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NewAge, Inc.
3/16/2021
Thank you. Good morning.
And thank you for joining New Age Inc's fourth quarter and full year 2020 financial results investor conference call. I'm Riley Timmer, the global head of investor relations of New Age, and I'm pleased to be with you all today. On today's call, we have Brent Willis, our chief executive officer, and Mark Wilson, our group president. I'd like to remind everyone that this conference call may contain certain forward-looking statements reflecting management's current expectations regarding future results of operations, economic performance, financial condition, and achievements of the company. Forward-looking statements, specifically those concerning future performance, are subject to certain risks and uncertainties. Factors that could cause these results to differ materially are set forth in our annual report on Form 10-K and 10-Q filed with the SEC. Any forward-looking statements that we may make on this call are based on assumptions as of today, and we undertake no obligation to update these statements as a result of new information or future events. Also during this call, we may present both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP measures is included in today's earnings release, which is available on our website. The transcript of today's conference call will also be available on the company's website. within the investor section at newage.com. I'll now turn the call over to Brent Willis, our CEO.
Thank you, Riley, and good morning, everyone. NewAge is now a half-billion-dollar company in pro forma revenue from really just an idea four and a half years ago. Essentially from near zero in mid-2016 to this scale, right at $500 million in a relatively short period of time, and now our first profitable quarter with $2.9 million of EBITDA. We've said all along that as we reach the initial scale we intended, which we've now hit, that the profitability will come, and that this Commitment has now materialized, so we expect to methodically and systematically improve on this profit base from this point forward. Now, why will the bottom line further improve from here? Well, it's just the math. Financially, now we have the scale and the associated resources. We don't need more SG&A, and we believe we have the right infrastructure for a multibillion-dollar-sized multinational. We have the market breadth and access. We've got the people, the systems, everything you need to capture the benefit of more scale, whereby a disproportionate amount of that growth will accrue to EBITDA margin and bottom line performance. Now, even though we have the scale and profitability as a result, much of our success still depends on the quality of our team and people. It always does, but with historically smaller companies like ours, it depends on them and their unwavering perseverance for success. To that end, I have with me on the call this morning long-term industry veteran Mark Wilson, our group president of our direct social selling division who leads all of our regions in commercial operations. I think Mark is by far and away one of the best in the industry, if not the best, And he will discuss the progress and details of our operational performance to provide more color on the operating results in our key geographies. Now, when you start out these startups, and if you are begrudgingly public like we inherited, you articulate your expectations of what you will do. And if four and a half years ago we would have said we're going to add 500 million in revenue and become EBITDA positive and cash flow generating, no one would have believed us, let's face it. So we're just not going to communicate our next milestones. What we will say, however, is that we are methodically going to build our business for consistent top line and consistent bottom line EBITDA, free cash and EBITDA margin improvement. And we are confident that we have both the business structure and the financial structure to do it. Now, leading to that methodical performance, as one of my mentors used to say, is a focus on what matters. To this end, the divestiture of BWR that frankly cost us more than $7 million at the EBITDA level a year was the right move. That happened at the end of Q3. We really loved our retail brands, but the economics in the retail brand beverage sector just changed. And we did not have the scale or the leverage to do anything about it. So we made the decision to divest them. And the end result is at least 7 million more in EBITDA per year. And this move enables an even greater focus on building out our direct route to market with competitively advanced social selling tools, which we see as a major trend and, frankly, a must-have for CPG companies to survive and thrive. We have over a 70 percent gross margin in this sector of the business and tremendous industry tailwinds behind us. And with all of the both organic and external growth opportunities in front of us, critical to our success is focusing both those financial resources against the opportunity and our human resources. So when we look out to where we expect to be in the next few years, this is why we are continuing to strengthen our management team with the right skill set to lead to a multibillion dollar multinational. We recently just hired a chief people officer as building a high performance company and culture is critical to our success and will continue to make additional changes to the management team, bringing on those leaders that will both embody the culture we're building and have the bandwidth for the opportunities in front of us. Look, what we saw in Q4 is the beginning of something big, as we promised. It's more than a foundation. It is a springboard. We have the scale. We have the profitability. We have the market reach, and we have an aligned, committed, and impassioned team of more than 400,000 brand partners and customers across more than 50 countries. We have the organizational capabilities, an increasingly stronger management team, and we have the financial resources and a whole host of growth opportunities in front of us. RX was and is an organic growth business, and it has only accelerated from there since the combination. given all the things that have come together for us so far that, frankly, investors are just getting the earliest glimpse of now, coupled with all the transformative external growth opportunities that are continuing to present themselves. Well, like I said, this is much more than a foundation. This is the springboard of something big. So let me pass it over to Mark to give you some insight on what is happening for us operationally. Mark?
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