The Vita Coco Company, Inc.

Good day and welcome to the Vitacoco Company first quarter 2025 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1-1 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, 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 first speaker, Mr. John Mills, Managing Partner at ICR. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and welcome to the Vitacoco Company First Quarter 2025 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 first quarter earnings release issued earlier today. This information is available on the investor relations section of the Vitacoco Company's website at investors.thevitacococompany.com. Also on the website, there's 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 release and other filings with the SEC for 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 our business performance. Our SEC 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. And with that, it is my pleasure to turn the call over to Mike Kerbin, our co-founder and executive chairman.

Thanks, John, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today to discuss our first quarter financial results and our expectations for the balance of 2025. I want to start by thanking all of our colleagues across the globe for our continued strong performance and for their commitment to the Vitacruco Company and to our mission of creating ethical, sustainable, better-for-you beverages that uplift our communities and do right by our planet. As we start a new year, I thought I would reiterate our priorities for delivering long-term shareholder growth. built on the foundation of Vitacoco, our leading coconut water brand, and a strong diversified supply chain that has consistently supported our long-term growth even in the face of a pandemic and transportation disruptions. Our growth strategy has been and continues to be consistently built on four core pillars. First, we plan to grow our Vitacoco brand by growing the coconut water category and gaining share in our core markets. Second, We will innovate around our core vitacoco coconut water offerings to increase the occasions and appeal of our beverages beyond pure coconut water. Vitacoco pressed coconut water, vitacoco coconut juice, vitacoco farmers organic, vitacoco coconut milk, and vitacoco treats are several recent successful examples of this strategy. Third, we strive to grow internationally in markets where we believe that we can build a winning vitacoco presence by investing in our brand and driving coconut water category growth. Our best example of this is Germany, who doubled their volume sold relative to the same quarter last year. I believe that we have a long runway for growth by successfully executing these strategies. Finally, we will continue to explore innovation in adjacent categories to coconut water with a long-term view to building additional branded platforms and also look at M&A opportunities where we can add significant value and attractive returns for our shareholders. Against these priorities, we're seeing terrific returns on our efforts. Coconut water remains one of the fastest-growing beverage categories in the beverage aisle, growing 23% in the U.S. and 19% in the U.K. in Q1, based on Cercana data. This, coupled with the acceleration of the emerging German market, has resulted in very strong global net sales performance for our first quarter and, similarly, strong reported gross profit, net income, and adjusted EBITDA. In the first quarter of 2025, according to Cercana, Vitacoco Coconut Water grew 20% in retail dollars in the US and grew 21% in the UK. This strong momentum and a much stronger inventory position than we had last year leads me to be very optimistic about our branded coconut water growth in 2025. In addition to the very healthy Vitacoco coconut water retail growth, we've seen strong scan growth for private label coconut water, which resulted in growth in our private label coconut water net sales, even with the initial impact of lost regions for private label coconut water that we talked about last quarter. I believe that our private label business remains a strategically important pillar of our business from a supply chain perspective, and that allows us to benefit more fully from our category growth initiatives. We continue to get asked to bid on business for private label coconut water and coconut oil, and expect that we will win new business in this portion of the category. Although private label is a strategically important part of our business, it can be more vulnerable to fluctuations than our branded business. I will reiterate what we've been saying for years, which is that as we continue to grow our business, we expect our branded sales to be the largest contributor to that growth long-term. In 2025, our commercial initiatives include emphasis on Vitacoco Multipacks, Vitacoco Farmers Organic, and Vitacoco Juice, the expansion of our SKUs in convenience stores, continued investment in our food service efforts, and the launch of Vitacoco Treats on a national basis. We're excited about the initial reception for Vitacoco Treats, and for the future of innovative coconut milk based beverages, which creates an indulgent occasion that could offer us yet another path for long term growth. We continue to develop our food service capabilities as an underdeveloped channel for us in the US. By working with food service broad line distributors, we're seeing some great wins across food service in hotels, restaurants and corporate accounts. We've secured partnerships for this spring with Joe's Coffee, who's featuring a Vitacoco orange and cream coconut latte and offering Vitacoco treats and Vitacoco pressed coconut water in their grab-and-go coolers. And also with Pete's Coffee, who's featuring a coconut water cold brew and a coconut water matcha, both made with Vitacoco pressed coconut water. These are just two examples of showcasing coconut water's versatility, creating opportunities for consumers to try coconut water in their beverages and building our brand as the category leader. Our international business is very healthy with strong performance in Europe, led by the UK and Germany. This year, we're stepping up our investments in the UK, Germany, and other European markets. And over time, we believe international, will become a larger part of our growth story as these markets are significantly underdeveloped relative to the U.S. I believe that the coconut water category is still developing with low household penetration in major markets relative to other juices. That suggests that the category is still in its early days. In fact, in the U.S., we think we can at least double the category in the coming years through increased household penetration and increased velocity per household. I believe that coconut water is becoming a household staple across the globe, and we're very excited and proud to be the leading brand in our primary markets and to help drive this growth. Longer term, I expect our European operations to be as large as our American businesses today. In summary, the acceleration of the category that we saw in late 2024 has continued and even accelerated through the first quarter of 2025 and with our significantly stronger inventory position. strong retail programming and innovation and additional production capacity, I believe that we are well positioned to continue our growth and I'm excited for a strong 2025. And now I'll turn the call over to our Chief Executive Officer, Martin Roper.