The Vita Coco Company, Inc.

Hello, and welcome to the Vitacoco Company's third quarter 2024 earnings conference call. My name is Steven. I'll be coordinating your call today. Following the prepared remarks, we will open the call to your questions with instructions to be given at that time. I'll now hand the call over to Alex Liskum with ICR.

Thank you, and welcome to the Vitacoco Company third quarter 2024 earnings results conference call. Today's call is being recorded. With us are Mr. Mike Kerbin, Executive Chairman, Martin Roper, Chief Executive Officer, and Corey Baker, Chief Financial Officer. By now, everyone should have access to the company's third quarter earnings release issued earlier today. This information is available on the investor relations section of the Vitacoco Company's website at investors.vitacococompany.com. Also, on the website, there is an accompanying presentation of our commercial and financial performance results. Certain comments made on this call include forward-looking statements, which are subject to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements are based on management's current expectations and beliefs concerning future events and are subject to several risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in these forward-looking statements. Please refer to today's press releases and other filings with the SEC for a more detailed discussion of the risk factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in any forward-looking statements made today. Also, during the call, we will use some non-GAAP financial measures as we describe the business performance. Our FCC filings, as well as the earnings press release and supplementary earnings presentation, provide reconciliations of the non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures and are available on our website as well. Additionally, please note that within the quarter, the company began using Cercana's expanded NuloPlus retail scanner data, which offers 15% more expanded coverage of the U.S. retail landscape, including greater coverage of retailers with larger private label programs, and results in a reported category size approximately 40% larger than the prior reported data set. All investor deck exhibits and script references have been updated to reflect the new data set, unless otherwise noted. And with that, it is my pleasure to now turn the call over to Mike Curbin, our co-founder and executive chairman.

Thanks, Alex, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today to discuss our third quarter 2024 financial results and our performance expectations for the balance of 2024. I want to start by thanking all of our colleagues across the globe for our continued strong performance. and for their commitment to the Vitacoco Company and to our mission of creating ethical, sustainable, better-for-you beverages that uplift our communities and do right by our planet. Our priorities of driving growth in the coconut water category are visible in the healthy retail scans in our major markets, where coconut water remains one of the fastest-growing categories in the beverage aisle, delivering double-digit growth. Year-to-date through end of September, according to Sertana, the Vitacoco brand grew 8% in retail dollars in the U.S. and grew 19% in the U.K. As we previously discussed, we were hampered by significant inventory shortages during the quarter due to limited ocean container availability earlier this summer, which resulted in a slowdown in scan growth. Our team, our distributors, and our retail partners did an incredible job weathering this storm and we are quickly recovering and starting to better fill consumer demand for our products. For the last four weeks, as visible in our investor deck slide five, branded scans quickly rebounded, and we believe that this is a sign that demand for our products and the category as a whole are stronger than ever. In addition to strong branded retail growth, we've seen strong demand for private label coconut water. Our private label business remains a strategically important aspect of our business and allows us to benefit more fully from our category growth initiatives. We should see our private label coconut water shipment trends improve as we put the supply chain challenges of this summer behind us. Our priorities for growth remain unchanged, adding households, expanding occasions, acceleration of our international businesses, and innovations. Our commercial initiatives around Vitacoco Multipacks, Vitacoco Farmer's Organic, and Vitacoco Juice continue to perform very well as seen in U.S. Sertana scans that we highlight in our investor deck. One highlight is Vitacoco Juice that is gaining share at retail with 39% growth year-to-date. The introduction of our Vitacoco Coconut 1-liter pack into a key convenience store chain this year has been incredibly successful. We believe that it is now one of the highest performing items in their juice store. Our newest innovation, Vitacoco Treats, a delicious and refreshing coconut milk-based beverage, has produced promising results at a key retailer through the summer, despite challenges on supply, which are now behind us. Given its strong performance, we decided to broaden the availability for 2025 to more retailers and are receiving positive indications of interest from these retailers. We're excited about the initial reception for VitaCoco treats and for the future of innovative coconut milk-based beverages, which could offer us another path for long-term growth. Our international business remains healthy, with strong performance in Europe led by the UK and Germany. In Germany, the category has grown over 50% over the last year, according to Nielsen, and we are now the leading branded coconut water at three times the size of our closest competitor. We intend to continue to invest in international markets where we have a strong brand position and can benefit from driving category growth. Despite continued volatility in the global supply chain, we are encouraged by the recovery in our inventory availability that we started seeing in late September and which has continued into October. While we still have a lot of work to do, I expect that product on retailer shelves and in distributor warehouses will We'll start returning to normal levels soon, and I'm excited for a strong finish to 2024 and what I believe will be a very exciting 2025. And now I'll turn the call over to our Chief Executive Officer, Martin Roper.