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spk08: Greetings and welcome to the Hostess Brand's second quarter 2022 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Amit Sharma, Vice President, Investor Relations. Thank you, Amit. You may begin.
spk11: Hi, good afternoon, and welcome to Hostess Brands' second quarter 2022 earnings conference call. Joining me on today's call is Andy Callahan, Hostess Brands' president and CEO, and Travis Leonard, chief financial officer. Right now, everyone should have access to the earnings release for the period ended June 30, 2022, that was published at approximately 4 p.m. Eastern time. The press release and investor presentation are available on Hosted's website at hostedbrands.com. This call is being webcast, and a replay will be available on our website. During the course of this call, management will make a number of forward-looking statements, including expectations and assumptions regarding the company's future performance. Actual results may differ materially from these forward-looking statements, and we undertake no obligation to update or revise these forward-looking statements. A detailed list of these risks and uncertainties can be found in today's earnings release and in our SEC filings. Management will make a number of references to non-GAAP financial measures that we believe will provide useful information to the investors. A full reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to the most comparable GAAP measures is included in the earnings release. With that, I will turn the call over to Andy Callahan, our President and CEO.
spk05: Thank you, Amit. First off, I would like to publicly welcome Travis to the Hostess Brands family. We are excited to have his leadership, talent, and experience as we continue on our journey as a leading snacking powerhouse. Moving on to our results, we delivered another quarter of strong top-line performance, highlighting Hostess Brands' position as a differentiated snack company with iconic brands and an advantaged business model. Consumption trends in our core categories remain resilient, and we continue to drive category growth. Our strong first-half results and the strength of our business gives us the confidence to raise our full-year revenue guidance to at least 15% growth, on top of last year's 11.6% growth. The strength of our revenue performance is meaningfully offsetting high inflation and supply chain inefficiencies due to heightened levels of volatility in the global markets. Our full year EBITDA and EPS outlook remain unchanged, even as we continue our increased investments behind our brand, innovation, and people to support our sustained, profitable, long-term growth strategy. First, a few highlights from our solid second quarter results, and then a few comments on why I feel confident that Hostess Brands is well positioned to successfully navigate the current operating environment. I'll then turn it over to Travis to provide a more detailed review of our quarterly financial results and our revised outlook for the full year before taking questions. Now to the quarterly highlights. Net revenue grew 16.8% in the quarter. We are growing revenue quarter after quarter, year after year. The second quarter marks the 10th consecutive quarter of at least 9% growth and fifth consecutive quarter of double digit growth. In this increasingly dynamic environment, we've benefited from our advantage business model and strength of our brands with favorability in pricing, mix, and volume. At the retail sales level, both our sweet baked goods and cookies posted impressive broad-based growth in the quarter. Sweet Baked Goods' point of sale, led by the hostess brand, grew 15.6% in the quarter. Our focus on large, growing snacking occasions, insight-driven innovation, and increasing advertising and marketing investments continue to drive the category and enable us to capture greater share of category values. Highlighting our unique access to both on-the-go and at-home consumer, Hostess Brain's single-serve and multi-pack point-of-sale each increased more than 15% during the quarter, with two-year stacked growth of 35.9% and 20.6% respectively, both well ahead of the underlying category trends. We believe our continued investment in product quality amplifies our ability to retain more consumers, which is reflected in higher repeat rates that are significantly above others in the sweet baked goods category. Turning to the Wortman brand and its ongoing growth momentum. Wortman growth continues to be driven by expanding distribution fueled by our investments in advertising to increase brand awareness. as well as the positive impact of innovation and a continued focus on improving SKU mix. These actions resulted in Bortman gaining five points of share in the fast-growing sugar-free subsegment during the quarter. I am proud of our top-line momentum and our long track record of strong organic growth. Underlying volume trends in our core snacking categories continue to hold up better than overall food, even in the current economic environment, highlighting the impact from our focus investments supporting our attractive growth potential over the long term. To fully realize our growth potential, we will continue to make targeted investments across the organization, including investments in our people, capabilities, products, and brands. As planned, we are investing in higher advertising and marketing support behind both our core portfolio and new product innovation. Our high ROI marketing investments include the recent expansion of our first national advertising campaign in over a decade and the upcoming support for the launch of Bouncers, our latest innovation platform. As we mentioned at our March Investor Day, Our iconic brands enjoy more than 90% brand awareness, at par or even higher than many of the largest snack brands. However, Hostess is not top of mind for 60% of consumers. Our rising advertising and marketing investments are designed to build top of mind awareness for Hostess snacks in order to create a powerful flywheel of growth. Our compelling and differentiated innovation remains a key element of our growth strategy. Our snacking occasions-based framework and strong consumer insights are supported by our marketing and innovation capability. I believe this is why we are now and continue to be positioned to consistently launch more impactful breakthrough innovation that brings incremental households into the franchise. Innovation is a core competency at Hostess, and we are building a multi-year pipeline of new products to continue our innovation momentum. Baby Bunce, our highest revenue innovation over the past 12 months, is a vivid example of our capabilities. We have high confidence that Bouncers, our next big innovation launch, will be another great example of how we can contemporize our iconic brands for the next generation. Bouncers reimagines our iconic Twinkies, Ding Dong, and Donets offerings in a single-serve, poppable version, ideal for the lunchbox occasion and designed to bring incremental consumers to our brand, particularly millennial parents. Bouncers is receiving strong endorsement and support from our retail partners and is expected to hit the market in early fall. At the macro level, the consumer environment is becoming more challenging. We are watching closely for signs of changing consumer behavior as consumer baskets show greater impact from overall higher inflation. However, we believe that our strong brands and innovation in our targeted snacking occasions positions us well to deliver leading growth for the remainder of 22 and beyond. A few points to amplify this point. First, We grew retail dollar sales across all channels during the quarter, demonstrating the strength and reach of our broad-based multi-channel distribution strategy as we continue to operate effectively across all channels. A key advantage as consumer spending shifts across channels. Second, even with double-digit price increases, absolute price points for Hostess products remain relatively low on a per serving basis, making them an accessible snacking option within the snacking occasions in which we compete. Third, similar to many snacking categories, the sweet baked goods category has low private label penetration of less than 3%. Our strong innovation and excellent retail execution insulates against the threat of consumer trade down in the current environment. We are pleased with our strong quarterly growth, which is helping us excel in a challenging operating environment as we face heightened inflation and continued supply chain fragility. I'm proud of our dedicated and talented workforce for continuing to execute at high levels through these challenges. enabling us to maintain our previously communicated EBITDA guidance at the upper end of our $280 to $290 million range for the full year. To demonstrate our appreciation, earlier this week we rewarded the relentless efforts and hard work of all of our hourly bakery and distribution center employees with a thank you bonus as we continue to invest in our workforce. Our frontline team members are the backbone of our hostess business, and we cannot thank them enough. We also continue to make great progress on all of our corporate responsibility initiatives, as outlined in our second corporate responsibility report, which we published in June. We recently announced the appointment of Darryl Riley as our first chief sustainability officer. Darryl will be instrumental in supporting the organization to drive accountability and transparency of our corporate responsibility initiatives as we continue to build a strong, sustainable corporate culture that values nimbleness, integrity, tenacity, inclusivity, and a commitment to quality. In summary, Our strong quarterly and year-to-date results position us well to successfully navigate through this near-term volatility and deliver our revised full-year guidance. We have built a long track record of delivering excellent results through various operating environments and continue to be excited about the growth opportunities ahead of us. We are executing on our strategic priorities and remain highly confident in our ability to deliver our attractive long-term growth algorithm. With that, let me turn it over to Travis to go through the quarterly financial results and our revised outlook in greater detail.
spk10: Thanks, Andy. It's an honor to be part of the Hosted Success Story and speak about another quarter of outstanding performance. I will start with a review of our top line. Organic net revenue for the second quarter increased 16.8%, to $340.5 million, a record sales quarter for Hostess Brands. Our top line was driven primarily by price mix, which accounted for nearly 14 percentage points of the quarterly growth as we benefited from planned pricing actions and favorable product mix. Higher volume accounted for the rest of the quarterly sales growth. Our sweet baked goods portfolio, nearly 90% of total sales, grew 15.6% during the quarter, while our cookie portfolio grew 27.6%, demonstrating growth across our entire portfolio. Switching to retail sales trends, our Nielsen measured sweet baked goods point of sale increased by 15.6% for the 13-week period ending July 2nd, with broad-based growth across all key channels. Our share of the sweet baked goods category dollar sales remained relatively flat at 21.7%, while our volume share increased by nearly 70 basis points. Fortman POS increased by 25% in the period, nearly double the 13% growth for the overall cookie category, driven by pricing, innovation, and distribution gains, with strong growth in the sugar-free subsegments. Vortman's share of the cookie category increased by nearly 20 basis points. As Andy mentioned, both our single-serve and multi-pack offerings grew by double digits during the quarter. Our breakfast portfolio also continued to significantly outperform the subsegment with 22.1% growth in the quarter, compared to 16.1% for the total breakfast subsegment, driven in part by our impactful innovation including baby bunts. Moving to the P&L, adjusted gross profit of $112.8 million increased by 7.1% in the quarter, driven by pricing actions and higher volume. As expected, second quarter gross margins were challenging. Adjusted gross margins for the quarter declined by 299 basis points from the year-ago quarter to 33.1% as the benefit from higher prices and productivity initiatives were more than offset by 20% inflation as well as inefficiencies caused by supply chain fragility. Adjusted EBITDA increased by 0.7% to $68.9 million in the quarter as higher gross profit was partially offset by higher SG&A expenses. Our adjusted SG&A increased by 19.8% to $61.2 million driven primarily by planned investments in our people and capabilities and a step up in brand building activities as well as higher variable selling expenses. Adjusted EBITDA margins declined by 323 basis points to 20.2%, primarily due to the decline in gross margin as previously discussed. Our effective tax rate, excluding discrete items, was 27.2%, as compared to 27.3% in the prior year quarter and was in line with our 27% outlook for the full year. Adjusted net income of 30.5 million for the quarter decreased 5.3% from the prior year period. Adjusted earnings per share of 22 cents decreased 4%. Both declined as EBITDA growth was offset by higher depreciation and share-based compensation expense. At the end of the quarter, we had cash and cash equivalents of $206.8 million, short-term investments of $20.9 million, and net debt of $858.3 million, with a net debt leverage ratio of three times, which is at the bottom of our targeted three to four times range. During the quarter, we repurchased $38.8 million worth of shares under our previously announced $150 million repurchase program. Turning to the outlook for the year, given our strong year-to-date results, we are raising our full-year net revenue guidance to at least 15% growth, up from our previous guidance of at least 12% growth. We continue to expect full-year volume to increase by low to mid single digits. Our stronger top-line outlook is enabling us to maintain our full-year EBITDA guidance towards the high end of the $280 million to $290 million range. and EPS guidance in the 93 to 98 cents per share range. We continue to expect full year CapEx in the 120 to 140 million range and a tax rate of 27%, both unchanged from our original guidance. We now expect average shares outstanding of 138.5 to 139.5 million, down modestly from our previous guidance of 139 to 140 million. We continue to expect high teens inflation for the full year, and we have forward purchase contracts in place for over 90% of our market traded commodities for the remainder of the year. Given the incremental supply chain headwinds experiencing Q2, we expect full year gross margins to be down approximately 200 basis points from last year. As we look to the back half of the year, we expect incremental margin benefits from previous announced pricing actions, along with higher contribution from productivity initiatives. As Andy mentioned, we will also continue to make targeted investments across the organization, including investments in our people, capabilities, products, and brands. As an example, advertising and marketing expense increased by double digits during the quarter and is expected to remain elevated over the remainder of the year to support both core and new product innovation. We expect to continue to drive productivity initiatives as well as leverage our revenue growth management toolkit, including positive mix and more efficient trade spending to manage our industry-leading margins over the long run. I am proud of our team's ability to deliver another quarter of strong growth, and I'm excited to continue our journey of driving sustained profit growth. With that, I will turn it back to Andy for closing comments.
spk05: Awesome. Thanks, Travis. Hostess continues to grow due to the resiliency of our portfolio, our business model, and our strategies supported by our talented team as we execute at a high level in a very dynamic environment. We remain confident of continuing our revenue growth through the remainder of 22 and beyond, as highlighted by our revised outlook and our ability to deliver attractive long-term growth and leading shareholder returns over time. With that, we are ready for your questions.
spk08: Thank you. We will now be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate that your line is in the question queue. You may press star 2 if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. One moment please while we poll for questions.
spk06: Thanks, Paul.
spk05: And we're open to the universe now.
spk08: Yes, every line is live. And our first question comes from Pamela Kaufman with Morgan Stanley. Please proceed with your question.
spk07: Hi, good evening.
spk08: Hi, Pam.
spk07: Hi, Pam. Hi. Can you discuss the outlook for the second half and what's driving your top line guidance? I think you previously expected mid-single-digit volume growth for the year, volumes were up 3% in the second quarter. So are you still expecting mid-single-digit volume growth? And can you talk about what's driving the guidance for revenue up around 10% in the back half, which is slowing to about less than half of the rate in the first half of the year?
spk05: Yeah, hey, thanks, Pam. I appreciate the question and the coverage. You know, we don't specifically quantify the forward revenue. As Travis mentioned, you're exactly right. We do expect the full year to be, you know, flat to the midpoint. So the point here is it's exactly really the way we expected it. If you look at the charts, we're lapping really high growth numbers. We expected the consumer to be absorbing a lot as we move into the back half. In the second quarter, we had 13.8 points of growth was from price mix. That's helping offset our 20% inflation in the second half. We do expect, obviously, that trend of more price mix weighted to be in the back half and the full year volumes to be that. So it is a deceleration of growth, but still growth that's on the leading end of other food companies. And I think that's really because of our business proposition, our innovation, our continued investment in the consumer market. And the categories in which we compete in the snacking occasions, which are traditionally resilient. So, you know, we've been, it's actually unfolding the way we see it at this point, but we're going to continue to monitor closely. We're always focused on the consumer and making sure that we have this sustainable, profitable growth over time. And I feel confident we have the right strategies to do that.
spk07: Thanks. That's helpful. And then can you just talk about your expectations around gross margin for the year? So you lowered your outlook for gross margins during the second quarter. What gives you confidence around the updated gross margin outlook, and what kind of visibility do you have into the back half gross margins?
spk10: Great. Thank you for the question. I'll take this. So as we stated in our call, we expect full year gross margins to be down 200 basis points versus prior year. We do anticipate Q2 to be the highest year over year decline. So as we think about the second half, from a year over year perspective, we will see that moderate a bit in the second half. And just to give you a little bit of perspective, we talked about supply chain fragility. And let me give you a little bit of insight to what we were specifically talking about. One example of this is around volatility in the timing of certain ingredients. So unfortunately, you can't make a Twinkie with only 95% of ingredients. So when the ingredients aren't there, you do experience production scheduling challenges, as well as inefficiencies in transportation. We continue to work very closely with our suppliers and value the strategic relationship we've built with them, which provides us confidence that these issues will definitely get better over time.
spk05: Yeah, I agree with everything Travis said. We have a good track record of executing in volatile environments from the beginning of COVID to now. So we work hard, appreciate our suppliers in a difficult situation, but good line of sight exactly the way Travis said.
spk07: Great. Thank you.
spk08: Thank you, Pam. Thank you. Our next question comes from Ken Goldman with J.P. Morgan. Please proceed with your question.
spk00: Hi. Good afternoon. It's Anuri on for Ken. Hi, Anuri.
spk11: Good afternoon.
spk00: Hi. I wanted to dive into those production challenges you had in the quarter a little bit more. So I'm curious if you could help us understand how much of the deceleration in volume that we saw in the second quarter was a result of supply chain versus, you know, just what you were expecting in terms of elasticity. I guess, could volumes have been better if you were able to produce optimally? And are there any catch-up shipments that we should keep in mind as we move into the back half?
spk05: Yeah, I'll take that. A couple of things. First of all, we are a relatively short shelf life product. You know, we're baked goods. We do it actually very well. We do high-quality products at scale that consumers demand high quality, which is why fresh bakeries are still around at such prevalence. It's one of our secret sauces. But the impact of that is that we have relatively low inventory. So we're not one of those categories that have catch-up inventory, so we ship real-time. As far as the supply chain fragility is concerned, I would think of it more now. We still have some disruptions. The cost that Travis talked about, we're not bringing – You know, not everything's happening as efficient as we're accustomed to or the standards we have. I would think of it more of a cost issue at this point versus a real meaningfully growth issue, although we certainly didn't do everything due to some of those disruptions. But I think in the Q2, it's more related to the inefficiencies than it would be the cost. I mean, the volumes.
spk00: Okay, got it. That's helpful. And then my follow up would be, you know, your optimism on bouncers is noted. And so how should we think about the incrementality of first year innovations like bouncers? And how much contribution or, you know, how should we think about the contribution and how much is embedded in your outlook for the balance of the year?
spk05: Yeah, it's embedded in the outlook. We typically do not break out the specific contributions of innovations. You know, our team, our innovation team with Dan O'Leary, Tina Lambert, you know, working in concert with Aris Masterides, our chief customer officer, really, and their talented team. It's insight-driven. You know, we focus on our five occasions. This one's focused on You know, the lunchbox, which we talked about in Investor Day, which is one of our really strategic areas targeted to our, you know, millennial parents who are searching for these options. So our customers and our consumers, when we test it to them, are really excited about bouncers, and we are too. So we're not going to forecast it, you know, innovations and art as much as it is as a science. Our track record over the last several years has been as good or better than most, and I'm equally excited about this. When you think about, for the lunchbox, a new innovation that reimagines some of the icons that some of us and our parents had in a really new and contemporary form for uses that they really needed, a consumer that has a high awareness of the hostess brands and sub-brands and looking for options that are more contemporized. I think that's one of the reasons why our customers are excited about it and certainly why we are, and the data has shown that. So when you move into new occasions and attract new consumers as well, which we anticipate this does, we do that research. We look at what are more platformable, scalable, how much is it incremental versus a line extension. Our pipeline takes into account all of that. Very excited about it and enthusiastic about it.
spk00: Thank you.
spk08: Thank you, Nuri. Thank you. Our next question comes from David Palmer with Evercore ISI. Please proceed with your question.
spk04: Thanks. Good evening. We wanted you to maybe tell the story of that quarter a little bit. I know you were expecting perhaps shipments to be trailing consumption because of some of the supply chain constraints and maybe surprised yourselves because it looks like you're units that you shipped were equal to the measured channel units that we see. Is that true? Or maybe there's some dynamics around bouncers, for example. You have some shipment timing there that represents the catch-up, and you still have some lower inventory levels in some other areas. I'd love to hear the story of the quarter in terms of shipments.
spk05: Yeah, David, let me think through your question here. Um, a couple of things you're, you're asking, uh, you know, similar to Inori, um, is there some customer related, uh, um, inventory that's still in front of us to fill up? You know, there might be a little bit of that, but I don't think that's really, uh, really at a meaningfully at play here. I think we're, we're pretty much aligned. We're looking at the second quarter in a row where we had shipments and, and, uh, and POS that weren't meaningfully off. It is not a bouncer's issue, by the way. We're in some early shipments of bouncers, but really our national expansion around bouncers is happening through September. So in the quarter, we do not have a bouncer's issue. I just feel that we have a good consumption model. Our team does a nice job. We're really having to execute and demonstrate our agility and customer partnerships and other things based on some of the supply chain things. We talked about that. I think we'll work through that really through in the back half and get back to the efficiencies and predictability that we're accustomed to. So I don't think that's the issue. I don't know, Travis, if you have anything to build on that. I think you got it, Andy. We continue to see volume growth in the quarter, but we're one of the few that are delivering nearly 14% of price mix and unit growth on top, growing unit share, despite some of the disruptions and inefficiencies.
spk04: The story of the quarter was you were scrambling for ingredients at times, elevated costs ensued, and that was a bit of a surprise and that was really the story of the supply chain rather than it ultimately leading to a shortfall in what you could ship. For the most part, yeah. I guess from here, you would expect measured channel sales versus shipments to be somewhat more even, I would imagine. I guess when you're... Consistent with your guidance, are you contemplating any additional pricing actions in the second half? You mentioned 20% inflation. Wondering if that would seem to have the right to be raising price a little bit more than you have.
spk05: So, yeah, the headline on that would be everything that's in our guide we've communicated and it's flowing through the marketplace. And when it comes to, you know, just in general, we look at a full market basket of things. Pricing is, you know, is one of them. But we have all the pricing that we're contemplating is in the marketplace. The inflation is coming up, as Travis has talked about it for the full year, about the high teens. It was a little higher here in Q2, as you noticed earlier. But that's built in our guide. And also, obviously, a long-term algorithm of mid-single-digit growth, EBITDA, top-line growth, and five to seven, and all of that contemplates us to obviously managing our gross margins over time. And we have a full toolbox of that revenue growth management, productivity initiative, actively managing mix to commit to that over time. So that's the way we see it. Obviously, it's a very dynamic environment. We're close to that. We monitor that, but that's where we're at.
spk04: Great. Thank you very much. Thanks, David.
spk08: Thank you. Our next question comes from Ben Benvenu with Stevens. Please proceed with your question.
spk02: Hi, guys. Jim Solero on for Ben. I have a two-part question on the top-line performance. Part one, if you guys could... Talk a little bit about the volume growth. It's impressive to have 3% volume growth given how much the price has gone up. Is that coming from new customers entering the category, whether it's from trade down or just return on mobility and C-Store channel? Or is that increased buying rates among existing postage customers?
spk05: Yeah, I appreciate the question from the consumer point of view. So we do continue to grow units. We expect a full year to come out of this year with growth in units and greater than 15% growth from at least 15% revenue growth to price next. So let me take the consumer first. We've grown penetration, i.e. we're getting more consumers in the franchise. And the consumers that we – when we attract new consumers – They repeat, i.e., turn into two-time consumers at a greater rate than the category in total, almost a two-times rate than the category in total. So a lot of these investments are making in growth by bringing them new ideas, by bringing them innovations that are compelling and that they want, by partnering with our customer and actively manage mix and build into distributions. And what you don't see is our investment and the great job our supply chain does and our quality team in the quality of our products. Baby Bunce was just really reimagined what quality baked good can happen at scale. But that's happening across all of our portfolio. So when you put those together, when we make those investments in growth, they become sticky and that's sustainable. And we're really focused on making sure we get that the right price value and then do that as efficiently as possible, which is what the magic of our model is. And the fact that we're in these five occasions, I expect that to continue to repeat over time. So within any one quarter, there's timing of pricing and some other things. A lot of things happen, maybe execution, lapping of things. But over time, that model is going to grow, continue to have us grow. above food. We're going to continue to grow share in our category because I think we're executing the right strategy, have the brands and the people and the ideas to be able to do that. And I think we're seeing that play through. In the short term, we're in categories with snacking with an accessible price points that I believe have proven over time to be resilient in different types of economic environments and are The breadth of our availability to consumers across channels helps insulate that as consumers move across channels looking for value. So I feel like we're in a good position both in the long term relative to some of those consumers' dynamics in the investments we're making as well as the short term.
spk02: Great. And you actually touched on the beginning of Part 2 there at the end. The single-serve point-of-sales growth is really incredible given the strength last year. Is that, again, you mentioned, more accessible now? Is that just consumers buying it because it's a lower dollar price than maybe some other indulgent snack? Or is that, again, return on mobility and maybe new entrants into the category, they want to buy a single serve before they go up into the multi-pack?
spk05: There's a couple of things going on here. One thing I would just be very clear, the single serve is a little bit more – it's a different occasion than the multi-pack. So the single serve – is really, you need to have distribution at a point of interruption. It's typically more of an impulse sale. It is a relatively good price point versus other options, accessible price point versus other options as well. Multipacks are more of a, you know, buy an inventory in your home for in-home snacking or on the go. So they're distinct occasions. On our single serve specifically, we have done really well. We have a We have a distribution that's good. We execute it very well. We have our hostess partnership program with a lot of our distributors and retail customers that allows them to benefit from growth collectively and provide investment. Our teams also, given our success and given the innovation we're doing, we're also working with customers to make sure, and we talked about this at Investor Day, Dan O'Leary did, about our investments in other uh, locations and points of distribution. So you may have distribution of hosts that say in a, in a grocery box or retail box, but you could get single serve still either more, more scheduled or more present in other stores, which adds another opportunity for sale. So we still have opportunity for points of interruption within stores, which the team's doing a real nice job at. So there's both the repeat that I talked about before, as well as some of the breadth of distribution of single serve within, uh, uh, different opportunities for the consumer to enjoy our products.
spk02: Great.
spk05: Thanks, guys. I'll pass it on.
spk02: Yep.
spk08: Thank you, Jim. Thank you. Our next question is from Rob Dickerson with Jefferies. Please proceed with your question.
spk03: Great. Thanks so much. Try to keep this quick. I guess just the first question I had was kind of visibility currently on the convenience store channel. I understand what you said about consumer baskets showing some impact, but you're still doing well. I heard from another company this morning saying they're actually seeing still decent traffic and purchase rates in the C-Store channel for the time being. I know you've also spoken to the channel before. So I'm just curious. of what you're seeing within that specific channel and if you have any perspective regarding elasticity, differential potential on a channel basis as you get through the year.
spk05: Yeah. Hey, Rob. Thanks for the question. You know, we have talked about convenience before. We look at external data. We try to collaborate it. Collaborate it. Yeah, we try to cross-tab it to our internal data. Yeah. And what we've seen historically, I'll just say what I said last quarter, is as gas prices gone up and mobility was up, what we saw was actually the opposite. We saw gas prices per ticket decline, but frequency increase inside sales still stay the same or benefit from the increased frequency. And snacks, of which we compete, be very resilient. Consumers would cut costs. let's say beverages before they'd cut snacks. When we looked at it through this quarter and continue to monitor it, we did see some of that traffic decline temporarily for a period of time, but then bounce back as we saw a fuel prices kind of drop a little bit. So the headline on the traffic in the C-store has been resilient and that's been helpful for our business, as well as the fact that we have, you know, good distribution, good presence, good partnership with our customers, as well as, you know, a really good valued price point versus some other options they have if they're looking for, you know, a quick snack. So we have seen good resilience. I like our position. Related to elasticity, we typically – we don't disclose exactly, but what we have said before is we certainly see impulse sales being – you know, modestly less elastic than some other categories. And that certainly helps where the leading share within the single serve within sweet baked goods. So that's, that's helpful.
spk04: All right. Super.
spk03: And then just a question on a couple of lines within SG&A, you know, advertising marketing was up double digit in the quarter. And then I know you had, you know, you making a comment on kind of the kind of first, ever, or at least first in a long time, campaign that's forthcoming while at the same time from your investor day, kind of speaking to that, saying that we are going to continue to lean in. Should we be expecting, let's say, an uptick in the back half of the year relative to what we're seeing in Q2? Or my impression was maybe some of that uptick and kind of spend on the go forward was maybe a little bit more heavily weighted in the next year or the following year, but maybe I'm just wrong.
spk10: Yeah, I'll start in the beginning here. So what we said in our comments is we had to step up in Q2, and we expect that to remain elevated so similar to those levels throughout the remainder of the back half.
spk03: Okay, okay. Fair enough. Perfect.
spk05: And we are supporting bouncers, by the way, which will expand in September, as we said, too. So that's both the base business and the innovation.
spk03: Okay. Perfect. And then just on the admin side, a little bit higher in the quarter than expected, but I know you have the commentary around the employee bonus piece. I'm not sure if that was included within the quarter or not. If that's coming later, because I'm just curious if there's kind of like a one-time and then that kind of rolls off a little bit, then I'll leave it at that.
spk10: Yeah, just let me get more specific on G&A. As we said in our comments, we expected to have investments in our people, process, and capabilities to drive growth. And we have accelerated quite honestly our investments in these areas around consumer insights, data analytics, productivity initiatives, again, which is we'll continue to support our long-term growth, both from a top and a bottom line. Additionally, we're investing in our workforce. We've got a new chief customer officer. We've got a new chief sustainability officer and hired a new R&D head. And obviously, I'm excited to be here as well. So I think overall, we've made some investments. We have accelerated those a bit in Q2, which is a little bit of that step up in Q2. All right.
spk05: Got it. Think about year to go, but just think about year to go as, you know, kind of consistent on a run rate basis.
spk03: Got it. Okay. Perfect. All right. Thanks, guys.
spk08: Thank you, Rob. Thank you. Our next question comes from Bill Chappell with Truist Securities. Please proceed with your question.
spk12: Good evening. This is Steven Langel on for Bill Chappell. um sort of piggyback hey how's it going uh sort of piggybacking off some of the prior questions about the supply chain i mean is there anything to note in terms of like the construction build out costs with the arkadelphia plant overall capex guide was unchanged but is it still on track for the mid uh second half of 23 and how quickly do you expect it to ramp um once it kind of gets into that range yeah hey thanks for the question um uh the the the headline answer is
spk05: That's not related to the supply. We'll talk about the fragility of the supply chain. The Arkadelphia ramp-up is still on schedule for the second half of 23. There is a ramp-up schedule. We haven't communicated that. That does take time. You have to hire people. You have to train the people. You have to you know, set up the facility. So, but that's second half of 23 that's on time. Travis talked about the capital on budget. So basically think of that as on budget on time at this point. The supply chain fragility that we're talking about is more the daily operations of making sure that a very complicated system that runs like a, like an orchestra at normal times is being disrupted and therefore really challenged our agility, sometimes our efficiencies. to be able to service our customers and our consumers at the standard that we have. And that's causing us with an ability of not to be able to do that and at the efficiencies that we want. So we think we're towards the back end of that, but we're still in a dynamic and fragile environment. But that's what that comment is more related to. That flows through, as Travis explained, into some of these costs. So as we move forward and it becomes more stable, we would get more to the efficiencies and build from there that our standards expect.
spk06: Great. Thank you very much.
spk08: Thank you. Our next question comes from Connor Ractigan with Consumer Edge Research. Please proceed with your question.
spk14: Hi. Good evening. Thanks for the question. So, great to hear that Vortman is doing so well in the sugar-free or better for you segment. I'm not sure if I missed this, but can you quantify maybe what percentage of your portfolio consists of that sugar-free or healthier snacking segment? And also, too, just thinking from a mixed standpoint, is there anything like sizable pricing differential between these healthier options versus the traditional offerings?
spk05: Yeah, so just the headlines on Vortman. So Vortman's about 10% of our overall portfolio in revenue. As you saw in this quarter, it's growing. Of course, our whole portfolio is growing a lot. But Bortman is growing a lot. We are by far the leading share within our sugar-free portfolio. So that's really important to think through. And that subsegment of sugar-free is consistently growing at two times the rate of total sugar our products taste terrific so we're working you know obviously hard it's really important for for us to make sure that we have a good portfolio of that so as far as you know as a percentage of our portfolio sugar free is a meaningful part of our total portfolio you know relative to total cookies and But we also have a meaningful share within our regular wafer category. And sugar-free encompasses both the wafers as well as cookies. So it's an important part of our portfolio. It's growing at twice the rate. It's a profitable, it's accretive in gross margins as well within our portfolio. So we feel really like we're in a good spot relative to wafer. sugar-free.
spk11: Connor, sugar-free is about two-thirds of the Goldman business.
spk14: Okay, thank you. That was really helpful. I'll pass it on.
spk08: Thank you, Connor. Thank you. Our next question comes from Robert Moscow with Credit Suisse. Please proceed with your question.
spk13: Hey, thanks. Andy and Travis, it's early to think about cost inflation heading into 2023, but You know, from our perspective, we just see all these commodities kind of leveling off and even kind of falling down a little bit, especially gasoline. But from your perspective, I'm sure you're seeing your costs only go higher because of upstream disruptions and lack of availability. So maybe this is a hypothetical question, but if the commodities are kind of leveling off or even falling, Could we still see a lot of inflation next year just because, I don't know, there's just not enough labor to get your raws to you when they need to be there? I don't know if that's the right way to ask the question, but is disruption still – could it be significant enough that we still see inflation even though the commodities are not so inflationary?
spk10: Maybe I'll start here and then Andy will chime in. You're right, it's too early to talk about 2023 given the volatility in the global markets. And we think about volatility, there's weather conditions are uncertain and volatile. There's geopolitical uncertainty out there. To your point, there's labor challenges and just the overall supply chain disruption. So at this point, it's too early to talk about it. As we said, for this year, we've got 90% of our market traded. We've got future purchase contracts and 90% of our market traded commodities. But there are some costs that are actually exposed and we buy on the spot, as we've discussed, such as packaging, corkette, labor, and diesel. And those will remain open to the spot market. So a lot of uncertainty, volatility, and a bit too early to talk about. And maybe Andy can talk a little bit about how we think about coverage and our approach in this space.
spk05: Yeah. You know, Rob, I think you nailed it as far as, you know, Where we do forward contracts, we look at predictability of cost, reliability of supply. And so when you're in a really volatile market, we look at those. So we certainly extend out. So in that case, just like on the way up, there's not an immediate close through. There's just a little bit of that on the way down. Who am I to predict inflation? And I think that's true for everybody else. You know, obviously, we can be hopeful. We haven't seen it yet. So we try to prepare for multiple scenarios and leverage our competency of agility and responsiveness and strong, you know, relationships with our customers, suppliers to kind of manage through it. That's proven pretty successful for us so far. I am hopeful. You know, our category, I feel like, will be resilient through rocky times for our consumers. And I am optimistic, but it's difficult to predict. You know, I do expect, like, you know, when we first started this journey, I guess, if we can say that COVID was the beginning of the journey, it was more of a blunt instrument on the supply chain that was really all clogged. And now it's, you know, a thousand points of light where you're not sure where the disruption is going to come through. It's a little bit more like that. So agility has certainly been a terrific tool. I would guess that I would be hopeful that we would see some relief and some stability in the back half, but certainly I'm not going to sit here and try to predict that.
spk13: Okay. Well, here's an easier follow-up maybe. Have you ever said what the incremental volume from Arkadelphia will provide just on a percentage basis? And is it all incremental or is it going to pull some volume from your other facility, which is probably being overworked?
spk05: There's a combination of both. We said that it adds 20% capacity to our cake and donuts and donut businesses. And it does have a little bit of a back-end benefit of flexibility in some of the remaining bakeries. So there's a little bit of a combination of both. You know, the team, by the way, the team's done a great job because we added lines over the last three or four years of our industry-leading growth journey. We've added lines and increased efficiency, cut SKUs to really get as much out of our fixed assets as we could. But then we're at the point with our projections on box. So it's really a good time confidence in our growth. But it does have a little bit of a dual effect in that regard.
spk11: Thanks. Yep.
spk08: Thank you, Rob. Thank you. Our next question comes from Rebecca Schooneman with Morningstar. Please proceed with your question.
spk01: Great. Thanks for squeezing me in. So just one quick question. I was wondering if you could give me an update on elasticities how they've been trending since the beginning of the year and how that compares with what your expectations were and then finally if you'd be willing to quantify that that would be very helpful thank you yeah I'll take that one we do not quantify our elasticities so what I would look at is the way I think about it our team has a consumption model that's
spk05: that's proprietary to us. And the consumption model says, what are all the drivers that you see in the Nielsen data or the IRI data? What are all the drivers that ultimately result in that? We have elasticity in the model. We have distribution. We have support. What's the consumer environment? Some macro things in there. Our advertising support our innovations. So our team has done a pretty good job with that. And what we've seen is in the short term, we've seen where we hear a lot of the resilience despite the pricing. So a lot of these macro factors around consumer behavior, change in behavior, are really offsetting what we typically see in the pricing. They've also seen some of the support. So one of the reasons why last quarter we saw this, impact on the consumer come into play which appears like it's playing out is because of this model so we think we have a pretty good understanding of of the consumer and the drivers of that the team you know has done a nice job of keeping us educated on that there's still some uncertainty out there but the elasticity does obviously get a lot of play But what really happens is some of those support things either were lapping the change in the consumer behavior changes, being at home more and other things, or support for the consumer. We actually see those drivers not as strong, and therefore you're starting to see a little bit of slowdown. I'll just close, but with that being said, I still am very confident in our long-term algorithm, our growth, our model, and our ability to grow over time that's a bit single digits.
spk00: Okay, great. Thank you.
spk11: Thank you, Rebecca. Paul, we have time for one more, please.
spk08: Thank you. Our last question comes from J.M. Sheckian with Citi Group. Please proceed with your question.
spk09: Hi. Thanks for squeezing me in here. You touched on this earlier, but I want to ask on the elevated A&M, just that higher level as you work to build up a mind piece, how you're thinking about balancing core products versus innovation or single-serve versus multi-tack. going into the launch of Bouncers and then beyond that also. Thank you.
spk05: Yeah, so our team does a nice job. We actively manage a pipeline. So our pipeline is really grounded in our five occasions. It's a $50 billion addressable market, morning sweet start, lunchbox, afternoon reward, immediate consumption, afternoon sharing. I encourage you to look at our Tina Lambert did an excellent job at Investor Day. If you click on the link, you'll be able to see it. I think it's about 10 minutes long, and it really explains it. But we manage that pipeline. We manage short-term news and long-term platform innovation that attracts new consumers to the franchise, leverages our brands, leverages our insights to be able to bring. That's what Bouncers is. Bouncers looks at that. We also look at convenience channel or immediate consumption innovation as well. That's what Boost did. you know, boost looked at the immediate consumption. This year we've launched a bagged sugar-free cookies under the Wortman brand. So we look at the, we look, we were grounded in the consumer. We look at the occasions, we then build a pipeline and a process of that. We're already looking at 24 early 25 ideas and then put it into our business realities. What's going to take to invest, what health big can it be, et cetera. A lot of that then becomes business judgment, but it all starts with the consumer. And certainly it's important for us to, you know, bring innovation to all of our important consumers who really we try to, you know, inspire moments of joy to every day. Great. Thank you very much. Yeah.
spk08: Thank you, Jim. Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I would like to return. I would like to turn the floor back over to Andy Callahan for any closing comments.
spk05: Yeah, real quickly to close, we greatly appreciate your interest in Hostess. We'll continue to work hard for all of you. Great thanks out to the Hostess team. They work hard passionately. They bring their heart and soul into everything they do. So it's greatly appreciated. We're just getting started, and we believe in our long-term algorithm, and I appreciate it. We'll see you next quarter.
spk08: This concludes today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.
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