Farmer Brothers Company

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Farmer Brothers Fiscal First Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question and answer session, and instructions will follow at the time. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference call, please press star then zero on your touchtone telephone. As a reminder, this call is being recorded. Joining me today are Deverell Massarang, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Scott Drake, Chief Financial Officer. Earlier today, the company issued its earnings press release, which is available on the Investor Relations section of Farmer Brothers' website at www.farmerbros.com. The press release is also included as an exhibit to the company's Form 8-K and is available on the company's website and on the Securities and Exchange Commission's website at www.sec.gov. A replay of this audio-only webcast will be available approximately two hours after the conclusion of this call. The link to the audio replay will also be available on the company's website. Before we begin the call, please note that all of the financial information presented is unaudited and that various remarks made by management during this call about the company's future expectations, plans, and prospects may constitute forward-looking statements for purposes of the safe harbor provisions under the federal securities laws and regulations. These forward-looking statements represent the company's views only as of today and should not be relied upon as representing the company's views as of any subsequent date. Results could differ materially from those forward-looking statements. Additional information on factors that can cause actual results and other events to differ materially from those forward-looking statements as available in the company's special lease and public filings. On today's call, management will also use certain non-GAAP financial measures, including adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA margin. In assessing the company's operating performance, reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to their most directly comparable GAAP measures is also included in the company's press release. I will now turn the call over to Deverell. Deverell, please go ahead.

Thanks, operator, and hello, everyone. Our fiscal first quarter results showed continued good progress on rebuilding sales momentum post-pandemic, with revenue up 12% against an uncertain macroeconomic environment. And I'm encouraged by the traction we're getting with new customers and some of our catalytic growth initiatives. I'll update you there in a moment. On the downside, our performance reflects significant declines in gross margin and profitability levels in the quarter. There is a complex set of factors at play here that I'll walk you through. But while we're disappointed with the performance, the impacts are largely very short-term in nature and already beginning to reverse. Along with that, we are excited about the opportunities we have in front of us and are optimistic about our potential in fiscal 2023. Let's start with a summary of sales performance and the external factors impacting the quarter. And Scott can fill in some of the details. Our total sales came in at 121 million, up 12% year over year, though down slightly from 123 million in our seasonally stronger fiscal Q4. Both DSD and direct ship sales were up approximately 12% year over year. DSD is executing well on all rollouts of recent new customer wins in the convenience and QSR spaces. We've also had a good quarter in customer renewals and maintain a robust pipeline of new opportunities that our sales teams are pursuing. While we're certainly pleased with the sales growth and customer momentum, Margins did not keep pace due to a combination of pricing, seasonal and inflationary pressures. Our gross margin percentage was down significantly in fiscal Q1 relative to Q4. Both national counts and DSD were impacted roughly in equal measure. There were several key factors at play. First, looking at direction. While we have been seeing the benefits of our price increases in recent months, the contractual increases for several of our large national accounts are continuing to follow behind cost inflation as their hedge costs have been accelerating more rapidly in recent months. We already are starting to see the benefit of higher pricing in our current December quarter. Additionally, a number of these direct ship customers were working off prior inventory bills in the quarter which impacted our volumes. Total pounds produced were down 13% on a year-over-year basis in the quarter, with more than two-thirds of the decline coming on the direct ship national account side. Second, ESD pricing increases are starting to come through but did not keep up with inflation in the quarter. At the same time, we experienced the impacts of rising coffee costs. At the same time, our hedges were beginning to roll off, exacerbating the margin impact. Third, we've also seen higher average production costs due to economic factors. Recessionary impacts on demand and longer, hotter summer added to the normal seasonally weaker consumption patterns in the business. This, along with the inventory drawdowns I mentioned a moment ago, factors led to underutilization in our production facilities. These impacts were most pronounced in July and the first half of August, but began recovering in September and through October. Put these factors together and you have an unusual quarter that we do not believe will repeat. What I would call the copy-related pressures, timing of recognizing price increases, inventory drawdowns, and seasonal impacts are already alleviating in the December quarter. Scott will share more, but we believe we can recover more than a third of the year-over-year margin decline reported today during the December quarter. However, we still face inflationary pressures like many businesses. In our case, those include reduced hours at certain customer locations, labor shortages that are hurting food and other service businesses, and ongoing supply chain issues. As we recorded to you today, coffee prices have softened significantly from the fiscal Q1 levels. Assuming these trends hold, we will be in a much more favorable position as we move through the latter part of our fiscal year from a margin standpoint. Below the gross margin line, we've done a very good job managing our optimized cost structure over the past couple of years. But inflationary pressures raise the bar that much more. We'll continue to take pricing where warranted and be nimble in identifying and acting on cost opportunities as we move forward. Further, as you saw in August, we completed a favorable refinancing that effectively recapitalizes the company. We're now moving full steam ahead on a company-wide initiative with two primary objectives. One, working capital optimization, which will enable us to put more cash to work in the business. And two, executing on our IT roadmap to put in place the tools, systems, and processes we need that will enable us to manage the business with more agility and better navigate industry complexities like those impacting our Q1. While we work toward margin recovery, the good news is we are winning in the marketplace and executing on multiple growth vectors. As I talked about last time, we define our growth opportunities in two categories. recovery-based, as our post-pandemic customer base comes back to life, and as new customers and partners engage with us, and new opportunities that we call catalytic growth. These include high-growth adjacencies that leverage our network, including alternate beverage initiatives, and our Revive business. I want to start with Revive, which is our vehicle for driving our Espresso program and also contributes significantly as a white glove equipment maintenance and service business. Revive is in growth mode. Now driving past mid six-figure revenues per month, demand is strong. We are actively in discussion for various levels of warranty and field support with several large coffee equipment manufacturers. In recent months, there has been a clear formalization of what was previously just indicated demand. And that is validating. Our job now is to implement our plans for ramping the hiring of service technicians. We are ramping up our tech support staff and plan to double our team within the next year. We're getting creative there, including working with technical schools to accelerate the sourcing of quality talent. We have several exciting additional catalytic growth opportunities in various stages to develop. including a few alternate beverage programs that I can talk about today. The first is our partnership with Lotus Plant Energy, which produces a line of plant-based energy drinks with natural flavoring and caffeine. We're introducing four SKUs into our DSD network as we speak. Research shows significant crossover between coffee and tea drinkers into energy drinks, and these products skew toward millennial and Gen Z consumers. We believe they fit very well with what we're selling into channels like coffee houses, QSRs, hospitality, and more. A second partnership with New Zealand SERPs company Schott should be in launch mode by the end of the year. Schott has been a huge hit in Australia and New Zealand. It's a disruptive SERPs product built from juice base and without artificial colors or flavors. The sugars and flavors come from a higher juice concentration than used in typical syrups. However, the real innovation is that they can do this in a shelf-stable product that does not require refrigeration. We're working with Schott in New Zealand on manufacturing and supply chain logistics and should be ready to test launch this product in two U.S. markets before year-end. Finally, in the backup of our fiscal 2023, we expect to launch a third partnership with a cold brew concentrate manufacturer. Think of it as a concentrate that can be used in a multitude of coffee drinks like iced lattes, Americanos, natural dispensing, and coffee milkshakes. One other application that is phenomenal in espresso martinis, which potentially opens the product to be the fine dining and bar categories. These are all beverages where hot espresso does not work as well, and because the product is shelf stable and in concentrate form, it can also be a more effective cold brew option for straight coffee drinkers. We're completing work on manufacturing logistics and should be ready to test launch in the first part of calendar 2023. As I wrap up, growth opportunities like these are a big part of the reason I joined Farmer Runners. We have the scale and the network to deliver disruptive products that can help drive top line performance and ultimately show the operating leverage we've built into farmer national footprint. At the same time, we also know we're operating in a really tough environment and are focused on managing short term pressures. We continue to also prune our portfolio when necessary. In the September quarter, we sold two branches for an attractive gain and we also decided to pause investment in our public demand brand in Oregon. This was primarily an online brand, and until we complete work on our consolidated backend e-commerce fulfillment infrastructure, it did not make sense from a cost perspective to operate the brand on a larger scale than needed. As we look ahead, we're cautiously optimistic. I don't want to sugarcoat the near-term inflationary and recession uncertainties, but we do expect fairly rapid gross margin recovery over the next couple of quarters as we flip the script on the near-term pricing impacts. We will also be very focused on managing our costs prudently, and Scott will have more on what we're also working on to improve our working capital position. Before turning the call over to Scott, I wanted to address the news about our changes at the Board level announced this week. We greatly appreciated the ongoing input and engagement with our large shareholders who have supported us on the journey of restoring Farmer Brothers operations, and setting a foundation for profitable growth. We reached an amicable agreement with two of our largest investors and look forward to welcoming two new members to our board, including Brad Radoff here in the immediate term. As we complete the fiscal year, we are also saying goodbye to two highly valued board members in Charles Marcy and Chris Motter, and we greatly appreciate their service and contributions. No one wants to create value for shareholders more than this management team and the board, so we look forward to working with our new colleagues toward that objective. With that, thanks again to all of you, and here's Scott.

Thanks, DeVore. My comments today will focus on the first quarter fiscal 2023 financial performance, our margin, and how we're managing the balance sheet, along with some more color on the key initiatives you mentioned. Overall, net sales in the first quarter of fiscal 2023 were $121.4 million, an increase of $13 million, or 12%, from the prior year period. The growth in net sales primarily reflects increased customer pricing on both our DSD and direct ship networks, both of which generated similar sales increases. These results were partially offset by lower volume in both DSD and national accounts compared to the prior year, and the lag in recognition of price increases in the direct ship business. That said, DSD and national account revenues in the current quarter do reflect some of our historic pricing actions, and that is helping offset decreased volume. Volumes, as Devereaux highlighted, were down 13% year-over-year. More than two-thirds of this decline was on the direct ship side. And of that amount, two-thirds was attributable to continuing customers and the rest to exited customers. With continuing customers, a healthy portion of the decline is attributable to inventory drawdowns within just a few of our key accounts. Additional factors impacting volumes include the seasonally weaker summer months, as well as recessionary pressures on consumption. In the first half of the quarter, a COVID resurgence impacted staffing levels and opening status at a number of customers within the DSD businesses that we support. As DeVerl noted, The DSD business has recovered aggressively over the last two months, and in fact, during October, we experienced our highest sales weeks since the start of the pandemic, in about three years. Week-to-week DSD sales are noticeably improved from our first quarter reported results. Breaking down sales a little further, DSD revenue was up nearly 13% year-over-year as we saw continued sales channel success and benefits from the price increases that we had implemented in the prior quarters. Though these increases were not able to keep up with inflation in the most recent quarter. We began implementing additional price and fee increases in our DSC business and the benefits of those will start to materialize in the current fiscal quarter. Our direct ship channel sales also improved nearly 11% during the first quarter of fiscal 2023 compared to the prior year period. Although our direct ship business operates under a cost-plus model and the pricing pressures flow through to our customers per the terms of our various agreements, the timing of price changes naturally lags, and on our fiscal first quarter, that was felt in our margins. As already noted, those contractual increases are merely timing-based per each customer contract and are now appearing in our fiscal second quarter. Total gross profit was $26.6 million for the three months ended September 30, 2022, compared to the $31.5 million in the prior year period. Gross margin decreased to 21.9% in Q1 of fiscal 23 from 29% for the comparative 2022 fiscal year period. Profitability levels reflect a near-term gap in gross margin performance due to timing and pull-through of contractual price increases with large national accounts and demand-related factors including customer inventory reductions during a seasonally slow period for coffee production, which combine to impact our roasting volumes. Additionally, in prior quarters, we have been able to offset some pricing changes through our hedging program, but those hedges are naturally maturing at higher cost levels each month. and will not have the same beneficial nature in the falling commodity price markets that we are now experiencing. We expect that Q1 will be the low point of our fiscal year on the margin front, and we are already seeing recovery. For perspective, I'll share that of the Q1 year-over-year gross margin decline, a little more than half was attributable to inflationary pressures on DSD margins and the remainder was attributable to the contractual delay in price increase recognition from national accounts. The pricing and margin actions across the business now coming through are expected to drive at least a 200 to 300 basis point improvement in the December quarter with more to come in the latter half of our fiscal year. Hedging impacts and outcomes, which are not core to our operations, are the only other material wildcard that I see as I look forward at our margin recovery story. Further, softening of coffee prices in recent weeks, should that continue, would provide a further tailwind for margins, as we would finally face deflation to a key component of our cost structure. In the first quarter of fiscal 2023, our operating expenses decreased by $2.3 million, or 7%, to $30.9 million, from $33.2 million in the prior year period. As a percentage of net sales, our operating expenses decreased by over 500 basis points to 26% compared to 31% in the prior year period. This decrease was due to modestly higher selling and G&A expenses offset by net gains from the sale of two branch locations during the quarter. The increase in selling expenses was primarily due to an increase in payroll, facility, and fleet inflationary-related costs. The decrease in general and administrative expenses was primarily due to a gain on purchase of assets as a result of the settlement related to the Boyd's acquisition, which included the cancellation of preferred shares and settlement of liabilities. This was partially offset by an increase in contract services. Even when excluding all gains on the sale of assets and preferred shares from this quarter and prior year, the result still leads to meaningful improvement in the operating expense to sales ratio year over year. Adjusted EBITDA was a loss of $4.9 million in the first quarter of fiscal 2023 compared to income of $3.5 million in the prior year period. And the adjusted EBITDA margin was negative 4% in the first quarter of fiscal 2023 as compared to 3.2% in the prior year period. Our capital expenditures for the three months ended September 30th, 2022 were $3 million, an increase of $400,000 compared to the prior year period. This was primarily due to higher CBE or coffee brewing equipment related capital spend compared to the prior year period as we position our revived business to capitalize on its growth momentum. As of September 30, 2022, the outstanding principal on our revolver and term loan credit facilities was $114 million, an increase of $5.4 million from June 30, 2022. Our cash balance was $7.6 million as of September 30, 2022, a decline of a little over $2 million. Our net reduction in liquidity during the quarter was due to the continued impact of higher product and operating costs. These uses of cash were partially offset by cash proceeds from the sale of branch properties during the quarter. I would also note that despite inventory purchases and inflationary impacts, our overall inventory balance was down in September compared to our June fiscal year-end level. We noted our attention would turn to working capital efficiencies once we completed our work on the debt structure, so it is nice to see improvement, and I will comment more on this in a moment. But first, as announced in late August, we completed a successful refinancing of our ABL credit facility consisting of a new five-year $47 million first lien secured credit facility with increased covenant flexibility. This refinancing was structured as a low-cost transactional amendment for a previously amended facility and is expected to provide the company with approximately $2 million in cash savings per year compared to the cost of our previous debt structure. In addition to lowering the interest rate and extending the maturity, the refinancing eliminates the minimum adjusted EBITDA covenant and allows for 15-year amortization on principal payments. The structure gives us enhanced flexibility as we prepare for a number of the growth initiatives that DeVirl has highlighted today. It has also set the stage for the comprehensive company-wide working capital and systems improvement initiative that DeVirl headlined earlier. Just to add a little more color, when we complete this work, we'll be able to substantially improve our working capital management. with access to critical tools, data, and new processes needed to manage the natural swings in pricing and costs that are inherent in the coffee business. This project affects operating procedures, metrics, reporting practices, contracts, and agreements with customers and vendors, and closely ties into our IT roadmap work, which includes defining the requirements for the systems we use and will be using to operate the business well into the future. We also expect some efficiency benefits as all of this is fully implemented over the coming quarters. As an initial step to these efforts, in the coming days, we're bringing online a new operations planning and ordering tool, which will allow for simultaneous users and collaborative workspaces that will provide improved data, documentation, visibility, and clarify all responsibilities in a low-cost, stable environment. We think the timing of this project works in our favor as margins recover from Q1 levels, providing the opportunity to focus more on reducing our leverage. We will gain valuable information that will help to accelerate our previously noted and ongoing optimization efforts. Wrapping up. On paper, this was clearly a tough quarter, but we view the impacts on margin and profitability as largely short-term in nature, and that view is supported by positive trends we're seeing here in the first part of our fiscal Q2. We do not think that our progress towards higher sales, higher margins, and higher profitability has been derailed, only delayed by the factors noted. We continue to execute on profitable growth initiatives from customer growth to new products and achievement of internal operating efficiencies and working capital improvement. Of course, the additional headwinds for macro uncertainties will play a role in our performance looking forward. But we are confident that we're in a good position to again build positive momentum into the business as we move through fiscal 2023.