This conference call transcript was computer generated and almost certianly contains errors. This transcript is provided for information purposes only.EarningsCall, LLC makes no representation about the accuracy of the aforementioned transcript, and you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the information provided by the transcript.
spk14: Good day and thank you for standing by and welcome to App Harvest Q4 2022 earnings conference call. At this time, our participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there'll be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you'll need to press star 1 1 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand has been raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 1 1 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Travis Parman, Chief Communications Officer. Please go ahead.
spk13: Thank you for joining us on the App Harvest fourth quarter 2022 and full year 2022 earnings call. I'm Travis Parman, Chief Communications Officer for App Harvest. Joining me today are several members of the senior management team, including Jonathan Webb, founder and CEO, Tony Martin, Chief Operating Officer and Board Member, and Lauren Eggleton, Chief Financial Officer. The earnings release is available on our investor website at investors.appharvest.com. On today's call, we'll begin with prepared remarks from the team. Then we'll open the call to questions. Before we start, I'd like to remind you that comments today regarding the company's future business plans, prospects, and financial performance are forward-looking statements that we make pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the securities laws. These statements are made based on management's current knowledge and assumptions about future events, and they involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from our expectations. In providing projections and other forward-looking statements, the company disclaims any intent or obligation to update them. For more information on important factors that could affect these expectations, please see our most recent SEC filings. And now, I'd like to turn the call over to Jonathan.
spk16: Thanks, Travis. In 2022, the AppHarvest team delivered on our commitment to quadruple the AppHarvest farm network now totaling 165 acres under glass in what we believe is the largest simultaneous build-out of controlled environment agriculture infrastructure in U.S. history. App Harvest has become one of the top three U.S. CEA operators by acreage, along with our distribution partner, Mastronardi Produce, and our new chief operating officer's former employer, Winsett Farm. In 2022, we also succeeded in diversifying our crop portfolio to include strawberries, salad greens, and more varietals of tomatoes, and now we've added cucumbers too. We expect this diversification to support stability in our sales. While there may be price volatility on one varietal or commodity, we believe we are unlikely to see it in whole categories or across multiple varieties. It also allows us opportunities to choose when or where to grow more lucrative produce mixes. Going forward, we expect to further diversify our portfolio with peppers and more varietals of existing crops. And we've already done this at our flagship 60-acre high-tech indoor farm in Moorhead, Kentucky. Currently, in its third harvesting season, we've added new varietals of premium snacking tomatoes sold under the Sunset brand as flavor bombs and sugar bombs. The new CEA facilities in App Harvest Farm Network are the 15-acre salad green facility in Berea, Kentucky, believed to be the world's largest high-tech indoor farm for autonomously harvested salad greens featuring a touchless growing system. It supplies the Queen of Greens brand washed and ready-to-eat salad. App Harvest Somerset is a 30-acre strawberry farm supplying multiple brands from Astronarty, including Wow Berries. Somerset also will grow Long English cucumbers during the annual summer refresh for strawberries. App Harvest Richmond is our second 60-acre tomato farm. The first 30 acres were planted in late 2022, and the initial harvest was this January. We expect to plant the second 30 acres later this year. Combined with Moorhead, we expect to grow nearly 1.5 million tomato plants across the combined 120 acres. I want to thank the entire App Harvest team for their hard work and perseverance in accomplishing this milestone. A build-out of this size is challenging as is, and we were able to bring three new farms into operation by year-end 2022 despite headwinds such as COVID-19 and ongoing supply chain challenges. In addition to this achievement, we also realized a 60% increase in net sales over the prior year with fiscal year 2022 net sales of 14.6 million. The addition of new sales of higher priced tomato varietals, strawberries, and salad greens in the fourth quarter, as well as higher market prices for tomatoes, helped drive this increase. Our business is now at an inflection point as we move from construction and development phase to one focused on maximizing production and operational efficiency. This January marked the first time that all four facilities in the App Harvest Farm network were shipping commercially to top national grocery store chains, restaurants, and food service outlets. For fiscal year 2023, we expect our new COO, Tony Martin, with his extensive CEA experience, to help accelerate our path to profitability. Tony is working to optimize production, revenue, and cost across our four farm network and has rolled out a strategic plan across all operations to focus the team on profitability. I'll now turn it over to Tony to share more details on our business strategy. Tony?
spk07: Thank you, Jonathan. Good afternoon. Some recent media coverage of the CEA sector reminds me of the quote attributed to the great Mark Twain, reports of my death are greatly exaggerated. It's true that inflationary factors, particularly those around energy costs, are challenging a number of players in the industry who struggle to compete, in part due to a lack of scale. However, there is still a strong rationale for cost-efficient CEA and sustainably grown domestic produce. The USA has become heavily reliant on imported fruits and vegetables. According to the USDA, nearly two-thirds of the fresh fruits and vegetables are imported. It's estimated that 20,000 additional CEA acres are needed in the U.S. just to displace the current volume of vine crops imports from Mexico. Consumers are demanding healthy, great-tasting, sustainable products. And increasingly, those customers are concerned about where their food comes from and its effects production has on people and the planet. These factors are driving growth. Major food retailers increasingly are interested in CEA for the reliability it offers in terms of quantity and quality that's based on its climate resilient, more sustainable, year-round growing approach. and it uses far fewer resources than traditional open-field farming. CEA produce often can be picked, packed, shipped, and on a store shelf within 24 hours, compared to 10 days or longer with imported product. That means longer shelf life and less waste for the retail seller. That translates into higher margins. Benefits also accrue to the end consumer with better quality and longer lasting product. Estimates for the period from 2022 to 2026 show more than 2.2 billion dollar opportunity for CEA grown products. We believe the app harvest model is sustainable both from an environmental and social impact perspective. Vertical farming relies on electrical lighting and municipal water. Contrasted with our approach that leverages sunshine and rainwater first, boosted with technology as needed to grow at scale, the advantage is clear. As the team ramps up production and works to optimize efficiency across the farm network, We follow a five-point strategy. We're calling this the next phase of Project New Leaf. It will focus our efforts on operations across all the farms. The first element is to leverage deeper synergies with our marketing and distribution partner, Mastronardi Produce. Mastronardi has extensive resources and experience in the CEA sector. We will collaborate with them as a true strategic partner for mutually beneficial results. The next is improving labor efficiency. We are leveraging experienced agricultural workers to drive efficiency. We are strategically deploying them to help supplement the work and to train local crop care specialists and packhouse team members. We are implementing a new incentive program at the farms to drive productivity. This includes training, quality assurance, performance measurement, and performance management components. Improving enterprise-wide feedback through clear KPIs and cross-organizational information sharing. We are implementing a new reporting format to improve efficiencies, to create more opportunity to share ideas, and to pursue best-in-class solutions across the four-farm network. This format is designed specifically for the management of farm financial performance, productivity in terms of yield, quality, and efficiency. Reporting occurs weekly with each farm team, farm general managers, and other key stakeholders comparing performance to our KPIs. We're initiating comprehensive spending reviews. The team is further scrutinizing our suppliers to determine their ROI to our core operations. As part of this assessment, we're also identifying opportunities where it makes sense to insource versus outsource and reducing third-party spend when possible. Aligning the company to milestones for a five-year strategic vision. Agriculture and crop decisions often require more than a single fiscal period. Payback periods on investment decisions may also exceed more than one year. For Project New Leaf to be successful, every team member needs to understand the full strategic vision. We must contemplate decisions over the appropriate period and the key milestones to achieve in years one through five. When producing at this massive scale, even small incremental improvements in core operations can have a huge impact. As our crop care specialists become more efficient and we test and identify which crop varietals perform best in our environment, we can become more productive. This requires fine-tuning over the course of multiple crop cycles. The expected benefit is that we greatly improve the reliability of our forecasting. And pardon the pun, we're seeing the fruits of our labor at our flagship farm in Moorhead. With two years under our belts, we're finding that ramping up to full production at Moorhead will come around the 36-month mark. Moorhead, now on its third harvest season, is performing significantly better on its KPIs. We expect that applying our learnings from Moorhead will help us reduce the curve to operational excellence at the three new farms. Based on my experience, I see tremendous opportunity for App Harvest. I believe we can leverage the state-of-the-art indoor farms to become a significant and profitable producer in an ecosystem that increasingly needs it. Now over to Lauren to review our Q4 and full year 2022 results. Thanks, Tony.
spk09: I'll start by briefly reviewing our fourth quarter and FY 2022 results, our financing, and then move to the 2023 outlook. We reported fourth quarter net sales of $4.5 million compared to net sales of $3.1 million in the fourth quarter of 2021. Going forward, we will report overall net sales by produce type rather than a metric of pounds sold. This change in reporting is driven by the diversified crop portfolio that is expected to include tomatoes, salad greens, strawberries, and cucumbers. It also helps resolve our distribution partners' concerns related to proprietary pricing information. In Q4 2022, we recorded a net loss of $93.3 million and a non-GAAP adjusted EBITDA loss of $24.1 million as we work to rapidly expand our farm network. This is compared to a prior year net loss of $88.4 million and non-GAAP adjusted EBITDA loss of $18.3 million. Following a third-party recoverability assessment, we also recorded a non-cash impairment charge of $50.1 million, which reduced the carrying value of certain long-lived assets. We achieved our previously revised guidance for full year 2022, as announced in the third quarter. We delivered net sales of $14.6 million as compared to $9.1 million for the prior year. an increase of 60% year-over-year. This increase in net sales was driven by a combination of higher market prices for tomatoes and addition of new sales of higher-priced tomato varietals, strawberries and salad greens, in the fourth quarter. Supply chain-related delays at App Harvest Berea and App Harvest Somerset affected the timing of commercial shipments from both farms, resulting in net sales at the lower end of the previously forecasted range of $14 million to $17 million. We reported a net loss of $176.6 million for 2022 compared to a loss of $166.2 million for the prior year. This increase in net loss was driven by the ramp-up of production at the three new farms. In terms of non-GAAP adjusted EBITDA loss, we achieved our revised guidance with a loss of $72 million versus a prior outlook of non-GAAP adjusted EBITDA loss in the range of $67 to $72 million. Turning now to our balance sheet and liquidity. We ended the year with cash and cash equivalents of $54.3 million. In the fourth quarter of 2022, we utilized our ATM with Callen, selling 475,600 shares, getting proceeds of approximately $932,000, leaving $97.6 million still available on the ATM facility. In February 2023, we completed our follow-on offering that raised $46 million before deducting the underwriters' discount, commissions, and estimated offering expenses. We expect to use the net proceeds from this offering for working capital and general corporate purposes as we ramp up production and sales from the four farms. Because we have focused on non-dilutive capital, this is the first public offering that we have made since going public over two years ago. Going forward, we will lean in on our past success with generating non-dilutive capital. In Q3, we secured $50 million in USDA guaranteed loans with Greater Nevada Credit Union at Harvest Somerset. And in December, we completed the $127 million sale leaseback of the Berea Farm to Mastinardi Berea LLC with an initial annual lease rate of 7.5% over 10 years. Some of the proceeds from the sale leaseback repaid the $30 million bridge loan from Mastinardi announced in Q4 and the first two years of prepaid rent at the Berea facility. We also focused on cost containment efforts to restructure the organization and to create operational efficiencies that we estimate will result in approximately $26 million in annualized savings in 2023. In terms of capital expenditures, we expect to spend approximately $60 to $65 million in 2023 to account for final project details at the Richmond, Berea, and Somerset facilities and ongoing maintenance across the four farm networks. Nearly $10 million of this CAPEX spend requirement was previously funded and should not be a reduction in balance sheet cash this year. Let me turn next to what we expect for 2023 and beyond. As Jonathan mentioned, we quadrupled our farm network in 2022 and diversified our crop portfolio to include strawberries, salad greens, and more varietals of tomatoes. In 2023, we also added cucumbers. With this significant infrastructure in place, coupled with the Project Newly strategy Tony is leading focused on operations across the farm network, we expect to nearly triple our net sales year-over-year in 2023. We believe in our ability to be self-sufficient and to generate positive operating cash flow over the longer term with our four-farm network. As we've stated in the past, we plan to expand capacity, but only after becoming profitable across the farm network and securing the required capital. Operations in the first quarter of 2023 continue to ramp up as expected. App Harvest Berea is opening on a phased approach, as previously announced, and we anticipate the third 5-acre salad greens growing area to be planted in the late first quarter of 2023. App Harvest Somerset, which grows both strawberries and cucumbers, has already planted about 45,000 Long English cucumber plants in advance of the full seasonal summer refresh for the facility. This smaller planting will allow us to calibrate packaging equipment and assess harvesting capabilities before a full planting of Long English cucumbers. Harvesting of the cucumbers is anticipated in the second quarter of 2023. With all four facilities in the App Harvest Farm Network now commercially shipping in Q1 2023 under a variety of brands for Mastinardi Produce, We expect to see significant year-over-year net sales increases throughout 2023 and even more in 2024. We anticipate FY 2023 guidance of net sales to be in the range of $40 million to $50 million. and non-GAAP adjusted EBITDA loss to be in the range of $67 million to $76 million. We are applying lessons learned at Moorhead to accelerate our path to operational excellence at each of the three new farms with the potential to achieve positive adjusted gross profit in 2024. In 2025, we expect to achieve positive adjusted EBITDA status for farm operations. With this trajectory, we believe that we may be able to achieve positive adjusted EBITDA status on a consolidated basis in 2026. In summary, AppHarvest achieved multiple key business milestones for the full year 2022 that we believe will accelerate our path to profitability. We quadrupled the App Harvest Farm Network by year end 2022, and as of January 2023, each of the facilities in the four farm network was shipping commercially. We diversified our crop portfolio to include strawberries, salad greens, and more varietals of tomatoes and added cucumbers in 2023. We expect this diversification to support stability in our sales. We achieved the lower end of our revised full-year 2022 guidance despite several headwinds. We shifted our business focus in Q1 2023 to maximizing production and operational efficiency with the rollout of the next phase of Project New Leaf, our five-point strategic plan across all operations. We remain confident in our ability to be self-sufficient and to generate positive operating cash flow over the longer term with the four-farm network. App Harvest expects to nearly triple its net sales year-over-year in 2023. With that, I'll turn it back over to our Chief Communications Officer, Travis Parman. Thank you, Lauren.
spk13: Operator, we'll now begin to take questions.
spk14: And thank you. And one moment, please. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star 11 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster.
spk10: And one moment for our first question. And our first question comes from Brian Hollander from Cowan.
spk14: Your line is now open.
spk15: Thank you. And hi, this is Jacob Henry on for Brian Holland. I am wondering how we should think about the ramp up in Moorhead as a proxy for the three new facilities. What learnings from Moorhead are you able to take into account? And is there anything about the construct of the new farms that will impact the timeline scale up either one way or the other?
spk07: So I'll answer the first part of your question and then I'll get you to repeat the second part because I had difficulty with the audio. With regards to the learnings at Moorhead, Moorhead was challenged last year with a virus in the crop that was endemic worldwide in tomato production called the tomato brown fruit rugose virus. Unfortunately, it had a dramatic effect on the production of tomatoes and the quality of tomatoes that Moore had produced. This year, through extensive hygiene protocols, starting with the acquisition of the seed, through the germination of the seed, through the introduction of the plant in the greenhouse, and a solid approach on integrated pest management, where pest management people started with the initial delivery of the crop into the greenhouse, we have been able to manage the greenhouse where we are virtually free of the virus. That's not to say we're without it. We've had 2,500 plants affected by 700,000 plants in our Moorhead facility, a feature of less than a third of a percent. And so we take those learnings and we apply them to Richmond. Richmond is free of the virus. And as a result, both in Moorhead and in Richmond, we are without economic damage or reduction in our expected results from those farms this year. Now, could I have the second part of your question?
spk15: Yeah, thank you. That was great. The second part is just about, I guess, on... the other two facilities, Berea and Somerset. Is there anything different about the construct of those farms, given they're growing different crops that will impact the timeline to ramp up the full scale?
spk07: Oh, yes, most certainly. Each crop has its unique requirement. In Berea, it's a highly technical, very advanced, touchless greenhouse. As a result, there's great integration between technology and agriculture. You know, we have to learn the management of both. I'll just give you an indication as to how we're succeeding. When we started the pack line in Berea, we processed about 400 cases in the first week. Yesterday, we did 12,000 cases. And as a result, as production increases, we're demonstrating our ability to pack it. the varieties that we grow. In the beginning, you trial certain seed types, certain lettuce types. They have a certain characteristic. As we progress, we are optimizing on the varieties we're growing and the pack types we're capable of producing. Lastly, the methods by which we pack are expanding. We now pack in four-ounce, six-ounce, eight-ounce, one-pound clam shells. We pack in one-pound three pound bags, and we're now selling to both retail and institutional clients. Our goal is that every ounce, every leaf of salad is packed and placed in premium packaging to premium clients. With regards to strawberries, strawberries grow, of course, on plants. There's a flowering and a natural cycle of strawberries. Strawberries can be grown from root stock or can be grown from plugs. The varietal that we chose was a UC Davis variety given to us by or selected for us by Mastro Nardi. It produces wonderful fruit. But strawberries can be a challenging crop. They're not free of either pests or sometimes disease. And as a result, we had to remove about seven and a half acres of strawberry production due to a broad mite that was brought in at propagation. Going forward, like the learnings we had in Moorhead, we'll test the seedlings prior to entry into the greenhouse. It's given us the opportunity to trial the equipment for cucumber production as we move through the quarter in anticipation of a volume.
spk15: Great. That's all great information. Thank you. On a different note, how should we think about modeling SG&A in 2023, mindful of where you finish the year as well as other factors like labor costs and cost improvements?
spk09: Yeah, so just in terms of general P&L timing, so as we announced today, expecting net sales of $40 to $50 million for the year. And at this time, we would expect that Q2 will be the highest sales quarter of this year, followed by Q4 and then Q1. And then lastly, Q3, which has historically been our lowest sales quarter of the year, because of the summer refresh and the buying crops. We would expect that cost of goods sold slightly more than doubles from 2022 as we increase production and create new farms. However, and to your question on SG&A, because of the restructuring actions that we took last year or throughout last year, we would also expect that SG&A should decline by nearly 40 to 50% from 2022.
spk15: Okay. Thank you. And then last one from me. Regarding the enhanced relationship with nationality that was mentioned earlier, can you provide additional color around what deeper synergies with nationality could look like?
spk16: Yeah, Brian, this is Jonathan. You know, just to kind of layer in on what Tony was saying a moment ago, we're deepening that relationship. I mean, to put it in perspective for the industry, you know, App Harvest had nothing three years ago, and now we have the second largest footprint of CEA facilities in the U.S., and the only party with a larger footprint in the U.S. is our distribution partner, Mastronardi. And then Tony's previous employer, where he was CFO at Winsett, is roughly tied with us on second. So around the table, we make up a vast majority of that production in the U.S. And so for us, it's far more than a transaction with Mastronardi. They're not just selling our product. And I think... you know, showing what the deal we announced in Berea is just a glimmer of that, which is, you know, they want to see us succeed. And in a market where, you know, interest rates are going up and, you know, capital markets are tight, you know, for us to be able to get seven and a half percent, you know, infrastructure dollars on a sale lease back at that facility shows you know, the types of conversations that are happening with Mastronardi. But yeah, Tony is taking his experience that he's executed on previously at Winsett, bringing that here and then helping us figure out how can we best optimize this relationship with Mastronardi where they do have you know, deep experience all across Mexico, deep experience in Canada, and what can we use to leverage the farm network we've built and the experience they have to optimize these assets and get to profitability as quickly as possible. But, you know, I would say you'll continue to see us, you know, pushing that Mastronardi relationship forward. And what you saw in Berea is just a signal of of what we're working on with them.
spk07: I think it's still me. I think from a farm perspective, the advantages we have with Mastinardi are they themselves are farmers. They help us with varietal selection. They provide expertise in crop maintenance, crop management, crop services work. They assist us in the analysis and design of productivity bonus. They have provided guidance on such matters as crop care, but also in terms of the types of certifications we have to undergo in order to meet the quality specifications of customers. They have an incredible team of growers that they make available to us to help our growers deepen their understanding and knowledge. And so the advantage of someone like Mastro Nardi from the perspective of our productivity in our production is they bring years of experience that we can parlay that experience into the benefit to App Harvest, you know, enhancing and strengthening the understanding of our crew here.
spk16: Yeah, and just to end with a specific note, Brian, I mean, they're sending large groups of their executive team down to Kentucky on a regular basis, sitting in the middle of our facilities with us. So it's, you know, again, far more than a sales and distribution relationship. It's something that we're, you know, trying to heavily integrate as we go from not just one facility and one crop type, but a whole host of variety of crops and tomatoes and now, you know, strawberries, leafy green. How can we, you know, best integrate and optimize for the facilities we have? And that's going to be, you know, something where we try to deepen and strengthen that relationship.
spk07: In terms of enhancing our communication, we have weekly, sometimes daily, meetings with them, both on-site and in Zoom, and we speak specifically to their operating team. It's a great advantage for us, especially as we start up and roll out these new operations.
spk14: And thank you. And one moment for our next question. And our next question comes from Ben Thurn from Barclays. Your line is now open.
spk17: Perfect. Thank you very much. Good afternoon. First question I have is, as you change going forward the reporting, because obviously now you have a more diversified portfolio, How should we think about the contribution, particularly to your guidance of 40 to 50 million revenues this year? How much is to come from which, call it sub-segment, tomatoes versus berries versus leafy greens? Just to get a little bit of a sense of the magnitude here, that would be my first question. Thank you.
spk09: Yeah, so we're not going to give guidance by produce type, at least not for this year, but I think it's fair to assume for this year that tomatoes will make up the vast majority of the net sales for this year. You know, we are going to have salad greens, strawberries, and cucumbers, and I would expect that it could be in that order in terms of magnitude. But I would expect that tomatoes could likely be at least 50%, if not more, of the net sales for this year.
spk17: okay perfect and then uh just to to understand a little bit um the balance sheet and and where we're at i mean obviously a lot a lot of things have moved uh since the fourth quarter and what what you're showing in terms of cash restricted cash yet the capital raise which was almost uh 40 million uh income but if you would have to like kind of think of like okay maybe last friday Where do we stand on cash versus restricted cash? And as we've seen in the first facilities, I mean, gross profit continues to be negative. So just to understand how that evolves now with four facilities, because that's not an SG&A dilution yet, but how should we think about the losses and how it impacts the cash burn rate?
spk09: Yeah, so I would say, you know, as we think about ending the year with 54.3 million cash, you know, we raised 43.1 approximately net on the share offering. You know, we announced we've got about 60 to 65 million remaining in CapEx. Now, I guess what may not have been clear in the prepared remarks is, Only about $40 to $45 million of that CapEx range is what we would expect to use in unrestricted cash. We've got a $9.8 million holdback on Berea as part of the sale-leaseback transaction for the changes and enhancements, $7.9 million in restricted cash for Greater Nevada as of the end of the year for completion of the Somerset project, and then about 2.4 million that was in escrow for the completion of the Berea EPC contract. So, only about 40 to 45 million of unrestricted cash from the beginning of the year to finish out the CapEx. But, you know, so I would say with the recent share offering, you know, plus other potential sources of financing, you know, to get us through the end of the year, you know, as you've seen with Berea, there's interest in the sale leasebacks on our facilities. Since we announced it free of sale leaseback, we've had some inbound interest, and we'll continue to evaluate additional sale leasebacks as a form of non-dilutive capital.
spk17: Okay, perfect. And then my last question, I guess that one's most likely more for Tony as it comes to the ramp-up and have all the people aligned, and as you've nicely laid it out in your prepared remarks, but also within the press release, one of the things that just came to my mind was around this enabling labor efficiency. And clearly, that's been one of the issues you had at the beginning. So, Tony, from your experience, maybe help us understand what you think needs to change. What do you think needs to be implemented in order to make labor more efficient and to ultimately be at that gross profit positive, which I think is a lot related to some of these inefficiencies.
spk07: Sure. I think, you know, if I look right to the very beginning of that harvest, it's a company of great ideals and great companies have ideals. And their ideal is to employ local labor. But when you're faced with a thin labor pool and a high attrition rate, oftentimes it's difficult. to attract, retain, and recruit the appropriate labor force. In the United States, we can rely on contract agricultural labor. These are U.S. residents who perform agricultural-type activities along with a program of the federal government called the H-2A. What that allowed us to do was to respond to the immediate need of the crop by having agricultural workers who were experienced in agriculture. Now, how does that relate to a productivity bonus? Because you have to measure the performance in the greenhouse. And to do that, we rely on a system called PrivaFS. Now, a greenhouse is set up on a grid pattern where each row has a unique identifier. Each crop in the crop plan, they know the density of the crop and they know the area by row that's planted. Each activity has a unique identifier. Each worker has a unique identifier. And each cart has a unique identifier. Every cart has a weigh station it goes through. And the objective of a productivity bonus is to take the worker by the activity, by the row, by the cart, and measure their performance. And then based on the standard of performance, You pay a productivity bonus when they perform above the standard, and it gives you corrective action when you perform below the bonus. That improves the efficiency of the staff. Now, in order to do that, you have to surround that with a database administration because you've now got 100 agricultural workers inputting to a database. You have to clear faults. And you have to have a quality assurance program or people, better said, on the path validating the work of the workforce. The combination of those things allow you to have a very effective productivity bonus program. We're now in the process of developing it for Moorhead. Our anticipation is we'll have it in effect across all of our properties with the start of the 2023 2024 agricultural season. I'm certain it's going to bring benefits. I'm certain it's going to bring benefits. Does that answer your question?
spk17: Yes, yes, that makes a lot of sense. Thank you very much, Tony.
spk14: And thank you. You're welcome. And one moment for our next question. And our next question comes from Kristen Owen from Oppenheimer. Your line is now open.
spk12: Great. Thank you. Good afternoon. And congratulations on all that you've accomplished this year, getting the farms up and going and the amount of transition that the business has gone through. I'll start there. Tony, you've touched on it in a number of the questions here and even in some of your prepared remarks discussing the difference between maybe some of the other solutions that are out there or the broad category of CEA. But in your brief time in the seat with AppHarvest, I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about you know, where you've seen App Harvest's differentiation, you know, what stood out to you that brought you into the organization. So I think we've touched a lot on what the opportunity set is, but I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about the foundation that you're building upon.
spk07: Sure, I'd be happy to. First, let me say that although I've been in the role of COO since January of this year, I had the opportunity early on, Jonathan had asked me, how I would like to participate with the company. What matters most to me is the ethos of a business, the culture of the business. And to do that, it takes time to assess it. I asked Jonathan if I could work as a consultant, providing advice to the development team, and I could observe the performance of their management and their approach to their work. And I did so for over a year. where I sat in on calls, listened to presentations, reviewed presentations, offered objective commentary. Jonathan approached me last November to join the board, and I said that I would. And it was in the board meeting when discussing the reason why the strategy of diversification, not only in crop, but in customer, in terms of packaging, in terms of varieties we offer, why it mattered so much to a company like AppHarvest. The combination of that ethos, that willingness, that teamwork, that esprit de corps that exists in AppHarvest, and the ability of these facilities to provide state-of-the-art support to a crop prompted me to join AppHarvest. There is nothing that AppHarvest faces today as a challenge that I haven't experienced in one form or another in my past employment, my past role. And I felt that I could bring an ability to see a problem perhaps earlier, come up with some solutions to help address it, and to enable a quickening of App Harvest to achieve their potential. And that's why I joined them.
spk12: Really helpful. And if I could touch on one of the points that you made around diversification. I mean, you are talking about new crops, new customers, new packaging, new SKUs, just how you manage the complexity of a business that's basically gone from one product and a handful of SKUs to now this diverse network. Talk about some of the management of that.
spk07: Sure, I would be happy to. So I'll give you an example of three crops or three varieties of a crop. We have beefsteak tomato, which is a round type of tomato. We have tomatoes on the vine. We have Campari. We have Delicer. Tomatoes on the vine, Campari, Delicer, are all vine-type tomatoes. They're all harvested in the cluster. It means that a single cluster is clipped at a single moment. The worker is equipped to deal with clipping a tomato cluster, a TOV tomato cluster, a delicer cluster, a Campari cluster, and it's the same action and approximately the same speed. Now, weight will change because some tomato varieties are larger than others, but the learnings they have in any single variety, that cluster variety is the very same. POVs and some of the smaller varieties are picked by the each, and the action of harvesting and clipping at the calyx are consistent. And so the ability of the crew to quickly learn their tasks and understand the correct method brings benefit to the company. As such, you're able to diversify your crop. Now, crop issues happen from time to time. It's an intense agricultural biological environment, What's important to recognize is that you have long cycle crops, such as tomatoes on the vine, where you get the opportunity within a very limited window to plant the crop for the year. Other crops are short cycle crops, meaning that if a TOV crop takes three months from germination to harvest, something like a mini cucumber crop can take six weeks. As a result, you can have an impact in a long cycle crop that gets replaced with a short-cycled crop, allowing the company to remain revenue-producing, to cover the cost of its operations. There's one last opportunity that I think needs to be reflected, which is in terms of lettuce production, that crop cycles on a 28- to 38-day cycle. It's a very, very fast cycle. I love lettuces because you could interrupt that crop and be back in production very, very quickly. So the combination of diversifying our crops, diversifying the varieties, ensuring that the workforce is well-trained, brings great stability to the business.
spk06: Does that answer your question?
spk12: I think that gets to the heart of it, and we can follow up offline, because the last point that I want to ask is to to build on that and the comments around farm level, EBITDA positive by 2025, taking some of these learnings and thinking about the opportunity for, say, Moorhead to become EBITDA positive before then and just how we should think about sort of the pace of the payback cycles on whether it's a more established farm where you've had the learning benefits or something like the autonomous lettuce farm where maybe there's more automation there, but the payback can be faster because the cycle times are faster. So the question is payback times and how we should think about that bridge to EBITDA positive by 2025 from a farm perspective. Thank you.
spk09: Yeah, Chris and Lauren. So we put out there that we expect the farms to be adjusted gross profit positive by 2024. So I think the first thing we have to remember is that this year, not all of the farms are 100% utilized. So we mentioned on the call, or Jonathan mentioned it in the prepared remarks, Richmond only has 30 out of 60 acres currently planted. with the remaining 30 acres we're not expecting to plant it now until later this year. We also mentioned that Berea only has 10 out of 15 acres planted, the last five acres being planted here very shortly. So this year, even though we're showing the nearly tripling of net sales year over year, does not really reflect what we would expect all of these farms to do at 100% utilization. So we're gonna see that benefit next year. So that's part of the journey there. I would say the next piece beyond that is just continuing to get better at ramping everything up. Looking at cost of goods, particularly on the labor front. So Tony was talking about the productivity bonuses. I think he has seen tremendous success and his previous employment.
spk05: I can talk to that.
spk07: Yeah, we implemented this, or I implemented this elsewhere with a team, and we saw an immediate savings. Now, I haven't extrapolated this yet to App Harvest, but we saw immediate savings in the labor cost of between 20% and 30% as a result of the productivity bonus that we put in place. And the reason for it is the benefit that accrues by higher efficiency is delivered, one-third of the benefit is to the payment of the staff, one-third of the benefit is to the payment of the system, and one-third of the benefit being the savings is to the benefit of the company. We have to model that for App Harvest, and we have to determine the level of efficiency and productivity within the staff that we can achieve.
spk09: What we kind of laid out in terms of the adjusted gross profit positive next year, the adjusted EBITDA positive for the farm operations in 25, and then on a consolidated basis in 26, kind of lays out how we think about the four-farm network. Now, I would say Moorhead, if we start all the farms from zero from day one, Moorhead probably takes the longest just because it was the first one. I think what we're seeing so far, and Tony, feel free to chime in on this, but with Richmond, in the first, call it two months now, of harvesting there, we're seeing that things are better there starting out on its first harvest than certainly than what we saw at Moorhead when it first started out. So we would expect that Richmond would have a much shorter ramp-up curve And I think it's also one of these things that we kind of talked about early on about having, you know, training people at Moorhead and being able to move them out to other facilities to help with that ramp.
spk07: So one of the things we talk about under Project New Leaf is improving the enterprise-wide feedback. And the way we do that is weekly, and it's a great deal of work, but weekly. I have a meeting with each farm, and the farm personnel that attend the meeting are the general manager, the grower, the IPM manager, the facility manager, the packhouse manager, and the crop labor supervisor. With regards to the four-farm meeting, where we share ideas, share advantages, share new trials, share the opportunity for improvement, we have a four-farm meeting weekly. where we go through and we discuss the performance in detail of each farm, where we look at things like productivity and yield and percent compliance and the measures of a business that matter. Lastly, I meet with the executive to discuss the very same information consolidated and aligned from the perspective of the company. And so by sharing information, by sharing approach, by Training people, giving the opportunity to train people in Moorhead and then bring them to Richmond to accelerate the process that we saw in Moorhead. We accelerated in a greenhouse like Richmond.
spk11: Great. Thank you for the call. I really appreciate it.
spk14: And thank you. And I am showing no further questions. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect. you Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Good day and thank you for standing by and welcome to App Harvest Q4 2022 earnings conference call. At this time, our participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there'll be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you'll need to press star 1 1 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand has been raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 1 1 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Travis Parman, Chief Communications Officer. Please go ahead.
spk13: Thank you for joining us on the App Harvest fourth quarter 2022 and full year 2022 earnings call. I'm Travis Parman, Chief Communications Officer for App Harvest. Joining me today are several members of the senior management team, including Jonathan Webb, founder and CEO, Tony Martin, Chief Operating Officer and Board Member, and Lauren Eggleton, Chief Financial Officer. The earnings release is available on our investor website at investors.appharvest.com. On today's call, we'll begin with prepared remarks from the team. Then we'll open the call to questions. Before we start, I'd like to remind you that comments today regarding the company's future business plans, prospects, and financial performance are forward-looking statements that we make pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the securities laws. These statements are made based on management's current knowledge and assumptions about future events, and they involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from our expectations. In providing projections and other forward-looking statements, the company disclaims any intent or obligation to update them. For more information on important factors that could affect these expectations, please see our most recent SEC filings. And now, I'd like to turn the call over to Jonathan.
spk16: Thanks, Travis. In 2022, the AppHarvest team delivered on our commitment to quadruple the AppHarvest farm network now totaling 165 acres under glass in what we believe is the largest simultaneous build-out of controlled environment agriculture infrastructure in U.S. history. App Harvest has become one of the top three U.S. CEA operators by acreage, along with our distribution partner, Mastronardi Produce, and our new chief operating officer's former employer, Winsett Farm. In 2022, we also succeeded in diversifying our crop portfolio to include strawberries, salad greens, and more varietals of tomatoes, and now we've added cucumbers too. We expect this diversification to support stability in our sales. While there may be price volatility on one varietal or commodity, we believe we are unlikely to see it in whole categories or across multiple varieties. It also allows us opportunities to choose when or where to grow more lucrative produce mixes. Going forward, we expect to further diversify our portfolio with peppers and more varietals of existing crops. And we've already done this at our flagship 60-acre high-tech indoor farm in Moorhead, Kentucky. Currently, in its third harvesting season, we've added new varietals of premium snacking tomatoes sold under the Sunset brand as flavor bombs and sugar bombs. The new CEA facilities in App Harvest Farm Network are the 15-acre salad green facility in Berea, Kentucky, believed to be the world's largest high-tech indoor farm for autonomously harvested salad greens featuring a touchless growing system. It supplies the Queen of Greens brand washed and ready-to-eat salad. App Harvest Somerset is a 30-acre strawberry farm supplying multiple brands from Astronarty, including Wow Berries. Somerset also will grow Long English cucumbers during the annual summer refresh for strawberries. App Harvest Richmond is our second 60-acre tomato farm. The first 30 acres were planted in late 2022, and the initial harvest was this January. We expect to plant the second 30 acres later this year. Combined with Moorhead, we expect to grow nearly 1.5 million tomato plants across the combined 120 acres. I want to thank the entire App Harvest team for their hard work and perseverance in accomplishing this milestone. A build-out of this size is challenging as is, and we were able to bring three new farms into operation by year-end 2022 despite headwinds such as COVID-19 and ongoing supply chain challenges. In addition to this achievement, we also realized a 60% increase in net sales over the prior year with fiscal year 2022 net sales of 14.6 million. The addition of new sales of higher priced tomato varietals, strawberries, and salad greens in the fourth quarter, as well as higher market prices for tomatoes, helped drive this increase. Our business is now at an inflection point as we move from construction and development phase to one focused on maximizing production and operational efficiency. This January marked the first time that all four facilities in the App Harvest Farm network were shipping commercially to top national grocery store chains, restaurants, and food service outlets. For fiscal year 2023, we expect our new COO, Tony Martin, with his extensive CEA experience, to help accelerate our path to profitability. Tony is working to optimize production, revenue, and cost across our four-farm network and has rolled out a strategic plan across all operations to focus the team on profitability. I'll now turn it over to Tony to share more details on our business strategy. Tony?
spk07: Thank you, Jonathan. Good afternoon. Some recent media coverage of the CEA sector reminds me of the quote attributed to the great Mark Twain, reports of my death are greatly exaggerated. It's true that inflationary factors, particularly those around energy costs, are challenging a number of players in the industry who struggle to compete, in part due to a lack of scale. However, there is still a strong rationale for cost-efficient CEA and sustainably grown domestic produce. The USA has become heavily reliant on imported fruits and vegetables. According to the USDA, nearly two-thirds of the fresh fruits and vegetables are imported. It's estimated that 20,000 additional CEA acres are needed in the U.S. just to displace the current volume of vine crops imports from Mexico. Consumers are demanding healthy, great-tasting, sustainable products. And increasingly, those customers are concerned about where their food comes from and its effects production has on people and the planet. These factors are driving growth. Major food retailers increasingly are interested in CEA for the reliability it offers in terms of quantity and quality, That's based on its climate resilient, more sustainable year-round growing approach. And it uses far fewer resources than traditional open field farming. CEA produce often can be picked, packed, shipped, and on a store shelf within 24 hours compared to 10 days or longer with imported product. That means longer shelf life and less waste for the retail seller. That translates into higher margins. Benefits also accrue to the end consumer with better quality and longer lasting product. Estimates for the period from 2022 to 2026 show a more than $2.2 billion opportunity for CEA grown products. We believe the app harvest model is sustainable both from an environmental and social impact perspective. Vertical farming relies on electrical lighting and municipal water. Contrasted with our approach that leverages sunshine and rainwater first, boosted with technology as needed to grow at scale, the advantage is clear. As the team ramps up production and works to optimize efficiency across the farm network, We follow a five-point strategy. We're calling this the next phase of Project New Leaf. It will focus our efforts on operations across all the farms. The first element is to leverage deeper synergies with our marketing and distribution partner, Mastro Nardi Produce. Mastro Nardi has extensive resources and experience in the CEA sector. We will collaborate with them as a true strategic partner for mutually beneficial results. The next is improving labor efficiency. We are leveraging experienced agricultural workers to drive efficiency. We are strategically deploying them to help supplement the work and to train local crop care specialists and packhouse team members. We are implementing a new incentive program at the farms to drive productivity. This includes training, quality assurance, performance measurement, and performance management components. Improving enterprise-wide feedback through clear KPIs and cross-organizational information sharing. We are implementing a new reporting format to improve efficiencies, to create more opportunity to share ideas, and to pursue best-in-class solutions across the four-farm network. This format is designed specifically for the management of farm financial performance, productivity in terms of yield, quality, and efficiency. Reporting occurs weekly with each farm team, farm general managers, and other key stakeholders comparing performance to our KPIs. We're initiating comprehensive spending reviews. The team is further scrutinizing our suppliers to determine their ROI to our core operations. As part of this assessment, we're also identifying opportunities where it makes sense to insource versus outsource and reducing third-party spend when possible. Aligning the company to milestones for a five-year strategic vision. Agriculture and crop decisions often require more than a single fiscal period. Payback periods on investment decisions may also exceed more than one year. For Project New Leaf to be successful, every team member needs to understand the full strategic vision. We must contemplate decisions over the appropriate period and the key milestones to achieve in years one through five. When producing at this massive scale, even small incremental improvements in core operations can have a huge impact. As our crop care specialists become more efficient and we test and identify which crop varietals perform best in our environment, we can become more productive. This requires fine-tuning over the course of multiple crop cycles. The expected benefit is that we greatly improve the reliability of our forecasting. And pardon the pun, we're seeing the fruits of our labor at our flagship farm in Moorhead. With two years under our belts, we're finding that ramping up to full production at Moorhead will come around the 36-month mark. Moorhead, now on its third harvest season, is performing significantly better on its KPIs. We expect that applying our learnings from Moorhead will help us reduce the curve to operational excellence at the three new farms. Based on my experience, I see tremendous opportunity for App Harvest. I believe we can leverage the state-of-the-art indoor farms to become a significant and profitable producer in an ecosystem that increasingly needs it. Now over to Lauren to review our Q4 and full year 2022 results. Thanks, Tony.
spk09: I'll start by briefly reviewing our fourth quarter and FY 2022 results, our financing, and then move to the 2023 outlook. We reported fourth quarter net sales of $4.5 million compared to net sales of $3.1 million in the fourth quarter of 2021. Going forward, we will report overall net sales by produce type rather than a metric of pounds sold. This change in reporting is driven by the diversified crop portfolio that is expected to include tomatoes, salad greens, strawberries, and cucumbers. It also helps resolve our distribution partners' concerns related to proprietary pricing information. In Q4 2022, we recorded a net loss of $93.3 million and a non-GAAP adjusted EBITDA loss of $24.1 million as we work to rapidly expand our farm network. This is compared to a prior year net loss of $88.4 million and non-GAAP adjusted EBITDA loss of $18.3 million. Following a third-party recoverability assessment, we also recorded a non-cash impairment charge of $50.1 million, which reduced the carrying value of certain long-lived assets. We achieved our previously revised guidance for full year 2022, as announced in the third quarter. We delivered net sales of $14.6 million as compared to $9.1 million for the prior year. an increase of 60% year-over-year. This increase in net sales was driven by a combination of higher market prices for tomatoes and addition of new sales of higher-priced tomato varietals, strawberries and salad greens, in the fourth quarter. Supply chain-related delays at App Harvest Berea and App Harvest Somerset affected the timing of commercial shipments from both farms, resulting in net sales at the lower end of the previously forecasted range of $14 million to $17 million. We reported a net loss of $176.6 million for 2022 compared to a loss of $166.2 million for the prior year. This increase in net loss was driven by the ramp-up of production at the three new farms. In terms of non-GAAP adjusted EBITDA loss, we achieved our revised guidance with a loss of $72 million versus a prior outlook of non-GAAP adjusted EBITDA loss in the range of $67 to $72 million. Turning now to our balance sheet and liquidity. We ended the year with cash and cash equivalents of $54.3 million. In the fourth quarter of 2022, we utilized our ATM with Callen, selling 475,600 shares, getting proceeds of approximately $932,000, leaving $97.6 million still available on the ATM facility. In February 2023, we completed our follow-on offering that raised $46 million before deducting the underwriter's discount, commissions, and estimated offering expenses. We expect to use the net proceeds from this offering for working capital and general corporate purposes as we ramp up production and sales from the four farms. Because we have focused on non-dilutive capital, this is the first public offering that we have made since going public over two years ago. Going forward, we will lean in on our past success with generating non-dilutive capital. In Q3, we secured $50 million in USDA guaranteed loans with Greater Nevada Credit Union for App Harvest Somerset. And in December, we completed the $127 million sale leaseback of the Brea Farm to Mastinardi Brea LLC with an initial annual lease rate of 7.5% over 10 years. Some of the proceeds from the sale leaseback repaid the $30 million bridge loan from Mastinardi announced in Q4 and the first two years of prepaid rent at the Brea facility. We also focused on cost containment efforts to restructure the organization and to create operational efficiencies that we estimate will result in approximately $26 million in annualized savings in 2023. In terms of capital expenditures, we expect to spend approximately $60 to $65 million in 2023 to account for final project details at the Richmond, Berea, and Somerset facilities and ongoing maintenance across the four farm networks. Nearly $10 million of this CapEx spend requirement was previously funded and should not be a reduction in balance sheet cash this year. Let me turn next to what we expect for 2023 and beyond. As Jonathan mentioned, we quadrupled our farm network in 2022 and diversified our crop portfolio to include strawberries, salad greens, and more varietals of tomatoes. In 2023, we also added cucumbers. With this significant infrastructure in place, coupled with the Project Newly strategy Tony is leading focused on operations across the farm network, we expect to nearly triple our net sales year-over-year in 2023. We believe in our ability to be self-sufficient and to generate positive operating cash flow in the longer term with our four-farm network. As we've stated in the past, we plan to expand capacity, but only after becoming profitable across the farm network and securing the required capital. Operations in the first quarter of 2023 continue to ramp up as expected. App Harvest Berea is opening on a phased approach, as previously announced, and we anticipate the third five-acre salad greens growing area to be planted in the late first quarter of 2023. App Harvest Somerset, which grows both strawberries and cucumbers, has already planted about 45,000 Long English cucumber plants in advance of the full seasonal summer refresh for the facility. This smaller planting will allow us to calibrate packaging equipment and assess harvesting capabilities before a full planting of Long English cucumbers. Harvesting of the cucumbers is anticipated in the second quarter of 2023. With all four facilities in the App Harvest Farm Network now commercially shipping in Q1 2023 under a variety of brands for Massanardi Produce, We expect to see significant year-over-year net sales increases throughout 2023 and even more in 2024. We anticipate FY 2023 guidance of net sales to be in the range of $40 million to $50 million and non-GAAP adjusted EBITDA loss to be in the range of $67 million to $76 million. We are applying lessons learned at Moorhead to accelerate our path to operational excellence at each of the three new farms with the potential to achieve positive adjusted gross profit in 2024. In 2025, we expect to achieve positive adjusted EBITDA status for farm operations. With this trajectory, we believe that we may be able to achieve positive adjusted EBITDA status on a consolidated basis in 2026. In summary, AppHarvest achieved multiple key business milestones for the full year 2022 that we believe will accelerate our path to profitability. We quadrupled the AppHarvest farm network by year end 2022, and as of January 2023, each of the facilities in the four farm network was shipping commercially. We diversified our crop portfolio to include strawberries, salad greens, and more varietals of tomatoes and added cucumbers in 2023. We expect this diversification to support stability in our sales. We achieved the lower end of our revised full-year 2022 guidance despite several headwinds. We shifted our business focus in Q1 2023 to maximizing production and operational efficiency with the rollout of the next phase of Project New Leaf, our five-point strategic plan across all operations. We remain confident in our ability to be self-sufficient and to generate positive operating cash flow over the longer term with the four-farm network. AppHarvest expects to nearly triple its net sales year-over-year in 2023. With that, I'll turn it back over to our Chief Communications Officer, Travis Parman. Thank you, Lauren.
spk13: Operator, we'll now begin to take questions. And thank you.
spk14: And one moment, please. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star 11 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster.
spk10: And one moment for our first question. And our first question comes from Brian Hollander from Cowan.
spk14: Your line is now open.
spk15: Thank you. And hi, this is Jacob Henry on for Brian Holland. I am wondering how we should think about the ramp up in Moorhead as a proxy for the three new facilities. What learnings from Moorhead are you able to take into account? And is there anything about the construct of the new farm that will impact the timeline scale up either one way or the other?
spk07: So I'll answer the first part of your question and then I'll get you to repeat the second part because I had difficulty with the audio. With regards to the learnings at Moorhead, Moorhead was challenged last year with a virus in the crop that was endemic worldwide in tomato production called the tomato brown fruit rugose virus. Unfortunately, it had a dramatic effect on the production of tomatoes and the quality of tomatoes that Moore had produced. This year, through extensive hygiene protocols, starting with the acquisition of the seed, through the germination of the seed, through the introduction of the plant in the greenhouse, and a solid approach on integrated pest management, where pest management people started with the initial delivery of the crop into the greenhouse, we have been able to manage the greenhouse where we are virtually free of the virus. That's not to say we're without it. We've had 2,500 plants affected by 700,000 plants in our Moorhead facility, a feature of less than a third of a percent. And so we take those learnings and we apply them to Richmond. Richmond is free of the virus. And as a result, both in Moorhead and in Richmond, we are without economic damage or reduction in our expected results from those farms this year. Now, could I have the second part of your question?
spk15: Yeah, thank you. That was great. The second part is just about, I guess, on... the other two facilities, Berea and Somerset. Is there anything different about the construct of those farms, given they're growing different crops that will impact the timeline to ramp up to full scale?
spk07: Oh, yes, most certainly. Each crop has its unique requirement. In Berea, it's a highly technical, very advanced, touchless greenhouse. As a result, there's great integration between technology and agriculture. You know, we have to learn the management of both. I'll just give you an indication as to how we're succeeding. When we started the pack line in Berea, we processed about 400 cases in the first week. Yesterday, we did 12,000 cases. And as a result, as production increases, we're demonstrating our ability to pack it. the varieties that we grow. In the beginning, you trial certain seed types, certain lettuce types. They have a certain characteristic. As we progress, we are optimizing on the varieties we're growing and the pack types we're capable of producing. Lastly, the methods by which we pack are expanding. We now pack in four-ounce, six-ounce, eight-ounce, one-pound clam shells. We pack in one-pound three-pound bags, and we're now selling to both retail and institutional clients. Our goal is that every ounce, every leaf of salad is packed and placed in premium packaging to premium clients. With regards to strawberries, strawberries grow, of course, on plants. There's a flowering and a natural cycle of strawberries. Strawberries can be grown from root stock or can be grown from plugs. The varietal that we chose was a UC Davis variety given to us by or selected for us by Mastro Nardi. It produces wonderful fruit. But strawberries can be a challenging crop. They're not free of either pests or sometimes disease. And as a result, we had to remove about seven and a half acres of strawberry production due to a broad mite that was brought in at propagation. Going forward, like the learnings we had in Moorhead, we'll test the seedlings prior to entry into the greenhouse. It's given us the opportunity to trial the equipment for cucumber production as we move through the quarter in anticipation of a volume.
spk15: Great. That's all great information. Thank you. On a different note, how should we think about modeling SG&A in 2023, mindful of where you finish the year as well as other factors like labor costs and cost improvements?
spk09: Yeah, so just in terms of general P&L timing, so as we announced today, expecting net sales of $40 to $50 million for the year. And at this time, we would expect that Q2 will be the highest sales quarter of this year, followed by Q4 and then Q1. And then lastly, Q3, which has historically been our lowest sales quarter of the year, because of the summer refresh and the buying crops. We would expect that cost of goods sold slightly more than doubles from 2022 as we increase production and create new farms. However, and to your question on SG&A, because of the restructuring actions that we took last year or throughout last year, we would also expect that SG&A should decline by nearly 40 to 50% from 2022.
spk15: Okay. Thank you. And then last one from me. Regarding the enhanced relationship with Mastro Nardi that was mentioned earlier, can you provide additional color around what deeper synergies with Mastro Nardi could look like?
spk16: Yeah, Brian, this is Jonathan. You know, just to kind of layer in on what Tony was saying a moment ago, we're deepening that relationship. I mean, to put it in perspective for the industry, you know, App Harvest had nothing three years ago, and now we have the second largest footprint of CEA facilities in the U.S., and the only party with a larger footprint in the U.S. is our distribution partner, Mastronardi. And then Tony's previous employer, where he was CFO at Winsett, is roughly tied with us on second. So around the table, we make up a vast majority of that production in the U.S. And so for us, it's far more than a transaction with Mastronardi. They're not just selling our product. And I think showing what the deal we announced in Berea is just a glimmer of that, which is they want to see us succeed. And in a market where interest rates are going up and capital markets are tight, for us to be able to get 7.5% infrastructure dollars on a sale lease back at that facility shows you know, the types of conversations that are happening with Mastronardi. But yeah, Tony is taking his experience that he's executed on previously at Winsett, bringing that here, and then helping us figure out how can we best optimize this relationship with Mastronardi, where they do have deep experience all across Mexico, deep experience in Canada, and what can we use to leverage the farm network we've built and the experience they have to optimize these assets and get to profitability as quickly as possible. But, you know, I would say you'll continue to see us, you know, pushing that Mastronardi relationship forward. And what you saw in Berea is just a signal of of what we're working on with them.
spk07: I think it's still me. I think from a farm perspective, the advantages we have with Mastinardi are they themselves are farmers. They help us with varietal selection. They provide expertise in crop maintenance, crop management, crop services work. They assist us in the analysis and design of productivity bonus. They have provided guidance on such matters as crop care, but also in terms of the types of certifications we have to undergo in order to meet the quality specifications of customers. They have an incredible team of growers that they make available to us to help our growers deepen their understanding and knowledge. And so the advantage of someone like Mastro Nardi from the perspective of our productivity in our production is they bring years of experience that we can parlay that experience into the benefit to App Harvest, enhancing and strengthening the understanding of our crew here.
spk16: Yeah, and just to end with a specific note, Brian, I mean, they're sending large groups of their executive team down to Kentucky on a regular basis, sitting in the middle of our facilities with us. So it's, you know, again, far more than a sales and distribution relationship. It's something that we're, you know, trying to heavily integrate as we go from not just one facility and one crop type, but a whole host of variety of of crops and tomatoes and now strawberries, leafy greens. How can we best integrate and optimize for the facilities we have? And that's going to be something where we try to deepen and strengthen that relationship.
spk07: In terms of enhancing our communication, we have weekly, sometimes daily, meetings with them, both on-site and in Zoom. And we speak specifically to their operating team. It's a great advantage for us especially as we start up and roll out these new operations.
spk14: And thank you. And one moment for our next question. And our next question comes from Ben Thurn from Barclays. Your line is now open.
spk17: Perfect. Thank you very much. Good afternoon. The first question I have is, as you change going forward the reporting, because obviously now you have a more diversified portfolio, how should we think about the contribution, particularly to your guidance of 40 to 50 million revenues this year? How much is to come from which, call it subsegment, tomatoes versus berries versus leafy greens? Just to get a little bit of a sense of the magnitude here, that would be my first question. Thank you.
spk09: Yeah, so we're not going to give guidance by produce type, at least not for this year, but I think it's fair to assume for this year that tomatoes will make up the vast majority of the net sales for this year. We are going to have salad greens, strawberries, and cucumbers, and I would expect that it could be in that order in terms of magnitude, but I would expect that tomatoes could likely be at least 50%, if not more, of the net sales for this year.
spk17: Okay, perfect. And then just to understand a little bit the balance sheet and where we're at, I mean, obviously a lot of things have moved since the fourth quarter and what you're showing in terms of cash, restricted cash, yet the capital raise, which was almost $40 million income. But if you would have to kind of think of like, okay, maybe last Friday, where do we stand on cash versus restricted cash? And as we've seen in the first facilities, I mean, gross profit continues to be negative. So just to understand how that evolves now with four facilities, because that's not an SG&A dilution yet, but how should we think about the losses and how it impacts the cash burn rate?
spk09: Yeah, so I would say, you know, as we think about ending the year with 54.3 million cash, you know, we raised 43.1 approximately net on the share offering. You know, we announced we've got about 60 to 65 million remaining in CapEx. Now, I guess what may not have been clear in the prepared remarks is, Only about $40 to $45 million of that CapEx range is what we would expect to use in unrestricted cash. And we've got a $9.8 million holdback on Berea as part of the stably stock transaction for the changes and enhancements. $7.9 million in restricted cash for Greater Nevada as of the end of the year for completion of the Somerset project. and then about $2.4 million that was in escrow for the completion of the Berea EPC contract. So, only about $40 to $45 million of unrestricted cash from the beginning of the year to finish out the CapEx. But, you know, I would say with the recent share offering, you know, plus other potential sources of financing, you know, to get us through the end of the year, you know, as you've seen with Berea, there's interest in the sale leasebacks on our facilities. Since we announced it free of sale leaseback, we've had some inbound interest and we'll continue to evaluate additional sale leasebacks as a form of non-dilutive capital.
spk17: Okay, perfect. And then my last question, I guess that one's most likely more for Tony as it comes to the ramp up and have all the people aligned and as you've nicely laid it out in your prepared remarks, but also within the press release. One of the things that just came to my mind was around this enabling labor efficiency, and clearly that's been one of the issues you had at the beginning. So, Tony, from your experience, maybe help us understand what you think needs to change. What do you think needs to be implemented in order to make labor more more efficient and to ultimately be at that gross profit positive, which I think is a lot related to some of these inefficiencies.
spk07: So I think, you know, if I look right to the very beginning of that harvest, it's a company of great ideals and great companies have ideals. And their ideal is to employ local labor. But when you're faced with a thin labor pool and a high attrition rate, oftentimes it's difficult to attract, retain, and recruit the appropriate labor force. In the United States, we can rely on contract agricultural labor. These are U.S. residents who perform agricultural-type activities along with a program of the federal government called the H-2A. What that allowed us to do was to respond to the immediate need of the crop by having agricultural workers who were experienced in agriculture. Now, how does that relate to a productivity bonus? Because you have to measure the performance in the greenhouse. And to do that, we rely on a system called PrivaFS. Now, a greenhouse is set up on a grid pattern where each row has a unique identifier. Each crop in the crop plan, they know the density of the crop and they know the area by row that's planted. Each activity has a unique identifier. Each worker has a unique identifier. And each cart has a unique identifier. Every cart has a weigh station it goes through. And the objective of a productivity bonus is to take the worker by the activity, by the row, by the cart, and measure their performance. And then based on the standard of performance, You pay a productivity bonus when they perform above the standard and it gives you corrective action when you perform below the bonus. That improves the efficiency of the staff. Now in order to do that, you have to surround that with a database administration because you've now got 100 agricultural workers inputting to a database. You have to clear faults. And you have to have a quality assurance program or people, better said, on the path validating the work of the workforce. The combination of those things allow you to have a very effective productivity bonus program. We're now in the process of developing it for Moorhead. Our anticipation is we'll have it in effect across all of our properties with the start of the 2023 2024 agricultural season. I'm certain it's going to bring benefits. I'm certain it's going to bring benefits. Does that answer your question?
spk17: Yes, yes, that makes a lot of sense. Thank you very much, Tony.
spk14: And thank you. You're welcome. And one moment for our next question. And our next question comes from Kristen Owen from Oppenheimer. Your line is now open.
spk12: Great. Thank you. Good afternoon. And congratulations on all that you've accomplished this year, getting the farms up and going and the amount of transition that the business has gone through. I'll start there. Tony, you've touched on it in a number of the questions here and even in some of your prepared remarks discussing the difference between maybe some of the other solutions that are out there or the broad category of CEA. But in your brief time in the seat with App Harvest, I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about where you've seen AppHarvest's differentiation, what stood out to you that brought you into the organization. I think we've touched a lot on what the opportunity set is, but I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about the foundation that you're building upon.
spk07: Sure, I'd be happy to. First, let me say that although I've been in the role of COO since January of this year, I had the opportunity early on, Jonathan had asked me, how I would like to participate with the company. What matters most to me is the ethos of a business, the culture of the business. And to do that, it takes time to assess it. I asked Jonathan if I could work as a consultant, providing advice to the development team, and I could observe the performance of their management and their approach to their work. And I did so for over a year. where I sat in on calls, listened to presentations, reviewed presentations, offered objective commentary. Jonathan approached me last November to join the board, and I said that I would. And it was in the board meeting when discussing the reason why the strategy of diversification, not only in crop, but in customer, in terms of packaging, in terms of varieties we offer, why it mattered so much to a company like AppHarvest. The combination of that ethos, that willingness, that teamwork, that esprit de corps that exists in AppHarvest, and the ability of these facilities to provide state-of-the-art support to a crop prompted me to join AppHarvest. There is nothing that AppHarvest faces today as a challenge that I haven't experienced in one form or another in my past employment, my past role. And I felt that I could bring an ability to see a problem perhaps earlier, come up with some solutions to help address it, and to enable a quickening of App Harvest to achieve their potential. And that's why I joined them.
spk12: Really helpful. And if I could touch on one of the points that you made around diversification. I mean, you are talking about new crops, new customers, new packaging, new SKUs, just how you manage the complexity of a business that's basically gone from one product and a handful of SKUs to now this diverse network. Talk about some of the management of that.
spk07: Sure, I would be happy to. So I'll give you an example of three crops, or three varieties of a crop. We have beefsteak tomato, which is a round type of tomato. We have tomatoes on the vine. We have Campari. We have Delicer. Tomatoes on the vine, Campari, Delicer, are all vine-type tomatoes. They're all harvested in the cluster. It means that a single cluster is clipped at a single moment. The worker is equipped to deal with clipping a tomato cluster, a TOV tomato cluster, a delicer cluster, a Campari cluster. And it's the same action and approximately the same speed. Now, weight will change because some tomato varieties are larger than others. But the learnings they have in any single variety, that cluster variety is the very same. POVs and some of the smaller varieties are picked by the each, and the action of harvesting and clipping at the calyx are consistent. And so the ability of the crew to quickly learn their tasks and understand the correct method brings benefits to the company. As such, you're able to diversify your crop. Now, crop issues happen from time to time. It's an intense agricultural biological environment. What's important to recognize is that you have long cycle crops, such as tomatoes on the vine, where you get the opportunity within a very limited window to plant the crop for the year. Other crops are short cycle crops, meaning that if a TOV crop takes three months from germination to harvest, something like a mini cucumber crop can take six weeks. As a result, you can have an impact in a long cycle crop that gets replaced with a short-cycled crop, allowing the company to remain revenue-producing, to cover the cost of its operations. There's one last opportunity that I think needs to be reflected, which is in terms of lettuce production, that crop cycles on a 28 to 38-day cycle. It's a very, very fast cycle. I love lettuces because you could interrupt that crop and be back in production very, very quickly. So the combination of diversifying our crops, diversifying the varieties, you know, ensuring that the workforce is well-trained brings great stability to the business.
spk06: Does that answer your question?
spk12: I think that gets to the heart of it, and we can follow up offline, because the last point that I want to ask is to to build on that and the comments around farm level, EBITDA positive by 2025, taking some of these learnings and thinking about the opportunity for, say, Moorhead to become EBITDA positive before then and just how we should think about sort of the pace of the payback cycles on whether it's a more established farm where you've had the learning benefits or something like the autonomous lettuce farm where maybe there's more automation there, but the payback can be faster because the cycle times are faster. So the question is payback times and how we should think about that bridge to EBITDA positive by 2025 from a farm perspective. Thank you.
spk09: Yeah, Chris and Lauren, so we put out there that we expect the farms to be adjusted gross profit positive by 2024. and so I think the first thing we have to remember is that this year, not all of the farms are 100% utilized. So we mentioned on the call, or Jonathan mentioned it in the prepared remarks, Richmond only has 30 out of 60 acres currently planted. with the remaining 30 acres we're not expecting to plant it now until later this year. We also mentioned that Berea only has 10 out of 15 acres planted, the last five acres being planted here very shortly. So this year, even though we're showing the nearly tripling of net sales year over year, does not really reflect what we would expect all of these farms to do at 100% utilization. So we're gonna see that benefit next year. So that's part of the journey there. I would say the next piece beyond that is just continuing to get better at ramping everything up. Looking at cost of goods, particularly on the labor front. So Tony was talking about the productivity bonuses. I think he has seen tremendous success and his previous employment.
spk05: I can talk to that.
spk07: Yeah, we implemented this, or I implemented this elsewhere with a team, and we saw an immediate savings. Now, I haven't extrapolated this yet to App Harvest, but we saw immediate savings in the labor cost of between 20% and 30% as a result of the productivity bonus that we put into place. And the reason for it is the benefit that accrues by higher efficiency is delivered, one-third of the benefit is to the payment of the staff, one-third of the benefit is to the payment of the system, and one-third of the benefit being the savings is to the benefit of the company. We have to model that for App Harvest, and we have to determine the level of efficiency and productivity within the staff that we can achieve.
spk09: What we kind of laid out in terms of the adjusted gross profit positive next year, the adjusted EBITDA positive for the farm operations in 25, and then on a consolidated basis in 26, kind of lays out how we think about the four-farm network. Now, I would say, Moorhead, if we start all the farms from zero from day one, Moorhead probably takes the longest just because it was the first one. I think what we're seeing so far, and Tony, feel free to chime in on this, but with Richmond, in the first, call it two months now, of harvesting there, we're seeing that things are better there starting out on its first harvest certainly than what we saw at Moorhead when it first started out. So we would expect that Richmond would have a much shorter ramp-up curve And I think it's also one of these things that we kind of talked about early on about having, you know, training people at Moorhead and being able to move them out to other facilities to help with that ramp.
spk07: So one of the things we talk about under Project New Leaf is improving the enterprise-wide feedback. And the way we do that is weekly, and it's a great deal of work, but weekly. I have a meeting with each farm, and the farm personnel that attend the meeting are the general manager, the grower, the IPM manager, the facility manager, the packhouse manager, and the crop labor supervisor. With regards to the four-farm meeting, where we share ideas, share advantages, share new trials, share the opportunity for improvement, we have a four-farm meeting weekly. where we go through and we discuss the performance in detail of each farm, where we look at things like productivity and yield and percent compliance and the measures of a business that matter. Lastly, I meet with the executive to discuss the very same information, consolidated and aligned from the perspective of the company. And so by sharing information, by sharing approach, by Training people, giving the opportunity to train people in Moorhead and then bring them to Richmond to accelerate the process that we saw in Moorhead. We accelerated in a greenhouse like Richmond.
spk11: Great. Thank you for the call. I really appreciate it.
spk14: And thank you. And I am showing no further questions. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.
Disclaimer