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spk00: Good day and welcome to the S&W Sheep Company reports first quarter fiscal year 2023 financial results. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. 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 Robert Bloom with Listen Partners. Please go ahead.
spk07: All right. Thank you very much, and thank you all for joining us today to discuss S&W Seed Company's first quarter fiscal year 2023 financial results for the quarter ended September 30th, 2022. With us on the call representing the company today are Mark Wong, President, Chief Executive Officer, and Betsy Horton, Chief Financial Officer. At the conclusion of today's prepared remarks, we'll open the call for a question and answer session. Before we begin with prepared remarks, please note that statements made by the management team of S&W Seed Company during the course of this conference call may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 is amended, and such forward-looking statements are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements describe future expectations, plans, results, or strategies, and are generally preceded by words such as may, future, plan or planned, will or should, expected, anticipates, draft, eventually, or projected. Such forward-looking statements on this call include, but are not limited to, the advancement of S&W's business strategy, S&W's financial guidance for fiscal 2023, and S&W's expectations regarding its lender relationships and planned use of loan proceeds. Listeners are cautioned that such statements are subject to a multitude of risks and uncertainties that could cause future circumstances events or results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements, including the risks that actual results may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements as a result of various factors and other risks identified in the company's 10-K for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2022, and other filings subsequently made by the company with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In addition, to supplement S&W's financial results reported in accordance with U.S. generally accepted accounting principles, or GAAP, S&W will be discussing adjusted EBITDA on this call. This non-GAAP financial measure is not meant to be considered in isolation or as a substitute for the comparable GAAP measure, should be read in conjunction with S&W's consolidated financial statements prepared in accordance with GAAP, has no standardized meaning prescribed by GAAP, and is not prepared under any comprehensive set of accounting rules or principles. A description of adjusted EBITDA and a reconciliation of historical adjusted EBITDA to net loss is included at the end of S&W's earnings release issued earlier today, which has been posted on the investor relations page of S&W's website. S&W has not reconciled its guidance for adjusted EBITDA for fiscal 2023 to net loss because the reconciling line items that impact net loss are uncertain or out of its control and cannot be reasonably predicted. The actual amount of these items during fiscal 23 will have a significant impact on net income or loss. Accordingly, reconciliation of this non-GAAP measure is not available without unreasonable efforts. An audio recording and webcast replay for today's conference call will also be made available online on the company's investor relations page. With that said, let me turn the call over to Mark Wong, Chief Executive Officer for S&W Seed Company. Mark, please proceed.
spk05: Thank you, Robert, and good morning to all of you on the call today. As we talked about during our year-end call in September, for fiscal year 2023, we're focused on commercial execution as we begin to leverage all the work that has been done over the past five years. Simply put, it's about driving towards and beyond profitability in the near term. We are doing this by being intensely focused on the four key centers of value we have outlined previously, including number one, our sorghum technology operations led by Double Team, a next generation non-GMO herbicide tolerant sorghum solution. Number two are international forage operations, which primarily operate out of Australia and provide products around the world. Number three are U.S. forage operations. And number four are specialty crops, which include camelina for biofuel applications and stevia. I'll review the progress of each of these areas during my presentation. Q1 of 2023, at a high level, I am extremely pleased. And we started the first quarter off on a very high note. Our first quarter revenue of 19.9 million was an increase of 28% compared to Q1 of a year ago. But as we discussed on our last call, fiscal 2023 is not simply about revenue growth, but our efforts to drive margin expansion and improvements in adjusted EBITDA. Compared to Q1 of fiscal 2022, we achieved a 260 basis point improvement in gross profit margins and a $2.4 million improvement in adjusted EBITDA up from negative 4.0 million to negative 1.6 million. Considering we had a 4.3 million increase in revenue, nearly 60% of our revenue growth dropped to the adjusted EBITDA line. One item I want everyone also to remember is that the first quarter is typically a heavy alfalfa quarter with very little of our high margin sorghum or double team sales occurring in this quarter. As we entered the back half of the year, we see potential for further significant gross margin and adjusted EBITDA improvements. Beyond sales execution and margin controls, we are executing on the cost control initiatives we discussed earlier this year. SG&A and R&D each dropped by $500,000 during the quarter or about a million dollars in total compared to Q1 fiscal 2022. Overall, we expect our OPEX spend to be much lower than last year. So operationally versus Q1 last year, 28% gross revenue growth, 260 basis point improvement in gross profits, $1 million decrease in operating expenses, and a $2.4 million improvement in adjusted EBITDA. Needless to say, we are very pleased with our progress in the first quarter. So let me talk a little bit about the four key centers of value again. The first being our U.S. sorghum technology double team business. First, let me discuss what I believe to be double team's potential potential. to revolutionize the sorghum market in the same way other weed control technologies have enhanced yields for crops such as corn, soybeans, and cotton. From a numbers standpoint, during the last year, we sold approximately $3 million of Doubleteen. But as we have stated, one of the biggest hindering factors we have is availability of seed. On that front, we have materialized our seed production and have taken steps we believe are appropriate to limit the risk, natural risk to farming that we can see such as freezes and excess heat. To date we have not seen quality concerns and our ongoing production harvest remains on track to support our 12 million revenue target from double team sales. These expected sales translate to about 500,000 acres of double team being grown by farmers in 2023. Operationally, the first half of our fiscal year is where we are booking pre-orders for the first quarter of the year. Initial indications are very positive and with a third of our expected crop already pre-ordered, the positive experience and word of mouth across the industry is truly benefiting us this year. We talked about this same last quarter, but additionally, selling Double Team in a S&W Sorghum Partners brand. We are also looking at a number of private label opportunities, which we believe can expand distribution. We currently have many more private label partners looking at packaging and selling Double Team. We... Expect that about a third of the 12 million of expected sales for 2023 will be to these private label customers. The ability to leverage key private label partners and utilize their expertise in distribution systems and other key geographies should be of huge benefit to us. Our private label partners will be important next year when we again expect double team sales to grow significantly in the American market. And we are also beginning to formulate our double team strategy for South America, Asia, and Africa. We remind everyone the season we are so excited about double team is significantly, excuse me, the reason we are excited about double team is the significantly enhanced margins for the product. Based on our outlook of $12 million of double team sales in fiscal 2023, we expect about a 50% or 6 million to drop to the EBITDA line. In summary, at the moment, we feel we are well positioned to hit our outlook for sorghum this year. I want to give an update on a sorghum product technology we've discussed previously that plays In the forage space, the technology is what we have previously called durian-free, and we continue to believe that it is some real potential in the global forage markets. We are renaming it prussic-free to reflect the fact that the trait eliminates prussic acid in sorghum. Farmers are more familiar with prussic acid terminology and with the fact that this naturally occurring compound can be under certain conditions occur in conventional sorghum, endangering grazing livestock. Crescent-free trait will eliminate this risk and allow worry-free use of sorghum, forage sorghum, regardless of growing conditions. We have introductory amounts of seed that we're growing this year, and we will have enough parent seed to produce a lot more seed for next year's crop year and expect to roll out in the U.S. to solid demand. Our second center of value, international forage, is also on a very positive upswing. The key drivers for improvement during the first quarter was alfalfa, particularly from our international forage operations. not from sales in Australia. Remember, this is traditionally a quarter where about 75% of our sales are alfalfa. As I mentioned a moment ago, this isn't just about sales, but gross margins as well. Our alfalfa business has margins in excess of 22% for the quarter, the highest quarterly margin for alfalfa that we have achieved in several years. We believe that the strong Commodity prices globally are underpinning continued strong growth in all agricultural inputs, and that the alfalfa market is no exception. Alfalfa pricing is up 22% compared to a year ago in the same period. On the flip side, our tighter cost controls and inventory management that we have put in place, we are achieving the forecasted savings outlined earlier in the year, leading to the improvement in margin. Further, the international shipping challenges we encountered as recently as a few months ago are starting to ease. Looking ahead, devastating floods, though, in eastern Australia has severely impacted vast swath of cropping land and expect mixed farming enterprises Once the water recedes, we believe there will be substantial remediation required, including replanting of crops and pastures. This has led, though, to a slow start for our Australian domestic business, but we expect it should benefit from international forage operations later in the year. While one quarter does not make a year, recall that the high end of our original guidance called for approximately 9 million in growth from international forage operations, while the low end had an assumption of flat revenues. While we believe our shipping issues have somewhat eased, we still face risks of delay on future shipments in future quarters. However, with a 3.5 million first quarter increase in international forage sales, we believe we are starting the year off on the right foot. Commenting now on our third center of value, our U.S. forage business. It's pretty much steady state as it goes. We continue to encounter headwinds that have, we have discussed in the past based on decreasing U.S. alfalfa acres. We have a nice base of business within this segment though. And as our customers desire our germplasm base with an emphasis on high yield and forage quality, with resistance to diseases and stress. Operationally about 10 to 12, 11 million or so of annual revenue is what we continue to expect from this sector. However, beyond the germplasm base, the real assets here remain our breeding station and processing facilities in Napa, Idaho, which we believe can be utilized for biofuel species such as camelina. And then onto our last, center of value which is the specialty crops and again the topic of biofuels i haven't i don't have any real update since our last report but let me remind you of what we have discussed last quarter it is our intent to partner with a large with large energy companies for biofuel production leveraging our capabilities in production, processing, packaging of camelina. Due to our unique position as an integrated global seed company with specific expertise in breeding production sales and distribution of small seeded specialty crops, including camelina, which are highly desirable for biofield production, we believe will be an ideal partner. As I mentioned last quarter, we're planning about 300 acres of camelina this fall, for seed harvest next year. And it remains our goal to enter the camelina market as a seed and technology provider with multiple industry transactions and to provide a potential roadmap. We are optimistic that there is a mutual beneficial agreement to be had in the future. I look forward to hopefully being able to provide further updates on this in the next couple of quarters. Just an update on our wheat JV. We're targeting to finalize the deal in the second quarter of this fiscal year, so the next couple of months, which would combine our wheat efforts in Australia with Trigal Genetics. As we've mentioned previously, it's a JV between BioSeries Crop Solutions and Flora Monde de Prey, a European wheat breeding company. We believe that the joint venture could significantly strengthen S&W's position in wheat, enabling us to benefit from the worldwide exposure the combined entity would provide. And further, we would all allow us to focus in our efforts internally on our key centers of value. A banking update for me, usually Betsy normally would hit most of the banking updates, but I, I just wanted to point out a few high points since we've made a lot of progress in this area. I just wanted to highlight how pleased I am to have entered into a new increase in extended credit facility with National Australian Bank for up to $48 million Australian, which is an increase of $9 million Australian from our current facility. Further, at the end of October, our largest shareholder, MFP partners increased their letter of credit from $9 million to $12 million, allowing us to increase our CIBC loan from $18 million to $21 million U.S. We believe these increased credit facilities reflect the support these groups have in our strategic plan going forward as we grow revenues and drive towards profitability. Before I turn it over to Betsy, just let me remind everyone of our outlook for fiscal 2023. On the high end of guidance, we're expecting 92 million in sales and a negative adjusted EBITDA of about $2 million. On the low end, it's 80 million in sales and a negative 7 million in adjusted EBITDA. The low end of the guidance assumes only growth from double team and flat revenue through the rest of our operations. Among other things, the higher end assumes 3 million in growth from traditional sorghums, and 9 million in growth from our international forage operations. Betsy will give you more detail and expand on this in her presentation. With the progress made during the first quarter where international forage is up 3.5 million, we see a path to achieve, we believe, something closer to the high end of the guidance. But as I said earlier, our quarter does not make a year. then we still have a lot of work ahead of us to achieve these results in the current fiscal year. And one additional item I'll point out is that we have made zero assumptions for any biofuel or stevia-related agreements for fiscal year 2023, guidance which may prove to offer upside opportunity for the company. So it's a great opportunity. start in the year on all fronts. And let me now turn it over to Betsy to walk through the numbers in more detail. And then we will be back and happy to answer any questions. Betsy, I'll turn it over to you, please.
spk01: Thanks so much, Mark. And thanks to everyone for joining us on the call this morning. Let's start on the revenue lines. Revenue was $19.9 million for the quarter, an increase of 27.9% compared to $15.5 million in the prior year's first quarter. The increase is primarily attributed to a $3.5 million increase in our international forage operations, which was driven by strong international alfalfa results and offset by a reduction of almost $1 million in our Australia domestic business due to those wet weather conditions that Mark mentioned. We also had a $1 million increase in revenue across sorghum and alfalfa in North America. While we did see a shift in revenue from the fourth quarter of fiscal 2022 to this quarter, which we talked about during our year-end call, please remember that we also had a shift from fourth quarter of FY21 into last year's first quarter, which essentially cancels out when comparing year over year. Another way to look at it is that two years ago, core revenue in Q1 fiscal 2021 was just $9 million. So, excluding the shift, we still achieved significant growth on a more normalized basis this quarter. Mark hit on the revenue guidance, but to reiterate what we discussed last quarter, our FY23 revenue guidance is currently in the range of $80 to $92 million. As we look to bridge $71 million in fiscal 2022 to $80 to $92 million in 2023, we are making the following growth assumptions. On the low end of the guidance, we are simply taking into account $9 million in incremental revenue growth attributable to double team and flat revenue in the rest of our operations. At the higher end of the guidance, in addition to the $9 million of double team growth, we are assuming approximately $9 million in growth from international forage operations, with about half coming from pricing improvements and half coming from volume, and then about $3 million in assumed growth from our traditional non-DT-related sorghum operations. As Marv stated, given the $3.5 million growth in international forage during Q1, we are starting the year off strong. Now turning to margins, growth margins were 22.7% in the first quarter of fiscal 2023 compared to 20.1% in the prior year's first quarter. The key driver to the 260 basis point improvement in gross margins was alfalfa, which was up over 1,000 basis points over the last year and accounted for nearly 75% of Q1 sales. Well, something I wouldn't normally highlight, but given our recent history, I think it warrants mentioning. is that we had inventory write downs of about $500,000. This is much more in line with what we would expect in a normal quarter compared to what we saw in Q4 of 2022. You may recall that we have been very focused on inventory management and really digging into our inventory evaluation. We know that inventory management is so incredibly critical for our industry and we are extremely focused on improving our lifecycle management so we can avoid big write downs in the future. We therefore have established a reserve process whereby we match the timing of the reserve with the revenue generation period of the lifecycle of each hybrid. Having some inventory write-downs is part of participating in the seed industry. However, through this reserve methodology and our lifecycle management efforts, we should avoid the large one-time impacts that we have experienced in the past and instead see amounts more likely due this quarter. Now we'll transition to operating expenses. Our GAAP operating expenses for Q1 2023 were $6.6 million compared to $7.6 million in the prior year's first quarter, a decrease of $1 million. Half of the expense reduction came from SG&A with the other half coming from reductions in R&D. We do have some timing differences where we will catch up on the underspend later in the but we believe we are on track to achieve our goal of $5 million in annualized cost savings outlined last quarter. For the year, we believe operating expenses, including stock-based comp of about $2 million, will be about $27 million, which is consistent with our earlier guidance. At the adjusted EBITDA line, we had a negative adjusted EBITDA of $1.6 million for the first quarter compared to negative adjusted EBITDA of $4 million in the prior year's first quarter, an improvement of $2.4 million. As Mark pointed out, this $2.4 million improvement to adjusted EBITDA was achieved on a $4.3 million increase in revenue. So with improvements in margin, nearly 60% of the revenue increase drops to the adjusted EBITDA line. Similar to what I did last quarter, let me bridge out how we look to achieve our adjusted EBITDA guidance in fiscal 2023. Let's start with the high end of our assumptions, which is a $2 million adjusted EBITDA loss for the year. Starting at a negative adjusted EBITDA of $24 million for fiscal year 22, we assumed the following for fiscal year 23. First, a $5 million improvement to our LCM, or lower of cost or market, charges. Second, $7 million in incremental gross profit due to DT and traditional Sorghum revenue growth. Third, a $5 million improvement in international forage gross profit due to both the higher end of our expected growth as well as overall improvements in our production costs. And fourth, a $5 million improvement from cuts to our operating expenses. All of that gets us to an expected $2 million adjusted EBITDA loss for fiscal year 23. For the low end of our adjusted EBITDA guidance, I'll remind you what we did for the low end of the revenue guidance. We simply took into account incremental revenue growth attributable to the double team and assumed flat revenue in the rest of our operations. On the low end of our range for adjusted EBITDA, we did the same and assumed growth only in DT, which would be a $6 million adjusted EBITDA loss. We made some additional assumptions. Negative $2 million of the international forage benefit would be captured due to increase in margins. And between our lower cost or market charges and OPEX combined, we would have a $9 million benefit versus 2022. This would end with an EBITDA loss on an adjusted basis of about $7 million. These are only assumptions and there are a tremendous number of variables, but we believe it is important for investors to understand the methodology behind the numbers we provided. Now let's talk about our financing. So as Mark discussed, in late October, we announced an extension and increase to certain of our credit facilities with National Australia Bank, or NAB, to a combined maximum borrowing capacity of 49 million Australian dollars, or approximately 31.8 million USD as of September 30th, 2022. This is an increase of Australian $9 million, or approximately $5.8 million compared to our prior facilities. The modified credit facilities include a seasonal credit facility, which is comprised of a borrowing baseline and an overdraft facility. We also have a flexible rate loan and a master asset finance facility with expiration dates ranging from September 2023 to May of 2026. We plan to use the increases in our credit facilities to support our growing international forage operations based out of Australia. We are grateful for the relationship we have had with NAV for more than 10 years and look forward to a mutually beneficial relationship for years to come. Additionally, as you might have seen from the 8K we filed on November 1st, we've amended a couple of our other financing agreements. MFP, our largest shareholder, continue to show their support for S&W by issuing a $12 million standby letter of credit to back our CIBC facility. This was a $3 million increase from what was in place previously. The LC allowed us to increase our total revolving loan commitment with CIBC to $21 million, up from $18 million. We felt this was a relatively non-dilutive way to improve our balance sheet, and we thoroughly appreciate the ongoing support from MFP. We continue to actively pursue long-term financing with a replacement lender with an expectation that a non-bank lender is likely a better fit for us at this point in time and expect to close a new deal prior to the maturity of the CIBC facility at the end of the calendar year. We know there's a lot of work ahead of us, but we are extremely pleased with the progress made during the first quarter and the pathway we believe it provides us for a potentially strong fiscal 2023. With that, I will turn the call back over to Mark.
spk05: Thank you, Betsy. Just in closing, we feel very good about the progress we've made so far in the first quarter. We remain focused on developing the four key centers of value we've outlined previously and continue to focus on. We have executed on the alignment of our cost structure to support these key centers of value. Further, we are assessing potential value generating transactions. intended to drive the business towards profitability. Our international forage operations had a very good quarter and initial indications on pre-orders of double team indicate that our assumptions for growth are reasonable. As always, we thank you for your continued support of SNW and look forward to taking your questions.
spk06: Operator? Thank you.
spk00: We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster.
spk06: Our first question comes from Ben Cleese with Lake Street.
spk00: Please go ahead.
spk08: All right. Thanks for taking my questions. And congratulations on a good quarter, especially in the margins and the capital availability side. A couple questions from me. First of all, on the Camelina initiative. Mark, I'm wondering if you can update us on expectations for planting that's, I assume, going on as we speak here. for camelina as a cover crop. So if you could update us on kind of acreage and locations of expected plantings, that'd be great.
spk05: Thanks, Ben. Always appreciate your questions. Yeah, so I've said we've got about 300 acres of seed camelina. So that would be the amount of camelina that then we produce seed that we sell to our farmer partners. And then they grow the grain camelina, which is pressed for oil. So that's a pretty big bite for just starting the program, but we think that the biodiesel market is going to be a huge opportunity. There's obviously a lot of other companies working in other crops all around the world, and we believe we can participate in that early on. So we're pretty excited about that. We also believe that the Idaho industry location where our breeding station and production plant are ideal for producing camelina. Some of the companies that are also in the U.S. market are a little farther north than we are. We think that that adds some weather risk to the seed production, and so we would prefer to frankly produce it in a little better weather environment, even though it might be a little higher cost because the competing crops earn more for the farmers, so we have to pay a little bit more for our camelina. But, you know, as everyone on the call knows, the ag business, ag feed business, is a long product line business. We've been doing this now. I've been CEO for five years, and now we're finally hitting our stride to the genes that we've put into the market, to these opportunities like camelina. And, you know, we think that having stable seed supply is more important than a couple of pennies per pound cost savings, at least at the beginning of the cycle where demand is higher than capacity to produce the seed. So we're really excited about what's happening on the camelina and the biodiesel side. It's pretty clear that in the U.S. market there won't be enough oil seeds to satisfy the diesel market for many, many years to come, maybe never. And so we think it's a tremendous opportunity to produce oils that have a much, much improved carbon footprint versus petroleum-based diesel, and at the same time not obviously affect the cost of food because it's, camelina's grown as a second crop basically over the winter. So we're pretty excited and, you know, we took a big bite putting 300 acres in the ground and we'll be updating, you know, in the next couple of quarters as to status of the seed production and what the actual farmers were able to produce and whatever the winter weather's going to be here in the next three, four months.
spk08: Very good. All right. Well, I appreciate that. We'll stay tuned for more updates next spring. Pivoting over to sorghum. So, Mark, you commented that you've got expectations that about a third of your double team is going to be in the form of private label. Can you kind of talk about just kind of the different business model of private label versus selling direct to farmers and kind of the challenges around the private label process here in the very early stages and kind of your expectations for that private label business, you know, over the next two to three years?
spk05: Yeah, great question, Ben. And, you know, it's good, as you point out, to look forward into the future because our decision to, frankly, sell a little bit more of our available inventory through private label is one that's based really on the future. So I said that this spring planting, you know, based on our sort of 55,000 bag kind of estimate of sorghum that we're going to sell, that it's a roughly 500,000 acre crop that's on a sorghum base in the U.S. of 6 million acres, right? So that's a fairly significant piece. But we think that... Obviously, we have to sell that and we have to distribute it and it has to get planted. But we think based on the demand, there's going to be a huge opportunity again to increase our sales in 2024 and maybe up to a million acres. So we're in seed production in terms of the male and female lines that we need to produce our hybrids and stuff. to have enough hybrid seed to in the 2024 spring planting. So that's next year to basically be targeting close to a million acres. And that would be really significant given the 6 million acres that's on the basis of 6 million acres of existing grain sorghum plantings in the U.S. that we think is the 2024 expected planting rates for farmers. So, you know, One of the big opportunities for us is to use the bigger customers who want private label to basically use their sales forces to continue to improve the penetration rates, market share rates that we get for double team grain sorghum. And so one of the big reasons why we're putting more of our available seed this year at the private label is that we think in 2024, that's going to help us improve and increase to a million acres our penetration rates. So that's really one of the reasons. It's not just for 2023 sales. It's really looking forward to 2024 sales. And again, I can't say this enough times. The product development life cycles are really long for ag And so, you know, it just, we're always looking forward a couple of years. As your question pointed out, you can't just focus on the year that you're in. You have to focus a couple of years ahead. So that's the reason why we're very, very bullish on all of the interest in private label. We didn't have this interest last year, right, because the crop was People were just assessing our gene and stuff. We remember we sold about a sixth of the seed that we're going to sell in 2023 last year. And so people were just getting used to seeing double T grain sorghum. But the overwhelming response of the farmers to want to purchase it is really uplifting to all of our employees, especially the R&D guys who have been working on this. for seven, eight years and our production guys who put the stuff field and, you know, our sales team who's, uh, who's selling it today. So we're, we're looking forward to 2024. That's the real reason to put more of our available seed, uh, sales and inventory through private label rather than our own branded, uh, slogan partners brand.
spk08: Got it. Makes, makes plenty of sense. Um, Well, very good. Well, there's plenty more to talk about, but that's probably a good place to leave it. Thanks for taking my questions, and I'll get back in line. You're more than welcome.
spk00: Again, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star, then 1 at this time. Our next question comes from Jonathan White with KMF Investments. Please go ahead.
spk04: Great. Good morning, Mark. Good morning, Betsy. Thanks for your time today. Morning, Jonathan. Just wanted to start high level. If we go back to kind of your technology presentation from December of 2020, you all outlined kind of some growth areas that you all were going to focus on, some areas that you had intended to divest. I'd put a flag in the ground as far as kind of where you thought you'd be in 2024, 2026. I know it's way too early to be giving guidance for next year, but just directionally, what what's changed and what is still on track from your mind in relation to kind of where you thought you'd be two years ago?
spk05: Yeah. So, you know, like all things in business that has long product development timelines, you know, facts in the market do change your opinion. And I would say at this point, the percent of your proprietary, you know, are based on the That percent is a pretty good estimate. We think that that number is pretty on spot. And we're excited because when we did that technology growth three, five-year plan, we didn't understand the durin-free slash now prussic acid opportunity that we were going to have in forage sorghums. And so, you know, having two traits following each other is always a huge, huge benefit to the farmers and to the company, frankly, because, you know, we are getting a reputation in the sorghum market as a technology leader. We have a lot of ongoing discussions with every single one of the other sorghum companies around the world that are fairly major in sorghum, grain sorghum and forward sorghum sales. And we just are very optimistic that there's a technology plan that our R&D from biotech and from our standard plant breeding is going to yield us continued products in the future. On the downside, I'd say that our estimates of kind of our general sales growth is going to be a bit slower than in that plan. I think that the sales number is probably high in that plan, but the profitability is probably a pretty good estimate. We get the chance, because we've been pretty busy, to redo that plan. When we're going to issue one is not totally clear to me, but hopefully by the end of this fiscal year, we'll have the time to put all of our teams together around the world and assess both the interest of other seed companies for licensing in our own direct sales and 3.0 technology, three- to five-year technology plan. That'll give your question a much more thorough answer than just sort of my head. But, you know, it's something we spend a lot of time thinking about. So the new plan will be along the same lines that I'm outlining. I think it'll have lower total sales. It'll have about the same amount of sales in technology-based products and about the same earnings EBITDA that we outlined in the three- to five-year plan.
spk04: That's interesting. I mean, so that's a significant step up in cash flow over the next 18 to 24 months. So given that you all still plan to burn a fair amount of cash this year, can you talk to, you know, there's the balance sheet data as of September 30th, I don't think comprehended some of the latest credit line adjustments and facility adjustments. Can you talk to if those adjustments give you enough working capital to kind of manage the cash burn this year or if asset sales or other items are really going to be needed to kind of bridge the pathway? Yeah, good question.
spk05: I think that the obviously we're working on increasing our as Betsy pointed out and as I pointed out in two phases. One with the
spk06: NAB in Australia and .
spk05: And so, you know, we believe that we're going to have to both that we're looking internationally and you know, MFP has been just incredibly supportive of our plan. I think they understand that these things take a number of years and, um, you know, now we're in that part of the cycle where we've spent the money, the time, the effort, the sweat and the blood to create these opportunities. And now we need to be a profitable company. And to your point, uh, Jonathan, you know, we, and then 2024, frankly, um, you know, we, we don't have obviously detail, uh, 2024, they would depend on how well we do with double team in 2023. But double team profit margins, as everybody knows who's on the call today, are so large compared to forage margins, gross profit margin percentages, that it's just what you need for working capital to get a huge boost in cash. for the same exposure of sales. And those are the products that make seed companies profitable, and those are the kind of products that we've been managing towards and looking towards in the five years that I've been with the company.
spk04: Are there any other, I mean, I think you've talked about some additional partnerships perhaps in a week. You've talked about some Camelina partnerships, but are there other non-core businesses that you would think are kind of ripe for some business development just to provide a cash infusion to bridge you over the next 18 months?
spk05: You know, we think that the opportunities that we have are so big, especially for a company our size, you know, under 100 million in sales, that we are just absolutely focused on bringing those home. We've, as I said, we've swept blood and tears on the ground to get to where we are. Double Team is going to have another good year in 2024. What other companies want to do about licensing, but that could be the way that we add a huge amount of market share. Remember the Monsanto strategy was always to put the traits in your own seed bags, but also license the traits to your competitors because the traits are so profitable that it's better for you to get the market share penetration from your competitors. And it is to try to use the traits to generate, um, market share only on your part. So, you know, we've learned those lessons over the years. Remember I sat on Monsanto's board for part of those times. Uh, you know, it was a long process for the industry to figure that out. Some of the industry giants, uh, did not license their traits to other companies. And I think the, uh, The conclusion of that effort was that the Monsanto strategy was the one that generated the highest amount of cash flow in the long run for the company who owned the traits. So that's the philosophy that we're following. We think that the oil company sort of market where you're going to grow vegetable oils that have a, you know, 50 percent better carbon footprint than petroleum based diesel. that that is just a gigantic market. If you look at some of the studies, people are trying to use soybean oil right now, but by 2035, market penetration is in the billions of dollars, and it's relatively like 15% of the available diesel market in the U.S., which is just a gigantic huge use. for large ships, but it's also used for trucking, and it's probably not going to be substituted by electric motors and stuff like that. Yes, for light trucks, for delivery trucks, for vans, electric motors work, but for cross-country delivery of goods, you need diesel. So it's a huge opportunity, and we're very close to signing a deal that we think is going to be advantageous to S&W. We've been working on it for over a year. These deals are difficult to do because they are so potentially big. And so everybody's looking at, you know, what's my benefit going to be from, from signing this and are you the right partner? And we think we found the right partner and we think we are having a good relationship in finalizing a deal. So, That will also allow us, as we pointed out in our earnings discussion this quarter, to supply other diesel companies with vegetable oil. So it's an all-encompassing deal, not just focused on one company, but on the industry. So we're very excited about that. And it's, frankly, to your question, everything we can do. And we're also working on the ingredient deal. we're making progress on that needs, as everyone remembers, a production plant to be established in the West. There's some good reasons for that, i.e. the relationships between China and the U.S. are such that you can't depend on sources of supply from China and all the leaf right now, the ingredient is processing is coming from China, so they do want another source. But, you know, it's a pretty big capital investment, and about traveling today, if everybody can hear. But we're excited that that's going to be a deal that gets in the next month with Ingredient. What we can effectively do with the staff that we have, you know, we've cut expenses. We've basically cut stopped all the projects that in my management have lower potential markets and lower returns. So we've fine-tuned with a scalpel our focus on the biggest opportunities and You know, we think that's plenty to do for now and that there will be plenty to do for all of our employees and management here in the next couple of years without looking at too many new opportunities.
spk04: Great. Thanks, Mark. Betsy, I just had one quick follow-up. In the EBITDA bridge, given the upper end of your guidance of getting from negative 24 last year down to negative 2, I think I heard $5 million in kind of LCM benefits, $5 million in gross profit on the Forge market side, $5 million in cuts to operating expenses, and then I didn't catch the $7 million. What category was that tied to?
spk01: $6 million was due to DT and another $1 million from our traditional Sordom portfolio.
spk03: $6 million from what was it? Double team? Double team. Oh, double team, okay. Great, thank you. Yeah, you're welcome. Have a great day.
spk05: Thanks, Jonathan.
spk00: This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Mark Wong for any closing remarks.
spk05: Well, thanks everyone today for getting on the call. Hopefully it was very informative. You know, Betsy and I and the boards Really do appreciate the support from the market, and we felt that going to explanation of our potential in the short term this year and in the next year or two in terms of sales and EBITDA now is hopefully beneficial for everyone understanding the real opportunities that S&W has got before it. We think that there's just going to be a huge explosive growth for the company, both in sales and profitability. And we really do appreciate all of those of you who follow the company and our shareholders. So thank you very much, and thank you for attending the call today. Bye-bye now.
spk06: The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.
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