Landec Corporation

Good afternoon, and thank you for joining Landex Fiscal 2022 Second Quarter Earnings Call. During the presentation, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. Afterwards, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. At that time, I will provide instructions on how to ask a question. Now, I would like to turn the call over to Jeff Sonick, Investor Relations at ICR.

Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us today to discuss Landex Corporation's Second Quarter Fiscal 2022 Earnings Results. On the call today from the company are Dr. Albert Bowles, President and Chief Executive Officer, John Moorberg, Chief Financial Officer, and Jim Hall, President of LifeCorps. By now, everyone should have access to the press release, which went out today just after 1 p.m. Pacific or 4 Eastern. If you've not received the release, it's available on the investor relations portion of Landex website at ir.landex.com. Before we begin today, We'd like to remind everyone of the safe harbor statement. Certain statements made in the course of this conference call contain forward-looking statements. It's important to note that the company's actual results could differ materially from those projected in such forward-looking statements. Additional information concerning risk factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements is contained from time to time in the company's filings with the SEC. including but not limited to the company's Form 10-K for fiscal year 2021. Copies of these filings may be obtained from the company's website. And with that, I'd like to turn the call over to Al.

Thanks, Jeff. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. On today's call, I will provide an update on our progress with Project SWIFT. Tom Hall will then review recent developments at LifeCorps. And then John Moorberg will discuss our financial results, and updated fiscal 2022 outlook. We will then open the call for your questions. We've been quite busy since we last spoke to you in September. As you can now see, our focus has been on executing the sale of our Eat Smart fresh packaged salad and vegetables business, which closed on December 13th for $73.5 million in cash. This asset sale marked an important milestone and Project SWIFT and demonstrates ongoing efforts to extract value from our non-core assets within our curation foods business and reorient the company around our rapidly growing life core biomedical business. We've already utilized the net proceeds from the transaction to pay down debt, which instantly reduced our balance sheet leverage. This puts the business back on a firm foundation It allows us the flexibility to channel our resources to more fully support the growth and expansion of the LifeCore business. With the divestment of each part, and while there's more work to do, management is laser-focused on the LifeCore business and the remaining curation assets that are growing at a higher rate, produce more attractive margins, and have value that we believe is presently underappreciated. As such, we will be focusing most of our attention and discussion going forward during our quarterly updates on LifeCorps, which is generating the vast majority of our consolidated adjusted EBITDA. It has provided Landex with a consistent and growing source of high-margin revenue since our acquisition of the business in 2010. In fact, LifeCorps' revenue has grown at a compound annual rate. of 15.4% since then, which is really impressive performance. Before I pass the call over to Jim for the review of LifeCorps, I also want to take a moment to characterize our financial reporting for the fiscal second quarter, as well as our guidance for the balance of the fiscal year. Since the Eat Smart sale occurred subsequent to fiscal second quarter end, we are providing you with a pro-formal look at the curation food segment for the first half of fiscal 22, as well as the full year of fiscal 21 to aid in your modeling of the go-forward business. John will share some greater insights on the financials and related guidance, but I want to recognize the great performance at LifeCorps. Revenue growth accelerated to a 7% increase in second quarter, which understates the accomplishments given some of the channel inventory headwinds we were working through in fiscal first half. And adjusted EBITDA growth was 26%. LifeCorps continues to perform well. We are excited for a strong fiscal second half of the year, and we couldn't be more excited about what lies ahead. With that, I'll pass the call over to Jim for a deeper review of the LifeCorps business.