Celsius Holdings, Inc.

Greetings, and welcome to Celsius Holdings' first quarter 2022 financial results. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during a conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Cameron Donahue, Investor Relations for Celsius Holdings. Thank you. You may begin.

Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. We appreciate you joining us today for Celsius Holdings' first quarter 2022 earnings conference call. Joining me on the call today are John Fieldley, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Jared Langans, Chief Financial Officer. Following the prepared remarks, we welcome the call to your questions and instructions will be given at that time. The company released their earnings press release upon market close this afternoon, and all materials will be available on the company's website, CelsiusHoldingsInc.com, under the investor relations section. As a reminder, before you turn the call over to John, an audio replay will be available later today. Please also be aware that this call may contain forward-looking statements, which are based on forecasts, expectations, and other information available to management as of May 10th, 2022. These statements involve numerous risks and uncertainties, including many that are beyond the company's control. Except to the extent required by law, Celsius Holdings undertakes no obligations and disclaims any duty to update any of these forward-looking statements. We encourage you to view in full our safe harbor statements contained in today's press release and our quarterly filings with the SEC for additional information. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to President and Chief Executive Officer John Fieldley for his prepared remarks. John?

Thank you, Cameron. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Our record first quarter represented our 14th consecutive quarter of sequential growth and a 28% increase over the fourth quarter period. According to the trailing four-week IRI MULOC data as of April 17, 2022, Celsius is the number one brand driver of growth in the energy category compared to 2021. For the last four-week data set, the energy category grew $101 million. In that period, Celsius added $38 million of the growth, accounting for 38% of the total. This is dollar share growth. eclipsing Monster by 1.4 times, Alani New by 2.2 times, Red Bull by 2.5 times, Ghost by 3 times, and C4 by 4 times. During this period, Celsius increased to a $4.1 share and surpassed Rockstar for the number four position in the energy category. This growth has been driven across all channels, including those non-tracked. with the two newest channels of Club and the vending food service channels leading on a percentage growth metric and driving an incremental $25.2 million in revenue for the two channels alone compared to 2021 first quarter. In March, we also began a full nationwide rollout through Sam's Club, more than doubling the number of stores in the channel, adding 589 locations with the launch. In the first quarter, we also expanded into additional Walmart locations, now bringing Our store count totaled to over 4,400 stores and expanded our offerings, which now totals on average about six facings across the country, with expanded distribution as well as new cooler placements in select stores. In the convenience channel, we began a nationwide rollout to over 6,000 Circle K locations. And in the fitness channel, we are now the official energy drink partner and provider of Cycle Bar Nationwide. In addition, since our Q4 launch with Lifetime Fitness, we are now the number one selling drink and have increased sales each month since our launch. On April 18th, we announced the retirement of Edwin Negron and appointed Jared Langs as our CFO. I would like to formally introduce him today and share our excitement of having him join the Celsius team. In addition, I'd like to thank Edwin for his commitment to the company and for the contribution over the years, which will continue to provide lasting positive impacts. We have also recently added Grace Clark as our new head of IT and welcome her to the Celsius team. And in addition to the many other new team members who have joined our team, we'd like to welcome them as we continue to expand our organization to keep pace with growth and maximize the opportunities we see ahead. Before I move to operational highlights for the quarter in regards to our previously disclosed SEC inquiry, we continue to fully cooperate and we do not have any material updates at this time. Moving to some of our financial highlights of the first quarter, sales held another record, achieving first quarter revenues in the United States, exceeding over $100 million in sales, hitting $123 million, growing exponentially. Revenue growth was driven by continued new store additions, flavor expansions, additional clove placements, and the optimization and activation of our DSD network, as well as growth in underrepresented channels. As we mentioned, in the convenience store, we see great expansion, club, and vending. Sales for the first quarter of 2022 totaled $133.4 million, up 167% from $50 million in the prior year quarter. As mentioned, domestic revenues increased 214% to a record $123.5 million, up from $39 million in the prior year quarter. International sales decreased approximately 10% to $9.9 million for the quarter, with Nordic sales down approximately 18% to $8.5 million as a result of timing of trade campaigns, flavor launches, as well as supply chain delays. And other international sales grew approximately 114% to $1.4 million. Gross profit for the quarter increased $162 million to $53.9 million, up from $20.6 million in the year-ago quarter. And gross margins totaled approximately 40.4% of net sales. and excluding outbound freight totaled 42.8% of revenues for the three months ending March 31, 2022, and from 41.1% or 49.5% when excluding outbound freight for the prior year quarter. There continues to be margin pressure felt across the beverage industry, and we have not been immune to these impacts. With the expansion of higher costs of international cans, A majority of these cost increases have been offset by efficiencies of scale through our raw materials production, full load shipping, reducing the miles on cases with our six orbit warehouse model expansion last fall. Our product channel sales mix has also impacted margins as our club channel revenue has extraordinarily had lower margin levels due to secondary repack facilities, which are required. With this rapid growth in the channel, which contributed over 26 million in revenue in the first quarter, It has increased overall margin pressure, and we have initiated several changes to improve margins in this channel, including the rework, working with co-packers and our partners to further drive costs out of the system. Overall, the company still expects to cycle through the remaining of our international cans by the end of the third quarter, with margins then moving back up towards the mid-40s based on channel mix. Our first quarter 2022 fill rates were experiencing about roughly around a 97% fill rate and we expect to maintain these normalized levels, even with our accelerated growth rates due to optimization of software improvements. warehouse expansion to our six orbit infrastructure model put in place during the third quarter and an inventory expansion, which has been key to the spring resets load ends with new accounts expanding and optimization. of our national distribution network, as well as Sam's Club, Circle K, and the Walmart expansions, just to name a few. Some additional highlights for the first quarter. Our domestic revenues of $123.5 million was driven by accelerated triple-digit growth traditional channels of trade, expansion with world-class retailers, and further activation and growth with our distribution partners. Direct store delivery, our DSD network, grew approximately 395% in our distributor revenues when compared to the prior year. Our vending channel grew 296% approximately in the first quarter and drove over $2 million in incremental revenue. We are now in over 12,000 vending and micromarkets, placement since the first quarter of 2021, increasing our number of locations by 96% and expect that growth to continue through the rest of the year. And our fitness vitamin specialty channel, in addition to now being the number one drink at Lifetime Fitness in the quarter, we officially launched with Solid Core at 70 locations. GNC also expanded their offerings in their corporate sets, and our partnership partnered with Cycle Bar, which is live with franchisees ordering product. Our mass club channel continued to accelerate following the rollout of the 561 Costco locations expanded in Q2 of 2021. Costco's first quarter established a new record in revenue growing over 100% for Q1 of 2021, and we continue to gain traction in the online sales platform on Costco.com. We initiated a sell-in with over a full nationwide sales rollout with Sam's Club at 589 locations, and we also saw significant additional opportunities we see ahead in further penetrating the club channel with BJ's in 2022. In Walmart, we expanded our store count of flavor assortment, as well as gaining front-end coolers and end cap activity in select locations. And in Target, we have a chain-wide end cap program, which we expanded our availabilities and also with additional cooler placements and in-store placements throughout the first quarter. In the convenience channel, our convenience store locations increased by 88% from the first quarter of 2021, and now total just under 64,000 locations. We began our national Circle K launch, which will be completed by the second quarter and total over 6,000 new locations upon completion, second only to our overall 8,000 locations with 7-Elevens in terms of total store size in the convenience store channel, with 7-Eleven and Circle K now being our two largest chains in that channel. Racetrack was fully converted to DSD in the first quarter, and we expanded our shelf placements through approximately between three quarters of a shelf to a full shelf in all locations. The convenience store channel has the largest growth opportunity and addition expansion indoors in 2021, and we expect that growth to continue in 2022. Industry-backed third-party data continues to show accelerated growth metrics, and we are confident that Celsius will continue to drive sales even higher as we increase our ACV across channels through additional launches with new chains and transitioning existing accounts to our DSD network for better optimization and in-product placements. Consumer demand for Celsius accelerated through the first quarter of 2022 and as of April of 2022 to record levels, with the most recent reported Nielsen scan data as of April 9, 2022, showing Celsius sales of up 216% year-over-year for two weeks, 215% for the four weeks, 230% for the 12 weeks with a 3.4 share, according to Nielsen data, of the energy category. This compares the energy category, which grew 6% on the two weeks, 11% on 12 weeks over the same period. Celsius also saw an average price increase of 17.4 over the 52-week period. On Amazon, Celsius is the second largest energy drink with 18.23% share of the energy category, 6.6 share ahead of Red Bull at 11.6 share, and 7.7 share behind Monster at a 25.9% share. Approximately, that's four weeks ending April 23, 2022. That's Stackline data, energy drink category, total U.S. With this, sales hit record quarterly revenues for Amazon, which totaled $13.8 million, up 74% from the first quarter of 2021. We continue to see acceleration through all channels, and are now beginning to see the additional lift from the conversion of accounts to our national DSD network. This delivered growth of 395% in our distributor revenues when compared to the prior year. We secured additional distribution agreements during the quarter, further expanding our availability. The company now has completed a nationwide network, which now services approximately 99% of the population. Our rollout of Celsius branded coolers in the first quarter was expanded with over 700 coolers placed and now over 1,900 coolers placed nationwide in key retailers. We have also implemented a comprehensive tracking tool to leverage growth acceleration metrics with retailers. In addition, over 400 barrel coolers were placed in key locations at premium retailers, and we anticipate additional cooler placements to continue through 2022. Our U.S. door count now exceeds 140,000 locations nationally, growing over 49,000 doors or 53% from 93,000 from Q1 2021. On our co-packer front, we continue to expand our partners and scale at existing locations, improving our line time priority. Our total U.S. co-packer footprint now totals 13 that are active, which will help protect for future out of stocks and support our growth that's ahead. In Europe, sales totaled $8.5 million, a decrease of approximately 18% as a result of translation costs, as well as timing of trade campaigns, timing of flavor launches, as well as supply chain delays. And we expect this to continue to optimize in the second and third quarter. Amazon EU, beginning with Great Britain, which launched with three flavors of Celsius and six flavors of our fast protein snack portfolio, and Germany launched with three flavors of Celsius. We expect additional EU launches to take place through 2022 to include France and Italy momentarily. Additionally, revenues are small today, but we see tremendous opportunities ahead. In China, we maintain a licensing royalty model in the market with fixed royalty revenues through 2024, which then becomes a volume-based model, but no lower than the minimum royalties of $2.2 million. In our other international market locations, driving growth includes Malaysia, Hong Kong, South Korea, and Singapore, with initial markets penetrating, as well as future opportunities discussions in Japan, Australia, and Taiwan. We continue to focus on our approach in these markets to find top distributors to partner with to drive revenue, profitable revenue, and growth opportunities. Now moving to the marketing front. On a marketing front, we continue to activate, target new and existing consumers where they live, work, and play, building meaningful, emotional connections through our robust, integrated marketing programs. In the first quarter, we continue to activate through our Celsius Live Fit Tour, and we kicked off a Celsius Essential Vibes Tour, which initially kicked off during the Super Bowl at Shaq's Funhouse, which was a great event. In addition, we also partnered with Shaun White around the Olympics and did a lot of activation, and we also launched a great flavor, a mango passion fruit in 7-Eleven nationwide, which was a very successful launch for us, just to name a few items which we accomplished. We continue to activate and connect with consumers in a meaningful way, bringing new consumers to the Celsius portfolio and energy category. We are driving a leading growth in the energy category across all channels, expanding the demographics by bringing in an industry-leading percentage of consumers from outside and new to category while accelerating our share and growing the energy category. We have committed the resources, both personnel and operational infrastructure, to maximize our opportunity. I'll now turn the call over to Jared Langens, our Chief Financial Officer, for his prepared remarks. Jared?

Thank you, John. Before I turn to the first quarter financial overview, I wanted to thank John and the entire team at Celsius for all the support they have provided over the last few weeks as we wrapped up our 10Q and I transitioned into the CFO role. The company is very well positioned and I am excited to join the team as the business continues to accelerate and we progress on the many opportunities ahead of us. And looking back at our last 10K, we had noted some internal control weaknesses that we would be remediating this year. Although it has been less than two months since the issuance of our 10K, I am pleased with our progress thus far and we are confident that we will be able to remediate these controls by the end of the year. We are building out our IT and internal audit teams as well as adding additional financial resources to our operations and sales teams in support of our ongoing growth and expansion. Turning to our first quarter financial results, our first quarter revenue for the three months ended March 31st, 2022 was approximately $133.4 million, an increase of $83.4 million or 167% from $50 million in the prior year. As expected, the growth was driven by our North American operations, where first quarter revenues were $123.5 million an increase of $84.5 million, or 217% from the prior year quarter. The balance of the revenues for the 2022 quarter were mainly attributed to European operations, which generated revenue of $8.5 million, slightly below the prior year quarter primarily due to foreign exchange rates, raw material sourcing, and timing. Asian revenues, which include royalty revenues from our China licensee, contributed an additional $1 million, an increase of 80% from approximately $500,000 in the prior year. Other international markets generated approximately half a million dollars in revenues during the quarter, an increase of 256% versus the prior year quarter. The total increase in revenue is largely attributable to increases in sales volume as opposed to increases in product pricing. The primary factors behind the increase in North American sales volume were related to continued strong triple-digit growth in traditional distribution channels, combined with an increase in and optimization of our products' presence in world-class retailers such as SKU Editions, Cold Placement, and NCAP displays. Additionally, the continued expansion of our direct store delivery network resulted in significant growth of 395% in distributor revenues when compared to the prior year quarter. Gross profit for the first quarter of 2022 increased by approximately $33.3 million, or 162%, to $53.9 million. Gross profit margins decreased slightly to 40.4% for the quarter from 41.1% in the prior year quarter. The increase in gross profit dollars is related to increases in volume, while the decrease in gross profit margins is mainly related to higher raw material costs, customer mix, and inflation across our supply chains. Sales and marketing expenses for the three months ended March 31, 2022 were approximately $31.6 million, an increase of $19.6 million, or 164% from $12 million for the three months ended March 31, 2021. This increase was primarily attributable to higher marketing investment activities, which resulted in an increase of $9.1 million when compared to the prior year quarter. Additionally, employee costs increased by approximately $1.4 million from the prior year quarter as we continue to invest in this area in order to have the proper infrastructure to support our growth. Lastly, storage and distribution expenses as well as broker costs accounted for the remainder of the increase in this area in the amount of $9.1 million from the 2021 quarter to the 2022 quarter. As a percentage of sales, sales and marketing was 23% of revenue in the first quarter of 2022 compared to 24% in the first quarter of 2021. General administrative expenses for the three months ended March 31st, 2022 were approximately $12.2 million, an increase of $4.4 million, or 56%, from $7.8 million for the three months ended March 31st, 2021. This increase was primarily attributable to other administrative expenses, which drove an increase of $2.4 million or 116% increase when compared to the prior year quarter. The other administrative expenses are mainly related to increases in audit costs, legal expenses, bad debt reserves, and insurance costs. Additionally, employee costs for the three months ended March 31st, 2022 reflect an increase of $1.2 million or an increase of 76.2% as investments in this area are being made to support our higher business volumes being generated by our commercial and operational teams. We also saw a $700,000 increase in stock option expense when compared to the prior year quarter. Management deems it very important to motivate employees by providing them ownership in the business in order to promote over-performance, which translates into the continued success of our business based on key performance attributes. Depreciation and amortization increases were minor at approximately $100,000 when compared to the prior year quarter. As a total percent of revenue, G&A costs decreased to 9% of sales for the three months ended March 31, 2022, compared to 16% in the prior year as we were able to leverage G&A against our growth. Net income for the three months ended March 31st, 2022 was $6.7 million or 9 cents per share based on a weighted average of 75.2 million shares outstanding and dilutive earnings per share of 9 cents based on a fully diluted weighted average of 78.3 million shares outstanding. In comparison, for the three months ended March 31st, 2021, the company had net income of approximately $600,000, or one cent per share based on a weighted average of 72.5 million shares outstanding and a dilutive earnings per share of one cent based on a fully diluted weighted average of 76.9 million shares outstanding. Focusing on liquidity, as of March 31st, 2022 and December 31st, 2021, we had cash of approximately $25.5 million and $16.3 million respectively. and working capital or net current assets of approximately $186.5 million and $169.2 million, respectively, with no long-term debt. Cash flows provided by operating activities totaled approximately $9.1 million for the three months ended March 31, 2022, which compares to $13.3 million of net cash used in operating activities for the three months ended March 31, 2021. The approximately $22 million increase in cash generation was driven by an increase in net income and improvements in working capital. Working capital improvements were driven primarily by the stabilization of our inventory, as we have established optimal levels to service the demand of our products, as well as timing of accounts payable, offset in part by increases of accounts receivable, driven by the significant growth in our business. Our current growing cash position is together with the expected results from operations, should provide us with sufficient cash to operate our business as we continue to operate inventory levels and deliver strong growth throughout the year. This concludes our prepared remarks. Operator, you may now open the call for questions. Thank you.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, at this time we will be conducting a question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question, you may press star 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star 2 if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star key. In the interest of time, if you could please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up so we may get to everyone's questions. Our first question comes from the line of Kevin Grundy with Jefferies. Please proceed with your question.

Great. Thanks. Good evening, guys, or good afternoon, and congratulations on a really strong result. John, why don't we start, I guess, with sort of the state of the consumer. You know, your business is obviously doing extremely well, given the significant expansion of distribution, as well as some really nice improvement in velocity. The Nielsen data still looks very good for the category. Are you picking up anything from distributors or anything perhaps from your sales folks in any geographies that gives you any concern around the state of the consumer? And then, you know, this kind of dovetails into a broader question around pricing. And it's not lost on you for a moment that Monster moved on that, which is good news for the category. Maybe just comment on that sort of twofold, stay the consumer, and then given the likelihood the category moves with monster pricing, any pause with that given what is viewed to be perhaps an increasingly fragile consumer. So sorry for the long-winded question, John.

No, no, Kevin, great question. I think when you look at it, there's a lot of discussions going on, right, in regards to what's going to happen with the consumer, what's taking place with the consumer. And, you know, like any of us, we're all very concerned. So, I mean, there's talk about recession now. It looks like the, you know, the inflation that we're all experiencing is not transitory. So everyone's making adjustments on that. You know, we have spoken prior calls about, you know, doing promotional strategies. And we've been, you know, hesitant on taking overall frontline pricing. We did initiate a front pricing. A frontline price increase, which we put out notices on April 1st, which will slowly take into effect over the next couple quarters. But that started to be implemented as of April 1st. So those are things we're working on. You know, the consumer sentiment seems to be quite mixed, especially with the news and what's happening in the markets most recently. We do feel there's opportunities for Celsius to have a premium position and maintain a premium position in the category. Due to the pricing elasticity and the testing that we've done with some of our promotional strategies, we felt that we were able to take price, which will offset a lot of the inflationary costs that we have been experiencing in the beverage category overall. Okay. You know, we're watching it closely. This will give us additional leeway where we can further adjust on promotional strategies on a go forward basis. But we do see, you know, overall the category continues to grow. We're watching it. Our growth is continuing. We think there's a lot of opportunity ahead based on where our pricing is at. You know, we do think we're in a pretty good position given that we are not an over luxury position product or offering.

Got it. Quick point of clarification, then one for Jared. The amount of the pricing that you took on April 1st, was that across the entire portfolio? And what was the amount?

Yeah, we haven't, you know, we did take frontline price. We haven't disclosed, we're not going to disclose the percentage of the increase. That is something we're working on. It is a, I mean, it has been implemented within the frontline pricing portfolio and will continue to optimize. But we're not, at this point, we're not going to disclose the actual percentage that we took. We are taking a sufficient amount of price in order to protect the increases that we're experiencing in the inflationary environment.

Okay, that's good news. A quick one for Jared, and then I'll pass it on. So, Jared, again, congrats again. And understanding it's really early days, I think perhaps maybe just some early observation in terms of what you see as opportunity, whether this is around return optimization tools or SKU management, profitability, working capital, et cetera. Any comments there would be helpful, and I'll pass it on. Thanks.

Yeah, thanks, Kevin. I think early opportunities are really important. you know, really blocking and tackling. The company's grown significantly over the last two years, so really coming in and on the finance side, looking at people, processes, and technology. So we don't want to be disruptive to the business, but I think there's a lot of opportunity from a data analytic perspective and from a finance perspective to really help the operations and sales teams in terms of analyzing the data and building out models and different things like that. The team has done a great job obviously doing that, but I think there's different processes we can implement to become more effective and efficient at what we do as well as some different tools from a technology perspective so that we can do even better than we have done. So I think that's probably the – there's some low-hanging fruit from that perspective. And really it's just about building a team from a G&A perspective that can support the business as we continue to grow and excel. Very good. Thanks, guys. Good luck. Thank you.

Our next question comes from the line of Camille Garjawala with Credit Suisse. Please proceed with your question.

Hi, guys. First question on club stores and kind of all the incremental growth from the club stores. Are you also delivering DSD to clubs? And then maybe if you could just talk a little bit about what Velocity looks like there versus some of your other channels.

Thank you, Paul. In regards to the Club channel, it's been quite surprising for us. If you look at the last several quarters there, you see the growth that we delivered in Q1. Costco has been just an extreme success for the company, and we are told we're one of the top-selling beverages in the energy set at Costco. So lots of opportunity to still grow and scale, especially leverage their online platforms, which we're working on. We do have some DSD. You know, mainly the business is direct at this point. But, you know, I think the big opportunity for us in the club panel is to further leverage and optimize Sam's Club and then also through 2022 opportunities that lie ahead with BJ's. So, you know, it's a great channel. What's interesting, it didn't affect our other channels, which are continuing to grow. When you look at the growth that we saw on Amazon as well as in all of our channels, it's great.

Okay, great. And then, well, I noticed your 10Q is out already. So that's a little faster than last quarter. Since it's out, maybe I can just ask about the freight expense. Maybe as I read it all too fast, but it looked like last year it was 3.2 million and only 4.2 million this year. Is that, given how much you grew, I might've expected that to look quite different. And I'm just curious, Is this linked to something related to timing, something about the orbit model? I'm just curious if there's just anything that might skew us a little bit.

Yeah, no, no, great question. I'll throw it over to Jared.

Yeah, it's something that we look into really because we noticed the same thing over the last six weeks or so. But Paul and his team have done a great job managing freight in the first quarter. We did have a few opportunities that we took advantage of during the quarter and we benefited from. Some of that is the mix, so Costco as an example, and also different kinds of packaging and growth at other specific customers where we're able to really leverage that orbit model that we've created so that we were able to use local freight in many instances, which was much – in terms of pricing per load, it was significantly reduced relative to what we were paying. So we did see a lot of good – call it or lower costs come in from a freight perspective we're going to continue to utilize that that opportunity but it will vary depending upon the the volume the packaging and where the growth is happening but with the growth in in stores like costco where we're closer to the warehousing and the production sites and where we can use local freight that will allow us to save some cost got it thank you and then maybe just um

One more quick one, getting back to club stores. Is there anything timing there that we should be aware of as it relates to just, you know, whether it's filling inventory or anything like that? I just want to make sure I don't get kind of a future comp wrong in any way.

The revenue at Costco just seemed to be standard recurring revenue now that we've been in there, you know, a couple quarters. Now, when you look at the sales club that took place in the quarter, that was a fill-in. But we did receive a reorder as well in the quarter. So it was a fill-in and a reorder. So I think we had a lot to learn about Sam's Club and the opportunity that lies there. We're just in the initial phases. I think we'll have a better understanding once we get through the second quarter on maybe what does that initial run rate look like. Keep in mind when you go into a new retailer, historically it has taken us some time to get up to ramped levels or that continual run rate. although Costco seems to be a lot of anomaly and some of the new retailers were entering now just due to the brand awareness, you know, sales are turning at a fairly good velocity level. So a lot to learn there in the club channel. We'll see how I think we'll have a better look at, at the end of the second quarter with the performance of Sam's club.

Okay, great. Thank you guys.

Thank you.

Our next, our next question comes from the line of Jeff and center in with B Riley, please proceed with your question.

Hi, everyone, and let me add my congratulations. Just since we're on the topic of club stores, just wonder if you could speak more about the opportunity with BJs, the status of BJs, what kind of the next steps are there and what we should look for.

Yeah, I mean, we're in some BJs currently. Jeff, I thank you. The team's worked really great on the accomplishments. I mean, it was a great quarter all around. Team's working really hard, and like I said on the call in my prepared remarks, the amount of new team members joining the team is just really exciting time. So we're just continuing to get better each and every quarter. But in regards to the BJ's opportunity right now, we're testing in some stores and regionally, but you know, we feel pretty confident we'll be able to hopefully get a, you know, a larger rollout here you know, within 2000, you know, this year, it should, we should definitely get reset throughout this year. I think initial store tests have been positive and, But that's all to be dependent on the buyer's decisions. But due to the success at Costco and initial success at Sam's Club, we feel pretty confident about that. So just a little bit premature on where those revenues will come in at. We're also looking at some additional pack size configurations to try to better optimize the margins for that business. And then we'll look at the mix as we go forward. Lots of opportunity. Thank you.

Okay, and then just sort of, I guess, a follow-up to that. Just thinking about your, you know, overall take on spring resets, maybe you can just touch on that.

Yeah, spring resets. We have an amazing key accounts team and actually had two individuals that started this week on our team as well as we further expand. You know, the spring resets, you know, like I said, we got Circle K, about 6,000 locations. Some divisions were delayed. They have about 13 divisions. So you'll start to see us in a variety of locations in the Circle K divisions today. But they will also be continuing to further roll out over the next several weeks, you know, due to really a lot of our – there's been a lot of delays with labor shortages on some of these resets. So some of these retailers have pushed out their reset delays due to labor shortages. So we're working on that. But we think we're going to have a great reset. I talked about Walmart expansion earlier, Target. We're getting a lot of interest from existing accounts where we're going to see additional flavors on. We launched in the first quarter with the mango passion fruit. It was such a great success. If anyone has not tried the product, please go to 7-Eleven and try it. It tastes amazing. It's going to be a winner for us. And we have some new flavors coming out in Q2 that we just launched. So I think it's going to be a great summer as we head into summer beverage season. So we're well-positioned. You're starting to see that DSD network really come alive as the team further activates them. We get better distribution, better placement, and most importantly, get it cold, which we know we have a winning portfolio when it's cold.

Okay, great. Thanks for taking my questions and continued success.

Thank you, Jeff.

Our next question comes from the line of Mark Asherton with Steeple. Please proceed with your question. Okay, I think he might have hung up. Our next question comes from the line of Jeffrey Cohen with Lattenberg-Dalman. Please proceed with your question.

Hi, John and Jared. How are you?

Excellent, Jeff.

So I think, John, you were referring to strawberry lemonade and arctic vibe, which is my question. It looks like 38 SKUs now. Can you talk a little bit about the launch cadence anticipated for the balance of the year and then Anything to call out specifically on go-to sticks, either the regulars or the heats?

Yeah, no, that's a great question. The strawberry lemonade, I'm being told that it's probably the best-tasting energy drink out there. So those are really excited about that this summer. It's going to be a great summer launch. And the Arctic Vibe, which is coming out in the second quarter, brings one of our expands our vibe portfolio, which is performing extremely well on the convenience channel. It's a little bit more inviting fun. We've got some great experiential marketing programs behind it for the summer. So we think that's going to be a great hit. It is a frozen berry flavor profile. So we're excited about that. So we'll have about three flavors there coming to, to retail over the next several months. And when you look at our, our on-the-go sticks, which is quite interesting, we're seeing a lot of demand for the on-the-go sticks and, Although it currently represents a smaller portion of our revenue, we did launch our heat on-the-go sticks, which is now available in a variety of retailers plus Walmart and nationwide. So lots of opportunities on the on-the-go. It is a portion of the core portfolio. And we continue to bring great innovative flavors to the category. Our marketing team and innovation team is doing a great job. So keep your eyes out for some great new flavors coming.

That's super. And as a follow-up, I wonder if you could call out anything in the international business outside of Nordics and China, any specific territories to call out, which are or could be perhaps, you know, million-plus territories this year?

Yeah, well, I mean, with a great success in North America, you know, we're getting a lot of interest from some A, you know, top-tier distributors and other markets. I think it's too preliminary to really, you know, talk about those markets right now, but we're getting a lot of interest from tier one distributors and distribution partners that, you know, upon putting the right structure together could allow us to further expand and drive profitable growth as we've talked about as we look at international and further expansion opportunities. So we see a lot of great markets, the same health and wellness trends in the U.S. or in Europe and in Asia. So we have a global opportunity here.

Super. Okay. Thanks for taking the questions. Nice quarter.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Mark Asherson with Stiefel. Please proceed with your question.

Let's try that again. Can you guys hear me?

Excellent, Mark.

Ah, perfect. So I wanted to go back on pricing, John. If you take a look at the scanner data since April 1, it doesn't look like your pricing has gone up. So is there some sort of lag that we should be taking into account as they're offsets of the reduced promotional activity that you were doing in lieu of pricing changes? Prior to that, and just might as well sort of related to the pricing, was there any sort of selling in the March quarter ahead of the price increase?

Yeah, well, I think when you look at just that period in April 1, what you're seeing there, it's benchmarking off the prior year. So during that same time, you know, timeframe, you're seeing some pricing adjustments which took place. We have reduced a lot of our – you know, promotions in regards to, you know, the buy twos, buy one, get a variety of strategies there. The pricing, frontline pricing we have taken is not going to be seen in retail for likely, you know, really impacted on the scanner data until like right around the third quarter. So we started to take frontline pricing. It is a process that we've implemented and it's going to take some time to set, but we did notify the mark, several of our key customers that, and retailers, which you have to provide notice for as of April 1st. So you're not starting to see that in the scanner data that you're looking at today, but we did start to initiate a price increase as of April 1st.

Got it. So to be clear, we're going to see that in the data starting at what point in 3Q?

You'll likely start to start seeing that in the data starting in the third quarter and then continuing through the fourth quarter.

Got it. Okay. And then Maybe just shifting to your comments and some of the work that we've done on the incrementality of both you as well as performance energy brands, is there anything you can kind of point to in terms of how much, keep it to you specifically if you want, in terms of incremental consumption or incremental consumers to the energy drink category versus sourcing share from more traditional players like Monster and Red Bull?

Yeah, I think that's the great opportunity we have with Celsius. And that's really the message we're providing retailers and our key customers. And what we're seeing in our key customers is we're not cannibalizing the sales of other leading players. So we are incremental. And when you look at the category growth, we brought in over that time period, contributed about 38% of the growth during that period. So We are bringing in a new consumer into the energy category. We're helping the category further expand. Our demo has been 50-50 male-female, so very much incremental to the category. There is some cannibalization slightly that you're seeing, but the majority of it is all new to category is what we're really seeing with some of our data.

Great. That's helpful. Thanks, guys.

Thank you, Mark.

Our next question comes from the line of Anthony Vendetti with Maxim Group. Please proceed with your question.

Hi, good afternoon. This is actually Jeremy on the line for Anthony. I have two quick questions for me. I know you mentioned on the call that you said the convenience store, you think that's your greatest growth opportunity. Maybe could you talk a little more to where do you see that growth coming from within the convenience store? Is that within current stores you're in, expanding the growth there or expanding stores in general?

Yeah, Jeremy, great question. I mean, you look at the opportunity for us, you know, and we've talked about this before on a variety of calls. I mean, really what we're doing, we're really backdooring the energy category when you look at it. The company has performed very well on Amazon, you know, the e-com, the club channel, grocery, mass, extremely well in club at CBS. And the next frontier really is the convenience channel where 70% of energy drinks are sold. So The team has done a great job. We talked about expansion at Racetrack, 7-Eleven. You look at Circle K. So by no means are we tapped out with the number of doors to capture in the convenience channel. We're just scratching the surface and just getting really in position in many of the leading convenience chains today. And, you know, you look at the... like Loves and Flying J as well, we just recently entered. So lots of opportunities, not only in expanding the ATV in the convenience channel, but also expanding the offerings. You know, when you look at the number of offerings that Celsius currently has versus some of the leading players and the leading competition. So we have a long runway ahead in that category for sure, we feel.

Okay, great. And then just one more shifting to gross margins. I know, Nicole, you also mentioned that you have a lot of initiatives to offset the inflationary costs, and this is, I think, before you even, you know, you took price, or you mentioned that you took price. Is there any more room in those initiatives for, you know, to help bump up the gross margins, or has that all been, you know, baked in?

Yeah, I mean, the challenge we have now, and we've talked about it as well, is these imported cans the company has to cycle through. So the good news is that all the cans that we originally imported are now arriving. The final cans have arrived into the U.S. So now it's about flushing them or using them up and flowing them through the system. So in Q2, we did have a good portion of international can mix. In our first quarter, we had a good portion of international can mix that was flowing through our cost of goods. In Q2, we anticipate the percentage of international cans to increase, which will further put somewhat pressure on our margins from Q1. And then we expect to use up those international cans by the end of the third quarter and get back to more of a normalized gross profit level somewhere in the mid-40s by the fourth quarter and into 2023. We are working to further improve upon that, but that's really kind of what we're looking at today based on the current environment. We are analyzing and optimizing the six-orbit model, as Jared mentioned, to seeing the opportunities on local delivery savings versus the long-haul rates. And then there's just so many other variables out there today. With aluminum alloy, you're seeing aluminum alloy come down in the most recent week. Prior to that, that's been going up substantially. So lots of movement there that we're looking at, but that's kind of what we're seeing now.

Okay, great. Thanks a lot. I'll hop on the queue.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Sean McGowan with Roth. Please proceed with your question.

Thank you. First, John, if I could ask you to clarify something you spoke kind of quickly on in your opening remarks when you were talking about Europe and the decline in some markets there. I think you said you would continue to see optimization. So can you clarify whether or not we should expect to see those revenues turn around and be positive year over year or Are you saying continue to see some negative pressure there?

Yeah, I mean, I think we're still looking at, you know, we had the team in Florida last week going over the strategies. I think we're still looking at, you know, somewhere of a 10% to 15% revenue growth rate for the year. At this point, we have had some delays in the first quarter associated with timing. There's also a lot of logistical changes with railways being shut down due to the activity in Europe. And also the protein portfolio had shortages of raw materials. So we've had a lot of things that impacted the first quarter. We're watching it closely for the second quarter. We've got a great program, some new flavor launches we'll be working on. And I think we're, you know, there's a lot of opportunities in the European market. And it's been a little bit slower than initially anticipated, but we do see a long runway ahead.

Okay. Thanks. And then if I can ask two other quickies. What's the outlook for your inventory levels relative to sales? I think you had said at the end of the fourth quarter that, you know, that was unusually high and you would expect to see that coming down. Obviously, you know, really strong sales performance. But would you expect that, you know, kind of ratio of inventory to sales to come down further from current levels?

Yeah, I mean, right now when you look at our inventory and you look at the queue, I mean, we're sitting at, you know, we did reduce inventory levels by about $6 million today. you did have additional cans of those international cans moved from a deposit into inventory because we physically took possession. And then we finalized the purchase of the international cans we committed to, uh, when they, we had the can shortages that took place. So, you know, we're going to be cycling through those, um, which I think is about right around 20 million or so, uh, that's on the books currently. Um, you know, I think really good inventory levels, um, and, uh, which is allowing us to really service customers on a 97% fill rate. We have a new distribution coming on. We're entering beverage selling season. And you are starting to hear about shortages in supply chains. So when we talk to a lot of our suppliers, there is talk about shortages again that have been talked about. So we feel we're in a good position. We have good inventory levels on raw. We're watching the markets very closely, and we'll take action as needed.

Okay, thank you. And then just to touch on the price increase that one of your competitors announced, kind of get a kick out of them saying, you know, we're taking price up, what, 6% in four months. You know, do you expect your customers to kind of load up on a lot of monster product between now and then that could clog the channel a little bit?

I mean, anytime you do a price increase, you know, you do get some load-ins there. I would assume 6% is a good return that you could make in a couple months if that's capable. But, you know, we'll have to see how that – there's challenges each and every day in this business. So it's a street war. We've got some really good distributors that will make sure we're housing our position. We don't feel there's going to be any slowdown in our trajectory or the opportunity we lie ahead. We've got really great team members, like I said, and distributors and partners, and we think we're in a good position. Great. Thank you.

That brings us to the end of our question and answer session. I'd like to hand the call back over to John Feeley for closing remarks.

Thank you. On behalf of the company and just like thank you everyone for their continued support and interest. Our results demonstrates our products are gaining considerable momentum as we capitalize on today's global health and wellness trends and the transformation taking place in the energy category. Our active lifestyle position is a global position with mass appeal. We're building upon our core business and leveraging opportunities and deploying our best practices. We have a winning portfolio strategy and team and a large rapidly growing market that consumers want. We believe we'll be able to navigate through the challenges ahead, and we will continue to position and thrive in the transformation of today's energy category. In addition, I'd like to thank all our investors for their continued support and confidence in our team. Thank you, everyone. Have a great day. Stay healthy. Stay fit.

Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's teleconference. Thank you for your participation. You may disconnect your lines at this time, and have a wonderful day.