Eastside Distilling, Inc.

Quarter 2023 Financial Results Conference Call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star and then one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Amy Lancer, Chief Commercial Officer. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today to discuss Eastside Distilling's financial results for the first quarter 2023. I'm Amy Lancer, Eastside's Chief Commercial Officer. Joining us on today's call to discuss these results are Mr. Jeffrey Gwynn, the company's chief executive officer and chief financial officer, Ms. Tiffany Milton, UCI's controller, and Mr. Bruce Wells, craft controller. Following their remarks, we will open the call to your questions. Now, before we begin with prepared remarks, we submit for the record the following statements. Certain matters discussed on this conference call by the management of Eastside Distilling may be forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 as amended, Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 as amended, and such forward-looking statements are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1934.

The forward-looking statements described future expectations, expectations, expectations, expectations, expectations, expectations, expectations, expectations, words such as may, future, plan, plan, will, or should, expected, anticipates, draft, eventually, or projected. There is a caution that statements are subject to a multitude of risks and uncertainties. circumstances, events, or results to determine whether or not the data for material is really from those projected in the forward-looking statement. Such matters involve resonance or that make as actual results to different materials. Include, but are not limited to, companies acceptance

and the company's products in the market, success in obtaining new customers, success in product development, ability to execute the business model and strategic plan, success in integrating acquired entities and assets, ability to obtain capital, ability to continue its going concern, and all the risks and related information described from time to time in the company's filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the financial statements and related information pertaining to the company's annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31st, 2022, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Now, with that said, I'd like to turn the call over to Jeffrey Gwynn. Jeffrey, please proceed.

Thank you all for joining the first quarter call today. I'm pleased to announce we made great progress during the first quarter. Let's talk about our two businesses, individual performances, and then look at the consolidated results, and finally review the guidance we gave just a few weeks ago on the year-end call. As you will see from our 10Q, we are now breaking out segment information on craft, spirits, and corporate results in the MD&A section of the 10Q. So if you have the Q in front of you, turn with me to the segment information section, and then we can get started. Kraft, which is our digital printing and mobile canning businesses, reported strong growth in the quarter. That business saw revenue up more than 35% year-over-year as digital printing sales have increased significantly. However, what's encouraging beyond the strong top line is that we achieved these results despite the slow start after the holidays. We had strong sequential growth each month of the quarter. In fact, March's printing sales were twice that of January. As we discussed on the call a few weeks ago, we have undergone some restructuring actions across all businesses, including Kraft, and those weighed on results in mobile. Now, Kraft's gross profit performance reported for the quarter does not reflect where we expect to be in the current quarter, quarter two.

In March, we saw strong improvements in gross margins driven by higher utilization and lower stock rates. In summary, our digital can printing business has significantly improved its rate of production and efficiency. We expect strong sales growth throughout the year. For Q2, we are maintaining our guidance that crafts will report positive results. Let's talk about the spirits business.

Spirit sales were $1.3 million lower year over year, but largely because we sold over 500 barrels more of inventory lack. than we did in the first quarter of this year.

The gross margins were normally high this quarter due to the bulk barrel sales. And this reflects the value of our about quite a bit over the last number of quarters. And we generated net income spirits because of these bulk sales.

Our volumes are lower year over year in the wholesale cases that we sold.

But we've kept gross margins flat year over year. Now, it's important to remember, and we've said this over the last number of calls, that we have taken price increases across the entire portfolio of brands. And we've also exited unprofitable distribution channels. Now, those are significant headwinds. And they affected us all last year. But we've made progress. during the quarter we took restructuring actions to lower our production and sales costs and expect to make incremental improvements there throughout the year so for q2 for spirits this will be an important quarter because we're moving into our promotional calendar and we expect to see volume improvements and we'll have more report on that for our second quarter call lastly we made progress cutting our corporate operating expenses by a third over last year. So in summary, we are improving our cost position across the board. Craft, spirits, the corporate overhead, the public company, all improving. These cost improvements helped us set a foundation for growth, which will lead us eventually to consolidated performance where we can generate positive EBITDA. That's a milestone for the company we've all been long waiting for, and I expect that this will happen later in the year. So Q2 is off to a good start, although it's early, and we're fighting against a weaker economic environment, but I am optimistic. Tiffany will take you through the company performance in some more detail, but I'd like to leave you with a few more thoughts. With the improvement in the statement of operations, we have a real opportunity to to invest and accelerate growth. The board has determined that it is critical for us to remain a NASDAQ-listed company. In our 10-K, we've highlighted a number of risks associated with this, and this is one specific risk we called out. We are out of compliance for two specific issues with NASDAQ, share price and tangible net worth.

Last, Last week we announced that the Board approved a reverse stock split that will allow us to take care of the first issue. We are actively working on addressing the second issue of tangible net worth prior to I'll be happy to answer your questions after Tiffany gives us more details on the quarter, but now let's turn it over to Tiffany and get some specifics. Tiffany? Thank you, Jeff, and thank you all again for joining our call today. Let's review the first quarter. On a consolidated basis, our sales were 2.9%. for the first quarter of 2023 compared to 3.8 million for the first quarter of 2022. to barrel sales, which totaled 600,000 in 2023 versus 1.6 million in 22.

Craft sales were $1.5 million for 23 and $1.1 million for 22 as we are finally seeing traction in digital can printing as it continues to gain capacity. Spirit sales, excluding bulk, were $700,000 for 23 compared to $1.1 million for 22 due to initial orders from multiple distributor changes last year. Our consolidated gross profit was $600,000 for Q1 23 compared to $900,000 for Q1 2022. Our consolidated gross margins were 22% for 23 and 25% for 2022. Kraft had margins of negative 7% for 2023 and negative 3% for 2022. Kraft margins on a consolidated basis sequentially improved through Q1 as we continue to build volume of printed cans. spirits margins were 54% for 23 and 37% for 22. Excluding barrel sales, spirits margins were 32% for 23 and 33% for 2022. Adjusted EBITDA was negative 700,000 for 23 and negative 1 million for 2022, primarily due to decreased operating expenses. Our results have sequentially improved on a quarterly basis since Q1 of 2022, as we have significantly reduced operating expenses and are beginning to see the strength of the digital cam printer, which we are excited to see its continued growth for the remainder of the year. We are also beginning to see better results for our Q1 2023 restructuring of both businesses, and this will become more apparent in the coming quarters. We will now open the floor for questions. Operator?

Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star and then one on your telephone keypad. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. Please re-queue for additional questions. Once again, it is star and then one to join the queue Our first question today will come from Sean McGowan of Roth MKM.

Please go ahead. Hey, Sean. Good day. A couple of questions. questions are we going to not it's great to see that that breakout that shows corporate are we going to be able to get caught figures for prior periods so that we can You know, have a full set of comparable numbers. Yeah, so we – this is – something that we've been working on for a while, Sean. I mean, one of the questions that everybody wants to understand better how profitable each business is. And just to be clear so people understand this, if you go under 10Q, if you go into MD&A section, now we see a segment with reports. with a third sector, and that's corporate.

Last year, we had started breaking out spirits and crafts, so you could really see those two businesses, very different businesses. Corporate this year, we added because I wanted to highlight what I think is the real cost of a public company, and that includes myself, Tiffany, public company costs, D&O, things like that. So we can go back and try to give you some guidance. There's a lot of information that we've kind of consolidated here, put together, but this is something that Tiffany and I can work on with you and see if we can get you something so you can follow it.

That's helpful. Now, on the craft, it's great to see that volume increase, and I've been listening to all the calls and talking to you about and, you know, what we can expect to see in terms of gross margin improvement. I guess maybe getting ahead of myself a little bit, but how high could that be at scale? You know, what is sort of the upper limit of what gross profit could be, you know, as a percentage of sales if it's really humming and everything's going great? And not assuming that we have the second machine, but just on the existing machine, what's sort of the upper bound of where gross margins could be?

Great question, and an honest answer to that is I don't know. I mean, and the part that's hard is it depends on really what happens to our core customers. Um, and the mix there right now, you know, we're, we're seeing our customers, all, all our mobile customers, uh, um, take up digital printing. I mean, that's not a, not been hard to, to, to get that to happen. We've had a number of new customers, um, take up printing only. And, uh, That's been a big part. So when you start to mix in the other services that we offer, then you see margins change. But at the end of the day, it really is by SKU and by type of can, right? Some end markets need digital can printing because it's imperative. And you can see that today in what's happening with, you know, the – you know, the sleek business, so all the specialty craft beverages that are going into sleek cans are having to compete in that market and you can't get away with crappy labeling.

So I'm not trying to void the question, but I would I could tell you this. You alluded to this. If we are able to execute our growth plan second machine into our single facility then this is a business that changes dramatically it's profitable because there's a high degree of fixed cost in that single facility with one machine humming along. And with the second machine, and you can do high volume and then high gross margin type of between the two machines, and you're absorbing all the fixed costs. The value of the first machine goes up dramatically, and the value of the second machine goes up with break. even going lower. So we think our... ...easily can use two machines.

Portland is a leader, and Seattle's a leader in... in the craft beverage space and i think we're starting to see in our market uh this digital printing tool be critical at retail for our customers so you know i think there's there's a lot to see but but i'll circle back and just put a final point on this we should know by the end of this uh this next couple of quarters um what a real high throughput and gross margin picture looks like because if we're able to keep the cans flowing through the machine, keep the supply chain going at the rate that we need, and we can keep up with these sales, then we're going to see really how margins start to pan out as we get the volume through it. And that will be a good proxy for a one-machine footprint. So Q2, Q3 is what I'd say.

Okay. All right. Thanks. And one point of clarification, that reverse split is supposed to be May 20th. Is that right?

That is a good question. I see it trading today as a, but we'll, we'll have to get back to you on that, exactly what the, what the timing was on that. OK. I don't remember. Yeah.

Thanks. And again, it is star and then one to ask a question. Our next question will come from Matt Campbell with Florida capital. Please go ahead.

Yeah. Good afternoon. Um, how are you Jeff? Um, so if, if, uh, yeah, the stocks put today, by the way, for, for Sean, it's now trading 21, one for 20. Um, so when we look at, um, you know, excluding barrel sales, Do you think we're going to start to see spirits accelerate year over year? Yeah. If you peel out the stocking orders that were made into those distributors by your previous CEO, if we take all that out, are we starting to see the core spirit business

Start to grow. Right. So let's talk about experiencing two segments. Let's talk about Zunia, which is really a our portfolio, our tequila business, outside of Oregon. And then we can talk about the Oregon products. Now, we've, over the last number of years, tried to move

Oregon products and the California and the other markets.

Portland potato bike is not going to sell outside of Portland. We've realized that, right? I mean... We've seen what it takes to get it into different markets, and it doesn't move without a lot of price help. So we'll talk about the two different markets. Starting with... with Portland. We have reset largely across the entire set of use our price

For Burnside, Portland Potato Vodka, we've made a number of adjustments in the market. And in the first quarter, we didn't do any price work. In other words, we were out of the promotional calendar. And in the past, the company has been promoting, promoting, promoting constantly and not pursuing a strategy where we're on price and then off price. and helping a distributor really drive opportunity and sales at retail. So this is a year where we, last year, tested TPRs, tested pricing, some different strategies. And this year, we have a calendar we think that's going to work well for us. And based on what we're seeing in the second quarter, we're optimistic. I think we're halfway through May, and I'm encouraged. Our promotional activity started at the beginning of May, and so we'll see how we end the quarter. But right now, I would tell you that I'm encouraged. I think we're going to have good results for the second quarter in Oregon spirits. Now, Azunia is a different situation. Azunia is a place where, you know, agave spirits, particularly imported agave, we had to really move price points up across the portfolio. I mean, if you just walk down the aisle and you pick out you know, a bottle of tequila, you're going to see the price points there are meaningfully higher than some of the other spirits category, right? And that's a function of really what's happening south of the border in Mexico. Now, we still produce a traditional tequila that isn't put through a diffuser, not cooked with hydrochloric acid. It's an outstanding product. So we, you know, have taken it upon ourselves to take the price points up And at the same time, walk away from distribution. We talked about this all last year, Matt. I know you suffered through it with everybody. We're not going to sell it alongside the crappy other mass market tequilas. And so we lost volume there last year. And so that's what you're seeing year over year, the comparisons. But we're working on Azunia, and we think we're going to have a solution for it where we really start to see some reinvestment there.

and we see some improvement. We've done some distribution. Just a couple of weeks ago, I was down in Texas, And we're selling black and other high-end products. University of Texas Stadium, we're selling it. and Baylor Stadium and some other places. So I'm encouraged, Matt, and I think you're going to start to see some improvements. But I think you need to look into the individual skews and talk about the story by market, and then you're going to see the traction picking up. And if we get a couple big things converted here, then it's a whole other story. So let's stay tuned and see what we can get accomplished in the second quarter. particularly in Oregon.

Just one follow-up, if I may. The gross margin characteristics of the spirits business, where do you see gross margins on a going-forward basis? Is there an opportunity for you to take some cost out of that process?

Yes. One of the key strategies for us is in Portland, we need to take cost out of our footprint. As you come down in volume, obviously that was something that we needed to do. We had built this business, we being the former management teams in the past, had built this business on a much larger set of volumes. I mean, think about how much volume we left with Redneck Riviera. And it's not as easy. for you to just size down your production facility and, you know, be working on lower volume, right, and keep your unit costs the same. So that's been a big challenge of the company. And I think that's one reason why last quarter I said we're going to see EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA break evens and crap before spirits because it's going to take us a little while to get aligned on volumes. on our spirits side, on the production side. But I think contribution margins can be healthy in that space. And there's some more work to be done. I think we've done a great job attacking everywhere we can. But I think we'll see some better results. Now, having said that, I mean, if you look at the margins, and I've said this a couple of other times in other quarterly calls, you're seeing the impact of the value of of wholesale spirits on the secondary market. The fact that we can take bulk spirits and sell them at the prices that we have been and have to show you how much the market's moved up for aged product. This is a business where nobody wants to take new fill and age it. They don't want to have the capital tied up, particularly in this higher interest rate environment. I think this is going to be a market where we're going to see valuations stay high for aged products. I'm not talking about just whiskey. I'm also talking about aged tequilas.

I'm excited about that. I think that we're in a good position. We have to invest It's an important point that people have to keep in mind. I appreciate the work that you guys have done through this turnaround. It seems like you're starting to see a little more visibility, especially in the craft business. ...business... ...invest in that and hope... ...we grow that... ...in good time. Thanks, Matt. Showing no further questions at this time, we will conclude our question and answer session.

to turn the conference back over to Jeffrey Gwynn for any closing remarks.

Great. Well, I really appreciate everybody's interest in the company. And as I said on our recent fourth quarter call, this has been a really important year for the company. This is a year where we've taken a number of restructuring activities, actions in the first quarter of this year, also at the end of last year. We've had a number of changes in the business to make it more profitable. I'm really encouraged by the team. I think there's times where you look down the long road to getting to a point where you're making money and it feels like it's just really, really challenging at every turn. But the team has come together both on the craft side and the spirit side. And so I'm really pleased with my teammates and watching them go at it every day. So I think we're going to have a great first half of the year. Stay tuned for the rest of the second quarter, and we hope that you'll take some time and reengage and get to know the company because I think this company is going to outperform this year and surprise a lot of people.

So, again, thank you for the time today.

The conference has now concluded. We thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect your lines.