Karat Packaging Inc.

ask a question during that time, please start, followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. Thank you. I'd like now to hand the call over to Roger Pondell, Investor Relations. You may now begin.

Thank you, Operator, and good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to Carrot Packaging's 2024 fourth quarter conference call. I'm Roger Pondell with Pondell Wilkinson, Carrot Packaging's Investor Relations firm. It will be my pleasure momentarily to introduce the company's Chief Executive Officer, Alan Yu, and its Chief Financial Officer, Jan Goh. Before I turn the call over to Alan, I want to remind our listeners that today's call may include forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such forward-looking statements are subject to numerous conditions, many of which are beyond the company's control, including those set forth in the risk factor section of the company's most recent Form 10-K, as filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and copies of which are available on the SEC's website at www.sec.gov, along with other company filings made with the SEC from time to time. Actual results could differ materially from these forward-looking statements, and CARED Packaging undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements except as required by law. Please also note that during this call, we will be discussing adjusted EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA margin, adjusted diluted earnings per share, and free cash flow, which are non-GAAP financial measures as defined by SEC Reg G. A reconciliation of the most directly comparable gap measures to the non-gap financial measures is included in today's press release, which is now posted on the company's website. And with that, it's my pleasure to turn the call over to CEO Alan Yu. Alan? Thank you, Roger.

Good afternoon, everyone. We end at 2024 with a strong fourth quarter. A sales volume grew 14%, a net sale grew 6.3%, over the prior year quarter despite a 4.8 million out of period benefit included in the prior year quarter from online sales platform be related to the first three quarter in 2023 we achieved gross margin of 39.2 percent in the fourth quarter versus 35.7 percent in the prior year period as positive momentum continues in 2025 we are prioritizing to further strengthen our supply chain resilience in preparation for tariff uncertainties. We have reduced our reliance on China for imported goods to approximately 20%, shifting our sourcing to countries with more favorable trade conditions and minimum tariffs like Taiwan. In 2024, we imported over 50% of our global purchases from Taiwan. We continue to actively work on further diversifying our supply chain outside of China and securing additional vendor discounts to mitigate pricing and margin pressures. While we try to protect pricing, we are evaluating product pricing holistically and have implemented pricing increases in certain categories to be effected in March and April. With a strong U.S. dollar and expected stable ocean freight rates this year, we expect the recent imposed tariffs to have minimum long-term impact on margins. Geographically, for the quarter, we experienced the strongest growth in the Midwest, and we continued to penetrate market in other regions, including the Pacific Northwest and East Coast. Sales in California, our biggest market, began to stabilize in the preceding third quarter, and I'm happy to report that the positive trend continued in the fourth quarter, when sales began to grow modestly in December. Sales of our eco-friendly product in the fourth quarter increased 11% year-over-year and represented 34.5% of total sales. We continue to observe more state and local government legislation requiring recyclable or compostable food service product. For example, California's ban on styrofoam went into effect on January 1, 2025. We expect demand for our eco-friendly product lines will accelerate and we continue to actively developing new and innovative products to enhance our competitive position. Our strategic focus for 2025 are to drive sales growth and improve our operational efficiencies. In January and February 2025, we are seeing robust sales growth and continued strength in our pipeline. We expect the positive momentum to continue into the rest of 2025, and we are closing new businesses expected to convert into revenue in the second half of the year. To support our anticipated growth, as recently announced, we signed a new lease on a 187,000 square foot distribution center near our headquarters in Chino, California. This facility almost doubles our current distribution capability in California and provides much needed capacities to support our anticipated growth and add approximately 500 new SKUs of paper products. ahead of the summer season. We anticipate the new distribution center to be fully operational by about this May. We are also re-evaluating our operating processes and investing in automation and AI support to enhance productivity and maximize operation efficiency with a lean team. As part of our long-term growth strategy, we will continue to explore sales opportunity outside of our traditional channels, such as the supermarket sector, we are in the product testing stage with some of our large supermarket customers to further expand our relationship with them. And we are working on expanding our sales team with experienced representatives focused on this sector. With our strong operating cash flow, as well as liquidity and balance sheet, and positive long-term outlets, our Board of Directors again approved an increase in the quarterly cash dividend payments to $0.45 per share, paid on February 28, 2025, to stockholder of record as of February 24, 2025. I will now turn the call over to Jian Guo, our Chief Financial Officer, to discuss the company financial result in greater detail. Jian?

Thank you, Alan. Let me provide an overview of our Q4 performance and I'll close with our guidance for 2025. Net sales for the 2024 fourth quarter were $101.6 million, up 6.3% from $95.6 million in the prior year quarter, which included a benefit of $4.8 million from the adjustment of online platform fees for the first nine months of 2023. As Alan mentioned, our volume grew 13.9% year-over-year. Pricing was unfavorable by $5.4 million year-over-year. Online platform fees decreased $3.4 million from the prior year quarter, reflecting the impact of the prior year out-of-period adjustment. By channel, compared with the prior year quarter, sales to our distributor channel for the 2024 fourth quarter were up 13.8%. Sales to the national and regional chains were up by 1.7%, and sales to retail channel decreased 1.4%. Online sales were down 6.1%, or $1.1 million, reflecting the impact of the prior year out-of-period adjustment. Cost of goods sold for the 2024 fourth quarter was $61.8 million, which included an additional import duty charge of $.6 million on paper shopping bags. Cost of goods sold for the 2023 fourth quarter was $61.5 million, which included an additional import duty reserve of $2.3 million, and the adjustment of $3.4 million of certain production expenses for the first nine months of 2023. Product costs increased $4.2 million year over year, primarily as a result of volume growth partially offset by a favorable impact from reduced vendor pricing, a stronger U.S. dollar, and an increase in imports as a percentage of total product mix. Gross profit for the 2024 fourth quarter increased 16.8% to $39.8 million from $34.1 million in the prior year quarter. Gross margin expanded by 350 basis points to 39.2% in the 2024 fourth quarter from 35.7% in the prior year quarter. The 2023 fourth quarter included a net unfavorable impact of 290 basis points from the out-of-period adjustments related to online platform fees and production expenses as well as additional import duty reserves. Gross margin benefited from lower vendor pricing, favorable foreign currency impact, and product mix, partially offset by higher freight and duty costs. Operating expenses for the 2024 fourth quarter increased 10.4% to $32.5 million from $29.5 million in the prior year quarter. Selling expenses for the 2024 fourth quarter was $13.9 million compared with $16.0 million in the same quarter last year, which included the impact from adjustment of $4.8 million of online platform fees for the first nine months in 2023 and an adjustment of $1.5 million of sales team labor costs for the first nine months in 2023. General and administrative expenses were $18.4 million compared with $13.2 million in the prior year quarter, which included a favorable impact from the adjustment of $3.4 million of certain production expenses for the first nine months in 2023 into cost of goods sold and an unfavorable impact of $1.1 million in write-off of a vendor prepayment upon the resolution of a legal contingency. Additionally, the year-over-year increase in general and administrative expenses was driven by an increase in labor costs and rent expense from workforce expansion and additional leased warehouses and higher stock-based compensation and transportation costs. Operating income for the 2024 fourth quarter increased 57.8% to $7.3 million from $4.6 million in the prior year quarter. Net income for the 2024 fourth quarter increased 40.3% to $5.9 million from $4.2 million in the prior year quarter. Net income margin was 5.8% in the 2024 fourth quarter compared with 4.4% in the prior year quarter. Net income attributable to carrot for the 2024 fourth quarter increased 44% to $5.6 million or $0.28 per diluted share from $3.9 million in the prior year quarter or $0.19 per diluted share. Adjusted EBITDA increased to $11.3 million for the 2024 fourth quarter from $8.6 million for the prior year quarter. Adjusted EBITDA margin was 11.1% of net sales for the 2024 fourth quarter compared with 9.0% for the prior year quarter. Adjusted diluted earnings per common share rose to 29 cents for the 2024 fourth quarter from 24 cents for the same quarter last year. We generated operating cash flow of $8.3 million in the fourth quarter and ended 2024 with $114.6 million in working capital compared with $110.5 million at the end of 2023. Our free cash flow was $7.5 million in the fourth quarter. As of December 31st, 2024, we have financial liquidity of $67.8 million with another $28.3 million in short-term investments. As Alan mentioned earlier, our board of directors approved another increase of our quarterly dividend to 45 cents per share. We remain committed to a balanced capital allocation strategy between shareholder return and long-term growth investments. We expect net sales for the 2025 first quarter to increase by 6% to 8% over the prior year quarter. Our gross margin goal for the 2025 first quarter is approximately 37% to 39%. We expect adjusted EBITDA margin to be between 9 and 11 percent. On a four-year basis, we expect year-over-year revenue to grow 9 to 11 percent in 2025, and gross margin to be in the range of 36 to 38 percent. We expect adjusted dividend margin to be in the low to mid-double digits. Alan and I will now be happy to answer your questions and I'll turn the call back to the operator.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to Carrot Packaging, Inc., fourth quarter 2024 earnings conference call. Please note that this call is being recorded. At this time, I would like to remind everyone, in order to ask a question, press star and then the number one on your telephone keypad. Again, that's star and one on your telephone keypad. We will pause for a brief moment to wait for the questions to come in. Your first question comes from the line of Ryan Myers from Lake Street Capital Markets. Your line is now open.

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my question. So just thinking about what you gave for the first quarter revenue growth guidance, you know walk me through kind of what you guys are expecting as far as an acceleration of growth goes because if you look at the full year guide obviously implies that sequentially throughout the year the growth is going to accelerate just wondering if there's anything to call out there or anything we should be aware of well first of all we're seeing already seen California has in the past two years California market has been basically a market that we saw we have seen decline until the fourth quarter

And that is one of our biggest markets. And we're now seeing the California market stabilize and growing modestly. And our largest market in Texas, we're seeing that market growing big time in the Midwest. That's where we're seeing that more people are switching out of plastic styrofoam into other type of material. It could be plastic. It could be compostable. And also plastic bags into paper shopping bags. So we're seeing more and more of that in the Midwest. Midwest has been a market with a lot of heavily on Styrofoam. And now they're finally moving away from Styrofoam. And basically, if the Trump tariff goes through with the Mexico 25% and also 25% in Canada, we're going to see a major run on our product in the second quarter. So we're ready for the tariff, basically. That's why we leased a double the size of our California warehouse. And we're actually shipping not only Before, previous year, we normally shipped 25%, 20% increases from our normal volume in summer peak season. This time of year, we're asking our overseas production manufacturers to ship 200%, 300% of what we used to sell in the past year. So we're wrapping up our inventory as the ocean phrase is kind of in a good pricing right now. And we know that there's still many uncertainties, but we know for sure anything coming out of China, it's Basically, like paper product, it's now being taxed 45%, which whoever is importing from China will stop immediately. There's no way they can afford that. And the reason import is really helping us, basically. It's not a tailwind. It's actually not a headwind for us, the turf. It's actually seen as a tailwind for us. Okay.

And Ryan, this is Jen. If I can just add on real quick to what Alan was talking about. also what we build in this model behind the guidance for four-year revenue growth is we are taking into consideration what we are seeing in our pipeline the new deals that we signed or are very close to get signed that we expect to convert into revenue around mid part of this year okay

Got it. And then just as a follow-up to that, I will ask a similar question on the adjusted EBITDA margins, obviously guided 9% to 11% in the first quarter, expect to end the year low to mid-double digits. Is that just a function of you guys are gaining scale kind of on the operating expense lines as you ramp revenue, or is there anything else to think about there as far as the difference between the first quarter and the full year?

Yes. One thing that we're seeing with us in the fourth quarter, we ramp up online sales and we also sell online shipping and also the local shipping cost has gone up. So immediately starting next week or actually the following week where actually we found actually a different carrier shipper that was saved almost a big time basically. We're looking at all these operational savings that we can find in terms of shipping our product not only the online shipping but also offline shipping. Recently the trucking Truckload shipping from California to everywhere in the U.S. has dropped by 35%, as well as the, I would say, the rent, the lease. Recently, the operational, the newly released warehouse in California is actually down nearly half of what it was a year and a half ago, the lease rate.

Got it. Thank you for taking my questions.

Your next question comes from the line of Jake Bartlett from Truvist Securities. Your line is now open.

Great. Thank you so much for taking the question. My line was about the composition of revenue growth or the drivers of revenue growth in 25. Alan, if you could maybe help us understand how much is volume, how much is price, and then I have some follow-ups from that.

I'm going to say the volume is going to be the double-digit in terms of growth. I would say that anywhere from 10%, 20% volume growth. Pricing, because of tariff, we already announced price increase. So there's going to be some type of growth in revenue, but I wouldn't say a lot because we're trying to help our customers, trying to increase as minimum as possible and reduce our operational expense. And with the savings in Ocean Freight, though, we've got to work with our client. And that's why our clients trust us and continue to give us more business because we're seeing a lot of these existing customer buyers, chain accounts. They're giving us more businesses in terms of the way that we can offer their savings and also different type of savings and also creativity in terms of different type of packaging. Many of them want to switch out of their plastic bag into paper bag, and some of them want to switch out of their plastic container into paper corrugated boards. So we're doing a lot of things on that part.

Got it. So just maybe to dial in on the pricing part, it has been negative. It's been a headwind for a little over two years now. And it sounds like maybe pricing could remain a bit of something that you kind of use to help drive volumes. Is that the right way to think about it, that we should maybe think about slightly negative pricing in 2025?

I don't see any negative pricing in 2025. There will be price increase for sure. That's a guarantee, 2025. There are some price increases. We already announced it. And it's just that there's going to be more announcement of price increase due to tariffs.

Okay. Great. And if you can just build on the comments you just made about the tariffs on Canada and Mexico, just remind us what the dynamic is there. Why is that, from those two markets specifically, why would that be a kill-in for your business?

Well, there's some manufacturers of plastic materials and aluminum items out of Canada. And if the 25% goes in place, basically... their existing clients will not be able to accept that increase. Same with Mexico. Mexico use has been, a lot of these distributors are ordering from Mexico from paper products, not necessarily plastic, more of a paper items, paper portion cup, paper bag, and paper other items, paper goods, and janitorial items. Now, if the U.S. taxed Mexico 25%, basically, the importer will have to raise their price. And basically, I mean, with us, we're – like I said, we have been very nimble. We have been very important from different parts of the world. It could be from not just – we move a lot out of China already. So our goal is by June of this year, only 10% of the product out of China. That's our goal. Remember, we were 50% two years ago. Now, in June, we already know it's 10% or less out of China. So basically, these new tariffs are not going to hit us at all, basically. There's not a major impact. So we're moving to a different part of the country in Southeast Asia, and that's the only item that's basically unavoidable. Everybody has to increase its aluminum because the announcement was that the 25% tariff is globally, including Japan, including Turkey, anywhere. So that basically is a given. That aluminum product has to go up.

Okay. And then the last question is on the freight. We were looking at the, it looks like the kind of the spot market or the open market here for freight has come down a ton in the last month. You know, what do you have baked into for freight costs in 25? And, you know, is it potential to see some upside to that? Or what's the story? Is that a kind of a lever point where it could really help your margins or not?

Well, freight, started to drop in the fourth quarter last year ocean freight and um there were some additional charges like peak season surcharge up until end of uh i believe uh february so starting march the ocean freight dropped about i would say about uh 20 on that part and has stayed stayed up there down there for a while and we don't expect the uh 2025 year contract there's going to be an increase because the shippers are actually seeing the decline in shipping product from Asia and for the domestic trucking because economy seem to be slowing down a lot so an oil price has come down so all these truckers are actually looking for businesses and and that's giving us an opportunity to save on the operational side so as Jen mentioned fourth quarter our operation expense was higher and And we're seeing that starting in March, our operational interest is coming down. In the second quarter, it's going to come down even lower than versus compared to fourth quarter and first quarter of this year.

Great. All right. Thank you so much. I appreciate it.

Thank you.

Next question comes from the line of Brian Butler from Stiefel. Your line is now open.

Good afternoon. Thanks for taking the questions. All right. First question, just maybe can we talk about the segments across the national accounts, distributors, online, and retail? How should we think about that in 2025 and what's driving, considering you had such a big performance in distributors in the fourth quarter?

Well, for the distribution channels, we're seeing California distributors, the major distributors, coming to us, tore us to sign agreement because they have to substitute out Styrofoam. So they're buying more of the plastic hinge containers, and we actually forecast a 400% increase in the sales of our plastic container in replacement of Styrofoam. This is from the distribution. Also, on the paperback side, we're seeing a major, a sharp increase, approximately 100% to 200% increase in the paperback because There are places banning plastic bags, and some national chain account is actually switching entirely out of the plastic bag into paper bag. And that's where we're seeing the growth in distribution also on the chain account. This is for the chain account on the paper bag side. And also for the chain account, we're seeing some of the chain account moving away from styrofoam into plastic containers, as well as some jump into the corrugated boxes, like these pizza boxes. They used to just put pizza in them. Now they're putting tacos. They're putting actually entrees. in the smaller size of pizza boxes. So that's where we're seeing a sharp increase in the distribution channels. And some of these chain accounts are coming toward us because they want to consolidate vendor. Here's the thing with the challenge of having multiple vendors. They can't get a full truckload per item, so their shipping cost is expensive. And so they want to reduce not their FOB pricing on the cost of goods itself. They want to actually see an overall saving in the landed cost. So that's something that we're offering to our customers that we can provide a landing cost. So this year, actually, we're going to be purchasing around 15 to 20 additional trucks and trailers, not just increasing our size of a warehouse. We're actually increasing our fleet so we can do more delivery ourselves into these chain accounts, distributors, retail accounts. We're seeing that that part, we're going to see we can enjoy more saving in the operational side.

Okay. And Following up, I guess, on that kind of vendor consolidation, when you think of your revenue growth, that double digit, which is impressive, you know, maybe break that down. What's the market growing at and then where are you taking share? Clearly some of that's vendor consolidation, but is there other places you're taking share in 25? And is supermarket, you know, is there any growth built in there on those trials that you're kind of in there? Is that part of your 2025 guidance as well?

Yes, supermarket growth is part of our guidance. National chain account is part of our guidance. And also introducing new paper product, additional 500 SKU on the paper product that is in the bakery bag, in the deli wraps, in the sandwich bag. So these are the sectors that we have never been into. In the past two months, we've seen a couple of our competitors being acquired by our competitor also. The acquisition actually caused more of a disruption in that industry, which is favorable to us as well. So we're one company that can ship all the product in one location versus you have to ship multiple locations. And like I mentioned earlier, customers switching out of plastic bag into paper, that's basically a market share we're taking from plastic bag. And also we're seeing this is a major issue with the importers. The tariff increase, a lot of these smaller importer without the cash flow, they will run into trouble of being able to import product in because of cash flow. Now that you have to put in more money on the Terra side versus just on the ocean freight, on the product itself, I mean, at Carrier Packaging and Lollica, we're strong, robust in terms of our cash flow. So we can utilize this cash flow to bring in more product as well as having increased storage, investing in trucking. So, I mean, we have that leverage now.

Okay, great. And actually, on cash flow... How should we think about that? I mean, you talked about building up inventories in the first quarter. How should we think about cash flow through 25, and what kind of capital spending are you looking at? You talked about adding trucks. So maybe how do we think about free cash flow sequentially through the quarters and a total for kind of where 25 could come out?

We're looking at the – we actually reduced our – in the past year, for the past 24 months, We've reduced our manufacturing in the U.S., and also with that reduction, we've reduced our maintenance costs, CapEx, on that as well. So our maintenance CapEx is down very low to approximately maybe $1 million or less a year. Our major capital investment will be on the truck, brand-new truck and fleet. That reduces our expenses and operational costs because we wouldn't have to lease the truck and maintenance costs. But the thing is, it will increase our EBITDA because that's back on depreciation I would anticipate our capital expenditure to be around $5 million this year.

Brian, this is Jen. Just to answer your question about the free cash flow, the way to think about kind of the free cash flow is obviously, as you're aware, we were just talking and giving guidance at the adjusted EBITDA margin level. For free cash flow, I would expect the free cash flow conversion ratio to be each of the quarter in 2025 to be fairly consistent with 2024 in terms of the cadence.

Okay, great. Thank you for taking the question. Thank you.

Thanks, Brian. Next question comes from the line of Michael Francis from William Blair. Your line is now open.

Hey, guys. This is Michael for Ryan. Thanks for taking the questions. First one for me, and you talked about sort of that good growth in the Midwest and some stabilization in California and the new D.C. there. So I was wondering, looking at 25, what sort of geographies you feel you have the most opportunity in?

I am going to bank on the Midwest. Okay. That is where we see the most opportunity, in Texas, especially in Texas.

Okay. Any reason why in Texas?

Well, our largest manufacturing facility is located in Texas, and a lot of our chain accounts are moving into Texas. And we're seeing – I mean, I myself moved to Dallas myself last year, and I'm there all the time and see that the roads are growing. People are moving to Dallas and Texas everywhere, and restaurants are booming. They're opening restaurants everywhere. So basically, we're seeing business – I mean – If people see that business is slowing down in California, it's growing greatly in Texas, Midwest.

Okay. And then looking at gross margins for next year, the guidance is down about 200 basis points, the midpoint from where you finished this year at. Can you talk about what's sort of driving that decline, and then are there any sort of positives or offsets that could help there?

Well, right now we – The tariff is very uncertain. So for us to set the entire year of gross margin, it's hard to really to anticipate. We don't know if the tariff is going to increase on Vietnam or if there's going to be additional tariff on Malaysia or additional tariff on Thailand or is it going to be globally? So we kind of wanted to anticipate, forecast a little bit into it for now. Because a lot of things are uncertain right now. But if I went to you for sure, the strong dollars, the lower ocean freight, it's helping us a lot in terms of the gross margin. But we'll see after. I would say it should stabilize. There should be more clarity after May of this year. Because right now, this month, we're still seeing one day there's an increase of 10%, 20%. And then two days later, it's a withdrawal or a pushback. So right now, we're just waiting to see what's going to happen. Okay.

And then the last one from me, you mentioned your operating expenses coming down to the second quarter from the fourth. Can you talk a little bit about what you're assuming on the OpEx side in 25?

Jack, can you go over that with Michael?

Yes. So, Michael, just to make sure I'm hearing your question correctly, your question is about what we build in the model for operating operating expenses for 2025 is that correct yeah that's correct okay yeah sure so happy to to provide a little more color there so uh in our model for 2025 we considered a few things at the operating expense level one is they continued saving opportunities as alan talked about to be more to drive operating efficiency primarily in the operations, in our operations. Alan talked about potential savings on the shipping side. That's primarily the truckings and shipping of our online orders. The other component of that really also is as we're gaining efficiency, we're trying to to to we're exploring kind of opportunities to get more savings on the labor side the third area that we building kind of in the on the operation side just in terms of saving opportunities is to look at our online sales online has been a great one of our our most significant drivers of growth as we, in the past, made significant investment on the marketing side, on the platforms to really drive that growth. We also have opportunities to potentially scale back on some of the investment and maintain that momentum on the online sales growth. So those are the major areas that we've considered in terms of building the model for 2025.

Okay, that's all for me. Thank you. Pass it on.

Thank you.

I'd now like to hand back the call over to Alan Yu, CEO. Go ahead, sir.

Thank you, operator, and thank you to all of you for joining us today. We appreciate your continued support. We remain confident about Carrot's future, and we look forward to keeping you appraised of our progress. Thank you very much. Have a nice day. Bye-bye.

Thank you for attending today's call. You may now disconnect. Goodbye.