Sow Good Inc.

Hello, and welcome to So Good First Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are on a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask the question during this session, you will need to press star 11 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. I would now like to turn the call over to Jackie Kashner. Director of Investor Relations. You may begin.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for participating in today's conference call to discuss SoGood's financial results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2024. Joining us today are SoGood's co-founder and CEO, Claudia Goldfarb and Interim Chief Financial Officer, Brendan Fisher. Certain statements made during this call are forward-looking statements, including those concerning our financial outlook, our market opportunities, and the impact of the global economic environment on our business. These statements are based on currently available information and assumptions, and we undertake no duty to update this information except as required by law. These statements are also subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, including those highlighted in today's earnings release and our filings with the SEC. Additional information concerning these statements and the risks and uncertainties associated with them is highlighted in today's earnings release and in our filings with the SEC. Copies are available on SEC's website or on our investor relations website. Furthermore, we will discuss adjusted EBITDA, a non-GAAP financial measure on today's call. A reconciliation of adjusted EBITDA to net loss, the nearest comparable non-GAAP financial measure discussed on today's call, is available in our earnings press release at our investor relations website. With that, I'll turn the call over to Claudia.

Thank you, Jackie, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate you joining us today to discuss our first quarter 2024 financial results. I want to start by thanking our SoGood team for their unwavering commitment to SoGood and our vision in creating one of the most innovative and disruptive companies in the candy industry. We are just beginning to scratch the surface of the innovative and disruptive power of freeze-dry technology and are excited to continue to shake up the candy industry. We achieved quite a few milestones since our year-end call and are on track to deliver an exceptional 2024. We delivered $11.4 million in revenue in the first quarter of 24, representing substantial year-over-year growth and a 20% sequential increase relative to the fourth quarter of 23, as well as $2.45 million in adjusted EBITDA, with an adjusted EBITDA margin of 21.5%. Our strong first quarter financial results demonstrate that free-thread candy continues to grow as a category, and that our strategies of expanding internal production and co-manufacturing capacity, growing and strengthening our distribution networks, and continuing product innovation are working. But before I delve deeper into our operational strides in the first quarter, I want to highlight a key corporate milestone we recently achieved. As we announced a few weeks ago, we have now uplisted our stock to NASDAQ, with our shares trading on the NASDAQ capital markets as of May 2nd, 2024. Along with the up list, we completed a public offering of 1.38 million shares of common stock, raising approximately $13.8 million in aggregate gross proceeds. Our interim CFO, Brendan Fisher, will provide additional detail on the offering later in the call. We believe our NASDAQ listing allows us to expand our investor base and market visibility while driving improvements in liquidity and long-term shareholder value. We really look forward to leveraging the advantages of NASDAQ's platform in support of our ongoing growth strategy. The proceeds from the public offering place us in an excellent position to help us achieve our strategic objectives for 2024. Our key objectives are to continue increasing our in-house and co-manufactured production capacity, strengthening and diversifying our distribution partnerships, laying the groundwork for a strong marketing and branding strategy for the second half of this year, and further disrupting the candy category with innovative treats. For our T1 production capacity, we surpassed our projections of 4.25 million units to over 4.5 million units. We accomplished this milestone by building a strong culture within SoGood that prioritizes manufacturing excellence and efficiency. as well as investing strongly in increasing our in-house production capabilities and strengthening our co-manufacturing relationships in China and Colombia. We completed the installation of our fifth freeze dryer, which is now operational, and our sixth freeze dryer is on track to becoming operational by the third quarter of this year. In addition, we recently placed deposits on three additional freeze dryers, which are expected to be operational within the next nine months. As discussed on the last call, we strategically paused new customer onboarding in the third quarter of 23 to focus our efforts on growing our production capacity. Though this approach resulted in smaller sequential expansion relative to what we achieved between the third and fourth quarters of 23, we determined that laying our production groundwork now would enable us to effectively manage and support much greater growth in the second half of this year. With our capacity increasing as projected, we have begun resuming new customer onboarding as planned. We are thrilled with the progress we have made with both existing and new customers. Recent updates to our customer launches and expansions include adding five new SKUs in Big Lots in May and launching so-good displays in 300 of their stores for increased exposure and brand building. Anticipated launch of our displays in 1,897 Kroger stores beginning early summer. Anticipated increases in our target store presence to nearly 2,000 stores this summer after outperforming sales forecasts in our initial 200-store launch. Launching four SKUs at Dollar General in May. Anticipated launch of three SKUs in the Fresh Market in June. anticipated launch of four SKUs in nearly 8,711 stores in June, and an anticipated launch of three SKUs at Ross in June. We're very proud of the milestones we continue to achieve as we ramp up production and sales. But before I discuss our goals in greater detail, I would like to introduce our Interim Chief Financial Officer, Brendan Fisher, whose appointment we announced early last month. Brendan first joined our team in June of 2023, bringing over 20 years of leadership experience in financial analysis, shareholder communications, and regulatory compliance with public and private companies. Before joining SoGood, he served as the CIO, managing director, and chief compliance officer of Fisher Capital Management, an investment advisory firm he founded in 2018. He was previously an assistant investment officer and portfolio manager at Rocky Mountain Advisors, managing a $1.3 billion publicly traded fund that was formerly known as the Boulder Growth and Income Fund. Throughout his time with the company, Brendan has been instrumental in helping us advance our strategic growth initiatives in support of the high market demand for freeze-dried candy. We are beyond thrilled that he is part of the SoGood team and will be instrumental in our future growth. I will now welcome him to the call to walk through our first quarter financial results. Brendan, over to you.