that reflect the impact of increasing Telecom production for the U.S. market, improving profit margins, a 3% terminal growth rate and an 11.4% discount rate. The reporting unit’s fair value would approximate its carrying value with a 175 basis point increase in the discount rate or a 150 basis point reduction in the average earnings margin and 100 basis point reduction in the terminal growth rate. 

As noted above, a considerable amount of management judgment and assumptions are required in performing the goodwill and indefinite-lived intangible asset impairment tests. While we believe our judgments and assumptions are reasonable, different assumptions could change the estimated fair values. A number of factors, many of which we have no ability to control, could cause actual results to differ from the estimates and assumptions we employed. These factors include:

If management's estimates of future operating results change or if there are changes to other assumptions due to these factors, the estimate of the fair values may change significantly. Such change could result in impairment charges in future periods, which could have a significant impact on our operating results and financial condition.

Income Taxes

We account for income taxes in accordance with Accounting Standards Codification (ASC) 740, Income Taxes. Our estimate of income taxes payable, deferred income taxes and the effective tax rate is based on an analysis of many factors including interpretations of federal, state and international income tax laws; the difference between tax and financial reporting bases of assets and liabilities; estimates of amounts currently due or owed in various jurisdictions; and current accounting standards. We review and update our estimates on a quarterly basis as facts and circumstances change and actual results are known.

In assessing the realizability of the deferred tax assets on our balance sheet, we consider whether it is more likely than not that some portion or all of the deferred tax assets will not be realized. The ultimate realization of deferred tax assets is dependent upon the generation of future taxable income during the years in which those temporary differences become deductible. We consider the taxable income in prior carryback years, scheduled reversal of deferred tax liabilities, projected future taxable income and tax planning strategies in making this assessment.

Refer to Note 15, “Income Taxes,” to the consolidated financial statements in Item 8 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K for further information on the Company’s income taxes and income tax positions.

New Accounting Standards

For information with respect to new accounting pronouncements and the impact of these pronouncements on our consolidated financial statements, refer to Note 2, “Summary of Accounting Policies - New Accounting Pronouncements,” to the consolidated financial statements in Item 8 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.

Non-GAAP Measures

Adjusted EBITDA

We view Adjusted EBITDA as a key measure of our performance. We present Adjusted EBITDA not only due to its importance for purposes of our credit agreements, but also because it assists us in comparing our performance across reporting periods on a consistent basis as it excludes items that we do not believe are indicative of our core operating performance. Our management uses Adjusted EBITDA:

We believe Adjusted EBITDA is used by securities analysts, investors and other interested parties in the evaluation of the Company. Management believes the disclosure of Adjusted EBITDA offers an additional financial metric that, when coupled with results prepared in accordance with U.S. generally accepted accounting principles (U.S. GAAP) and the reconciliation to U.S. GAAP results, provides a more complete understanding of our results of operations and the factors and trends affecting our business. We believe Adjusted EBITDA is useful to investors for the following reasons:

The adjustments included in the reconciliation table listed below are provided for under our Term Loan and ABL Facility, and also are presented to illustrate the operating performance of our business in a manner consistent with the presentation used by our management and Board of Directors. These adjustments eliminate the impact of a number of items that:

We explain in more detail in footnotes (a) through (f) below why we believe these adjustments are useful in calculating Adjusted EBITDA as a measure of our operating performance.

Adjusted EBITDA does not represent, and should not be a substitute for, net income or cash flows from operations as determined in accordance with U.S. GAAP. Adjusted EBITDA has limitations as an analytical tool, and you should not consider it in isolation, or as a substitute for analysis of our results as reported under U.S. GAAP. Some of the limitations are:

Furthermore, as noted above, one of our uses of Adjusted EBITDA is as a benchmark for determining elements of compensation for our senior executives. At the same time, some or all of these senior executives have responsibility for monitoring our financial results, generally including the adjustments in calculating Adjusted EBITDA (subject ultimately to review by our Board of Directors in the context of the Board's review of our financial statements). While many of the adjustments (for example, transaction costs and credit facility fees), involve mathematical application of items reflected in our financial statements, others involve a degree of judgment and discretion. While we believe all of these adjustments are appropriate, and while the calculations are subject to review by our Board of Directors in the context of the Board's review of our financial statements, and certification by our Chief Financial Officer in a compliance certificate provided to the lenders under our Term Loan and ABL Facility, this discretion may be viewed as an additional limitation on the use of Adjusted EBITDA as an analytical tool.

Because of these limitations, Adjusted EBITDA should not be considered as a measure of discretionary cash available to us to invest in the growth of our business. We compensate for these limitations by relying primarily on our U.S. GAAP results and using Adjusted EBITDA only supplementally.

The following table presents a reconciliation of net income to Adjusted EBITDA attributable to Generac Holdings Inc.:

(a) Represents the following non-cash adjustments: gains/losses on disposals of assets and gains on certain investments, unrealized mark-to-market adjustments on commodity contracts, and certain foreign currency and purchase accounting related adjustments. We believe that adjusting net income for these non-cash items is useful for the following reasons:

(b) Represents share-based compensation expense to account for stock options, restricted stock and other stock awards over their respective vesting period.

(c) Represents the non-cash write-off of original issue discount and deferred financing costs due to voluntary prepayments of Term Loan debt. Refer to Note 12, “Credit Agreements,” to the consolidated financial statements in Item 8 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K for further information on the losses on extinguishment of debt.

(d) Represents pre-tax settlement charges related to the termination of the Company’s domestic pension plan in the fourth quarter of 2019. Refer to Note 16, “Benefit Plans,” to the consolidated financial statements in Item 8 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K for further information regarding the Company’s pension plans.

(e) Represents transaction costs incurred directly in connection with any investment (including business acquisitions), as defined in our credit agreement, equity issuance, or debt issuance or refinancing, together with certain fees relating to our senior secured credit facilities, such as administrative agent fees and credit facility commitment fees under our Term Loan and ABL Facility, which we believe to be akin to, or associated with, interest expense and whose inclusion in Adjusted EBITDA is therefore similar to the inclusion of interest expense in that calculation.

(f) For the year-ended December 31, 2020, represents severance, non-cash asset write-downs and other charges to address the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and decline in oil prices on demand for C&I products. These charges represent expenses that are nonrecurring and do not reflect our ongoing operations.

Adjusted Net Income

To further supplement our consolidated financial statements in accordance with U.S. GAAP, we provide the computation of Adjusted Net Income attributable to the Company, which is defined as net income before noncontrolling interest and provision for income taxes adjusted for the following items: cash income tax expense, amortization of intangible assets, amortization of deferred financing costs and original issue discount related to our debt, intangible impairment charges, certain transaction costs and other purchase accounting adjustments, losses on extinguishment of debt, business optimization expenses, certain other non-cash gains and losses, and adjusted net income attributable to noncontrolling interests, as set forth in the reconciliation table below. 

We believe Adjusted Net Income is used by securities analysts, investors and other interested parties in the evaluation of our company’s operations. Management believes the disclosure of Adjusted Net Income offers an additional financial metric that, when used in conjunction with U.S. GAAP results and the reconciliation to U.S. GAAP results, provides a more complete understanding of our ongoing results of operations, and the factors and trends affecting our business.

The adjustments included in the reconciliation table listed below are presented to illustrate the operating performance of our business in a manner consistent with the presentation used by investors and securities analysts. Similar to the Adjusted EBITDA reconciliation, these adjustments eliminate the impact of a number of items we do not consider indicative of our ongoing operating performance or cash flows, such as amortization costs, transaction costs and write-offs relating to the retirement of debt. We also make adjustments to present cash taxes paid as a result of our favorable tax attributes, causing our cash tax rate to be lower than our U.S GAAP tax rate.

Similar to Adjusted EBITDA, Adjusted Net Income does not represent, and should not be a substitute for, net income or cash flows from operations as determined in accordance with U.S. GAAP. Adjusted Net Income has limitations as an analytical tool, and you should not consider it in isolation, or as a substitute for analysis of our results as reported under U.S. GAAP. Some of the limitations are:

The following table presents a reconciliation of net income to Adjusted Net Income attributable to Generac Holdings Inc.: