Karat Packaging Inc.

After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your touchtone phone. And 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 Mr. Roger Pondale. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, operator. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Carrot Packaging's 2025 conference. Third 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, 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 carrot 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 Regulation G. A reconciliation of the most directly comparable GAAP measures to the non-GAAP financial measures is included in today's press release, which is now posted on the company's website. And with that, I will turn the call over to CEO Alan Yu. Alan?

Thank you, Roger. Good afternoon, everyone. Despite ongoing trade volatility, CARA achieved another quarter of record net sales up over 10% year-over-year, fueled by solid volume expansion, a favorable product mix, and effective pricing initiatives. We've experienced double-digit growth across all major markets, especially in Texas and California. Even with significant higher import costs due to increased duties and tariffs, we successfully sustained a gross margin of 34.5% for the third quarter. We remain committed to our sourcing diversification strategy, and our nimble and flexible operating model continues to enable us to effectively manage ongoing supply chain challenges. During the third quarter, we increased domestic sourcing to approximately 20% from about 15% in the second quarter. and we reduced imports from Taiwan to approximately 42% from 58%. We continue to closely monitor tariff developments and are ready to quickly adjust our sourcing strategy accordingly, as we have done in the past to maintain carrot competitive advantage. Additionally, foreign currency exchange rate between the US dollar and the new Taiwan dollar have shown increased stability since August, which is expected to help improve our operating performance for the current quarter. Earlier this year, we secured a major atom of business to supply paperback, a new product category for Carrot, to one of our largest national chain accounts. Initial shipments to select distribution centers started in the third quarter, and we expect the volume to accelerate in the fourth quarter. With fulfillment expected during Q1 of 2026, This new category of business with a chain account is for a two-year term and expected to contribute approximately $20 million in additional annual revenue. Over the next two to three years, we aim to scale our paper bag business to more than $100 million in additional annual revenue. The anticipated growth from this new category is being driven by national and regional restaurant chains that are transitioning to paper bags from plastic bags. This shift is influenced by evolving state and municipal regulations, as well as a growing emphasis on enhancing customer experience and brand images. We expect continued market share growth in this segment, further solidifying our position as leader in providing sustainable, eco-friendly disposable food service products. In late May and June this year, we implemented broad pricing increases across most product line to offset rising import costs. Heading into the fourth quarter and 2026, business trends remain strong. We continue to make disciplined pricing approach and partner with our customers while focusing on operating efficiencies. We are actively integrating several meaningful new customer accounts and focusing on increasing online marketing, which will strengthen our 2026 pipeline. building a strong foundation for what we expect to be another record-setting year in sales. Keres announced a first-ever stock repurchase program this week. In addition to the regular quarterly dividends, the announcement underscores our broad confidence in the company's future growth prospects and financial strength. And I will now turn the call over to Jian Guo, our Chief Financial Officer, to discuss the company's financial results in greater detail. Jian?

Thank you, Alan. I'll begin with a summary of our Q3 performance, followed by an update on our guidance. Net sales for the 2025 third quarter were $124.5 million, up 10.4% from $112.8 million in the prior year quarter. The increase was primarily driven by an increase of $9.4 million in volume and a $3.5 million favorable impact from product mix, partially offset by a $0.7 million unfavorable year-over-year pricing comparison. Sales to chain accounts and distributors were up by 13.7%. Online sales increased 3.1% over the prior year quarter, and sales to the retail channel were down 12.5% over the prior year quarter, reflecting the softness of the overall retail sector. Cost of goods sold for the 2025 third quarter increased 17.8% to $81.6 million. from $69.3 million in the prior year quarter. Product costs increased $5.0 million due to sales growth, partially offset by more favorable vendor pricing and product mix. Additionally, import costs increased $8.2 million due to higher import duty and tariffs, coupled with a 21.0% increase in import volume as we purchased more inventory ahead of expected business expansion, partially offset by a 13.4% decrease in average freight container rates. Gross profit for the 2025 third quarter was $42.9 million, compared with $43.5 million in the prior year quarter. Gross margin for the 2025 third quarter was 34.5% compared with 38.6% in the prior year quarter. Gross margin was negatively impacted by higher import costs, which as a percentage of vet sales increased to 14.4% compared with 8.6% in the prior year quarter. The decrease in margin was partially offset by a decrease in product costs as a percentage of net sales due to more favorable vendor pricing and product mix, as well as a reduction in inventory write-off and adjustments as a percentage of net sales. Operating expenses in the 2025 third quarter were $34.3 million compared with $32.2 million in the prior year quarter. The increase was mainly driven by $2.1 million of higher shipping costs due to higher sales volume, $0.7 million of higher rent expense due to a higher rate on our Chino-California facility lease extension, plus the opening of a new Chino distribution center, and $.6 million of higher salary and benefit expenses These increases were partially offset by a $1.4 million reduction in online platform fees. Operating income in the 2025 third quarter was $8.6 million versus $11.3 million in the prior year quarter. Total other income net was $1.3 million for the 2025 third quarter compared with $.6 million in the prior year quarter. The increase was primarily from foreign currency transaction gain of $.7 million, driven by the strengthening of the United States dollar against the new Taiwan dollar during the 2025 third quarter, compared with a loss of $.3 million on foreign currency transactions during the 2024 third quarter. Net income for the 2025 third quarter was $7.6 million compared with $9.3 million for the prior quarter. Net income margin was 6.1% in the 2025 third quarter compared with 8.2% in the prior year quarter. Net income attributable to carrot for the 2025 third quarter was $7.3 million, 36 cents per diluted share compared with $9.1 million or 45 cents per diluted share in the prior year quarter. Adjusted EBITDA for the 2025 third quarter was $13.1 million compared with $14.7 million for the prior year quarter. Adjusted EBITDA margin was 10.5% of net sales for the 2025 third quarter compared with 13.0% for the prior year quarter. Adjusted diluted earnings per common share was 37 cents for the 2025 third quarter compared with 47 cents for the prior year quarter. We generated operating cash flow of $1.0 million in the third quarter compared with $19.5 million in the prior year quarter. Duty and tariff payments as well as the inventory purchase payments increased. However, such increases were offset by strong collection and as you'll see described in the form 10Q filed tomorrow. Despite the significant cash outlays for operations and a $3.5 million early loan repayment on one of our consolidated variable interest entities term loans, we ended the quarter with $91.1 million in working capital. As of September 30th, 2025, we maintained financial liquidity of $34.7 million with another $19.9 million in short-term investment. As of September 30, 2025, we reclassified one of our consolidated variable interest entities' term loans into current liabilities as the maturity is within 12 months, totaling $20.4 million. we intend to pay down the loan upon maturity with our cash on hand. On November 4th, 2025, our board of directors approved the quarterly dividend of 45 cents per share payable November 28th, 2025 to stockholders of record as of November 21st, 2025. Additionally, our board of directors approved our first-ever share repurchase program of up to $15.0 million, under which Carrot is authorized to repurchase shares of its outstanding common stock from time to time through open market purchases. Looking ahead to the 2025 fourth quarter, we expect net sales to increase by approximately 10% to 14% over the prior year quarter, with gross margin projected to be within 33% to 35% and adjusted EBITDA margin to be within 8% to 10%. As Adam mentioned earlier, our new business pipeline for 2026 is robust, supported by the new paperback category offering and the addition of several key customer accounts. We remain focused on accelerating top-line growth with disciplined pricing while continuing to enhance operational efficiency and cost management. Alan and I will now be happy to answer your questions, and I'll turn the call back to the operator.

Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then 1 on your touchtone phone. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. If at any time your question has been addressed and you would like to withdraw your question, please press star, then two. And at this time, we'll pause momentarily to assemble our roster.

And the first question will come from Michael Francis with William Blair.

Please go ahead.

Hey, Allen, Jim. It's Mike on for Ryan. Nice quarter. I wanted to start on paper bags. Did I hear you right, that you aim to scale that to 100 million over the next two years?

Yes, that is correct.

And what gives you confidence in that number?

It's because there's a lot of chains are moving away from plastic bag into paper bag. And this is a segment that we're seeing that it's, you know, as one of the large chains in the U.S., move towards this area, more and more similar change will follow through that. And there, but basically that we feel that there is a organic growth in that segment. And also at the same time, it is not just the paper bag was handled. There's different type of bag. There's SOS bag that which every fast food restaurant will need. And with the growth of the fast food chain that is growing, the number of store that is growing, we feel that we're competitive. We can be competitive enough to gain market share in that segment as more and more people are looking toward that area. And also, there's other bakery back as well. There's just too many items in that segment that make us feel that we can grow immediately. I mean, as I said, we mentioned in our announcement that one chain, the annual sales of that number, it will be $20 million to $25 million. per year just for one chain. And we do have two or three other chains already working in testing our paperback and SOS back. That's why we feel confident that this will grow quickly into annual sales of additional $100 million a year.

That's all good to hear. And then I wanted to ask on gross margins. It went lower, I think, as we were expecting, and 4Q is a little lower than we were expecting. But we'd like to know, longer term, do you think that there's an opportunity for you to get back into that high 30% range on the gross margin number, or is that going to be difficult while tariffs are in the market?

Well, we're trying to be conservative right now at this point because there's still uncertainties. But the good thing is we feel that there's a tailwind. One of the issues that reduces our gross margins drastically in the second quarter was there's sudden drop in the Taiwanese – a sudden increase in the Taiwanese dollar versus the U.S. dollar, that it was a drop of 11% in just three days alone. And that 11% has come back to just about an increase of 4.5%, 5%. So basically – it's more of a stabilization in the U.S. dollars against Asian currencies. And this is actually enabling us to go back to our vendors to negotiate a better pricing this past few months basically. So we're seeing that there's more tailwind in terms of the gross margin. But we do want to be conservative in terms of how we look at in terms of the numbers in September. and giving us a number that we've seen in October. We've already seen some improvement in October versus September. September was better than August. So we want to see more of the positive trend before we can issue a higher, increase our gross margin numbers, basically.

And lastly for me, it's good to see the share buybacks. Would love to get an update on your capital allocation priorities between debt pay down buybacks and the dividend and any potential M&A.

Well, we, our strategy is that if we have more than $20 million in a short-term deposit, that we can allocate it to the dividend, special dividend, regular dividend, or use it for other investment. At this point, even with the increase in tariffs, increase in inventory-wise in the second quarters, our deposit amount is still the same, remains the same. So we're still strong in cash. And lately we're seeing that we're bringing, we have been bringing down our inventory to reduce our liability, reduce our costs in terms of the tariff as well as importation costs. So we're seeing cash flowing back into our accounts. And that's why we feel like it's good for us to do some type of a share repurchase. While our stock is kind of low right now, I think it's a value to repurchase or steer back. At the same time, we are still looking to merger and acquisition. We do have a few in the pipeline, investment, partnership, joint venture, and also acquisition. We don't feel that this will deter us in terms of moving toward this direction.

Okay. Good to hear. I'll pass it on. Thank you, Michael.

The next question will come from George Staffos with Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Hi, everyone. Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. Can you hear me okay, Alan? Yes, I can, George. Hey, how are you? So, listen, maybe piggybacking on the question on capital allocation, I want to take it from a different approach. I mean, your dividend basically represents the majority of your earnings per share. Why would you consider or contemplate doing more buyback in light of that? Would you consider borrowing? to buy back more stock, it would seem like, you know, deleveraging and taking care of your incoming debt pay down needs would be probably more prudent. But, you know, how do you think about that?

Well, here's the thing. We don't have any debt on our book right now at this point. The debt that you're seeing is the IE. That's on the real estate side of the interest.

That $20 million, that current liability, you said you're going to pay that down in the upcoming year?

We can pay it down. We can pay either with our current CD that we have in our short-term deposit to utilize some of the cash on that. And at the same time, we can have third party. We can also continue to borrow with different banks. It depends on what the cash flow situation is, if there's a need to do that. Because right now, like I said, we don't have any debt in our lollipop or care packaging book right now. So we're, this is one of the things that we still have time to think what we want to do, allocate our capitals. If there's other things that we can do better, then we will do that. But at this currently, the rate of CD income is dropping as the interest rate reduces. So we have to figure out which is better. If we were to pay down the debt, we actually will be making, generating additional income you know, it'll be an inter-department, inter-company loan to the VIE company in paying down that debt. So it wouldn't be like really just paying, it would be paying down the debt for the VIE company, but at the same time, for a lollipop, it would be income, additional income. Instead of giving us deposits from, yeah, deposits from the bank, it would be actually more income from the VIE company.

And George, this is Jen. I just wanted to add, hi, George. I just wanted to add on to what Alan was talking about to answer your question. The main purpose really is to have one additional tool in our toolbox to further enhance our shareholder return while we continue to focus on growing the company either organically or inorganically. As we previously announced, as you probably saw yesterday in the announcement, the total amount that the board approved of the share repurchase program is $15 million. So it is a fairly small program at management's total discretionary. So this will be something that management will continue to evaluate in terms of a lot of the different factors, right? The pricing, the performance, the liquidity, the strength of the balance sheet, quite a few factors, just another tool in our toolbox to further enhance our shareholder return. You're right. I mean, obviously, our dividend yield is already pretty rich, so that definitely is something that we consider as we move forward with the potential execution under this program as well.

Okay. I appreciate the thoughts on that, and thanks for the the reminder on the VIE. One question, back to the question, I think Mike teed up on the bag business. So let's assume you have perfect accuracy on the revenue side on bags, and that's $100 million in whatever time period you'd said. What kind of margin do you think you're going to get on that business? And you're already starting to see some of that show up in the fourth quarter, you said, correct. So two questions there.

It will be more of a mixed margin. The higher volume will be could be in the high teens margin size. And the SOS bag could be in the high 30s. So it depends on the product line. There's also a bakery bag that could be in the high 50s. And also, at the same time, we are selling online on these new bags that we're bringing in. The online will be even in a higher margin range. So It will be more of a balancing mixture of each, just as we are doing right now. So, and also, we are actually working heavily toward in terms of getting our batch to manufacture more efficiently to increase margin from there, a better sourcing of raw material from our vendors. and also moving, shifting the manufacturing site locations, potentially moving some into domestic U.S. production. That might save some costs, even enhancing more margin. So these are the things that we can do once as a volume increase in the next 12 months.

All right. Two quickies for me, and I'll turn it over to Alan. So, you know, with that being the case, and we're already in November, so, you know, almost halfway through the quarter yet you know the range on on revenue growth the range on on margin is uh is fairly wide now i realize you're trying to be prudent i realize there are a lot of bigger reason to mark especially with tariffs and sourcing but i find the range it's maybe a little bit wider than i would expect at this juncture in the year what what's giving you pause in terms of maybe perhaps having a little bit narrower both growth rate range and margin range for the quarter. And then did I hear you say – my last question, I'll turn it over. Did you say there was an inventory write-off? I apologize, I'm on the road right now, so I don't have your materials in front of me.

I wasn't – I'm not sure what the inventory write-off was, but I know that we're reducing inventory at this currently toward the year end. Actually, our sales have been very robust. As you've said, we are in the middle of the fourth quarter already, so we're seeing our sales almost in the mid-teen range, but we just want to be conservative. Basically, at the mid-teen range, this is a sales increase organically that we haven't seen actually for the past three years. We're saying that 12 to 14, but we are seeing numbers very close to the mid-teens, but we just want to be in terms of falls to 14, that's what we're trying to – this is where we're being conservative, but we're seeing in the mid-teens right now in the growth numbers, the after-sales numbers. And basically, in our industry, this is kind of a very good number in terms of well above our industry right now.

Understood. Understood. Thanks. I'll turn it over. Thank you, Jen. Thank you.

And this will conclude our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Mr. Alan Yu, CEO, for any closing remarks. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Thank you, everyone, for joining our third quarter carrier packaging earning conference call. I'd like to say thank you again and have a nice day. Goodbye.

The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.