Vintage Wine Estates, Inc.

Q4 2021 Earnings Conference Call

9/22/2021

spk07: Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Vintage One Estates Incorporated fiscal year and fourth quarter 2021 earnings call. My name is Sam, and I'll be coordinating your call today. If you wish to ask a question during the presentation, you may do so by pressing star followed by one on your telephone keypad. I'll now hand you over to your host, Anna Kate Heller from Investor Relations to begin. Anna Kate, please go ahead.
spk01: Thank you. Good morning, and thanks for joining us on Vintage Wine Estate's fourth quarter and fiscal year 2021 earnings conference call. You should have a copy of our earnings release that crossed the wires yesterday after the market. You should also have a copy of our release announcing the acquisition of Vaness, a direct-to-consumer platform company specializing in wine clubs. If you do not, they can be found on our website at VintageWineEstate.com under the Investor Relations heading. We also have available on the website slides that we will reference during our conversation today. Joining on the call today are Pat Roney, Founder and CEO, Terry Wheatley, President, and Kathy DeViller, CFO. Pat and Terry will provide an overview of BWE's fiscal year results, its strategy for growth, and the outlook for fiscal 2022, after which we will open the call for questions. Management will be making some forward-looking statements during this presentation and also during the Q&A session. These statements apply to future events that are subject to risks and uncertainties, as well as other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from where we are today. These risks and uncertainties and other factors are provided in the release, on the slides, and in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. You can find these documents on our website or at sec.gov. I'll also point out that during today's call, we will discuss some non-GAAP financial measures which management believes are useful in evaluating the company's performance. You should not consider the presentation of this additional information in isolation or as a substitute for results prepared in accordance with GAAP. You can find reconciliations of comparable GAAP with non-GAAP measures in the tables that accompany yesterday's release and slides. And now, I'd like to turn the call over to Teri Wheatley.
spk02: Teri Wheatley Thank you, Anna Kate. And welcome everyone to our first financial results conference call as a public company. Now please, if you would, turn to slide four. These are certainly exciting times for vintage wine estates. We successfully completed going public and the business combination transaction with bespoke capital that infused capital into the vintage wine estates. For those that may not be familiar with us, Vintage Wine Estates is one of the largest, fastest-growing wine companies in the United States. While you may not recognize the name VWE, you likely do know many of the brands, such as Layer Cake, Cameron Hughes, Clopagas, VR Cone, Firespeed, Bar Dog, Cundi, Cherry Pie, and many others. VWE has profitably grown over the last decade both organically and with more than 20 acquisitions in the last 10 years, two of which have been announced in the brief time since we became a public company in June of this year. This includes the nest acquisition we announced just last night. We have an aggressive, organic and acquisitive growth strategy and believe we have the business model, the infrastructure and the team to execute on that plan. In fact, we delivered on our growth goals for the year and believe our fiscal 2021 results validate our ability to execute on our strategy. Net revenue grew 16% in fiscal 2021. We achieved pro forma adjusted EBITDA of over 46 million, and we sold nearly 2 million cases of wine. Please now look at slide five. Importantly, as we have transformed into a public company, We have made and continue to make investments to build a scalable organization that we believe will provide increasing operating leverage as we grow. Our finance and accounting team has been challenged with the additional burden of the business combination and going public transaction and then the closing and the audit of fiscal 2021. This challenge was exacerbated by the sudden death of a key employee, and the difficulty in identifying and hiring staff. We have brought on two new seasoned personnel in SEC reporting. We've retained outsourced support and continue to look to build the team. The finance and accounting team are busy implementing the necessary process and controls to enable repeatable processes with the elimination of error and waste. We are also fortunate to have Russell Joy joining us as Chief Operating Officer. His deep experience in the industry, operational expertise, and a strong accounting background we expect will serve us very well. Our acquisitions also bring talent in many forms that we expect to leverage as we grow. Let me talk about some opportunities. of the conditions of the wine industry and how our omnichannel presence provides a strong advantage to drive growth. Volume growth in the wine has been positive, albeit at a slower rate than value growth, with a 3% increase in domestic wine volume to $313 million. We believe we're on track to outpace the industry growth. Looking forward, market commentators expect market growth trends to remain positive, although without the benefit of the COVID bump. Now let me review with you briefly the result from each of the segments. One of the key strengths is our well-diversified operating segments, wholesale, direct-to-consumer, and business-to-business. In our wholesale segment, net revenue decreased 3.3% to 72.9 million, while operating income increased 1.8 to 15 million. Wholesale wine sales have benefited over the year from increases in core priority brands and innovation in the off-premise channel. However, this was more than offset by the declines in the on-premise due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Some core brand highlights include Bardog, which has grown 68% in meals and sales dollars to now be a nearly $7 million brand. It's demonstrating strong growth across retail on-premise and off-premise channels. Our Firesteed brand has also performed very well, growing to be of similar size with Nielsen sales increasing 9%. An overall shift in mix to super premium and luxury winery brands helped expand our wholesale margin. A decrease in general and administrative expenses due to COVID-19 restrictions in the market provided the segment with some cost savings, which contributed to the overall increase in wholesale operating income for the year. In new strategic initiatives, in April 2021, our wholesale operations launched the eGrocery Group, which is exclusively focused on digital product syndication and digital optimization. of VWA wholesale products to drive digital shelf conversion. With a specific focus on omni-channel retailers, pure play, third and fourth party platforms, and marketplaces, by June 30, 2021, RE Grocery had already launched A-plus content syndication to Albertsons.com, Kroger.com, Target.com, Harris-Peter.com, Amazon.com, Instacart, and Shipt. In our business-to-business segment, we had an excellent year with net revenue increasing 43% to $77.4 million while operating income increased 21% to $17.9 million. The strong results in the segment are a reflection of our successful innovation in both wine and spirits. We continue to offer high-quality brands with an emphasis on engaging and connecting with with customers. Mix in the segment did impact margins from the lower volumes delivered through a key customer at a lower average margin. We believe our approach to the segment of the business is strong, offering us continued opportunities for market share growth. Now our direct-to-consumer segment continued to achieve very strong growth, with net revenue increasing by 20% to $66.6 million while operating income increased 60% to $11.4 million. Operating margin expanded nicely in this segment as well. The COVID-19 consumer behavior shift drove significant gains in e-commerce, wine clubs, and QVC for 2021. Our direct-to-consumer channels were ready both in technical scale and experience to weather COVID. Gains in this channel were a direct result of our fiscal 2020 and our fiscal 19 customer promotion platform implementation. Tasting rooms, while closed, found sales in SMS, email, and virtual event guest engagement. Cameron Hughes continued to see healthy growth with good contribution margin, and our Windsor telemarketing showed gains despite physical corporate events closures highlighting the fiscal 19 and fiscal 20 investment in the brand site redesign and our outbound marketing to drive customer acquisition. QVC achieved record revenue, which was a result of increased on-air programming time dedicated to the wine category, the addition of Zulily and new brand partnerships. We expect this segment to remain a very strong growth driver of the business with our DTC capabilities further enhanced by the acquisition of the Sommelier Company and Van Ness. Now with that, let me turn it over to Pat to talk more about our results, the recent acquisitions, and our outlook. Pat?
spk03: Thank you, Terri, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate your interest in Benetwine Estates. I'll start on slide seven. I believe there are three key points you should take away today. First, through strong execution of our strategy, we delivered on our expectations for the fiscal year for both revenue and pro forma adjusted EBITDA. Second, we are reaffirming our FY22 guidance and actually providing some upside from our previous expectations. This is being driven by our strategy. And third, we are creating a scalable organization. This includes enhancing our reach through multiple channels to market, expanding their production and distribution capabilities, and reinforcing in support areas such as finance and accounting. Let me take a moment to provide a deeper review of the results for the year. Revenue for the year was up over 16%, driven by volume increases, as Terry mentioned, in the B2B and the DTC segments. Lower wholesale volumes reflected the impact of COVID, particularly on on-premise, having consumers in their buying practices. That also, though, helped to drive the growth in DTC. We also had the benefit for the CUNDI acquisition that was completed in mid-April. If you combine that with the sommelier company, or TSC, which we acquired later in June, acquisitions contributed approximately $2.3 million in revenue in the fourth quarter, or 1% for the year. As you might imagine, given the timing, TSC's contribution was nominal. There were a number of impacts to gross margin for the year. We had an atypical inventory adjustment of $9 million, which had an 11.9% impact on margin. This was related to higher than typical overhead on lower volume as a result of the wildfires in Northern California. In fact, we adjusted for about a half million gallons lower for our two most expensive Sonoma and Napa production areas. We had to delay our year-end report and file an extension for our 10-K filing because of the difficulties with this accounting issue and the material weakness that was recognized on our processes. Our Finance and Accounting Department has been somewhat stressed these last several months with the significance of the transaction to public and other unfortunate personnel challenges. This included the untimely passing of a key member of our accounting department, as well as challenges finding and hiring the right people. This prevented certain reconciliations from occurring on a timelier basis. As Terry mentioned, we are building up the team and improving our processes. Our goal is to quickly implement the processes needed to cure the deficiency quickly. Looking to slide eight, we've been very busy completing the ongoing public company transaction and getting through our year-end close and audit. We have also completed in a short period of time two acquisitions that, while relatively small in size, are strategically excellent fits for British Wine Estates. TSC, which has established itself as an expert in the industry for private wine tasting events and wine education, enhances our DTC market channel. We can provide our many premium and luxury brands through their marketing reach. There are cost synergies as well as we utilize our own wines and our own marketing programs in this process. On slide nine, you can see the details regarding the Vanessa acquisition that we announced yesterday after the market closed. We expect to close this transaction on Friday. The Nest is a well-established DTC platform that has been building its wine clubs for nearly 30 years and has over 60,000 members. Here, too, we expect to capture significant cost synergies by bringing their winemaking and distribution in-house and marketing our brands to their wine channels. This is an excellent example of our strategy at work as we acquire these many avenues to market our luxury wines to their consumers. If you turn to slide 10, We believe our results clearly demonstrated our ability to execute on our strategy to grow both organically and through acquisitions. And we are confident in our ability to continue to execute our plan. We expect fiscal 2022 pro forma revenue to grow to $265 million to $275 million, while pro forma adjusted EBITDA will expand to $63 million to $65 million. I want to reinforce the significance of this going public transaction to our strategy. With this transaction, we added capital and financial strength that enables us to accelerate consolidation of the fragmented premium wine market in the United States. And we are excited about the robustness of our acquisition pipeline. I would be disappointed that we don't complete at least two more acquisitions before the end of fiscal year 22. Looking at slide 11, the United States key growth drivers are the combination of our omni-channel strategy and acquisition capabilities. which have enabled us to deliver strong above-market growth in revenue and EBITDA. We believe our strategy drives growth, improves profitability, and ultimately generates strong cash flow that enables reinvestment for continued expansion. We have been executing this strategy for a number of years and can do it very well. We are excited to be able to accelerate our plans to deliver significant growth and become a much larger player in the industry. With that, Sam, We can open the call for questions.
spk07: Thank you. If you'd like to ask a question, please press star followed by 1 on your telephone keypad now. If you change your mind, please press star followed by 2. When preparing to ask your question, please ensure your line is unmuted locally. Our first question comes from Vivian Aza from Karen. Vivian, your line is now open. Please proceed with your question.
spk00: Thank you. Good morning. Good morning. So I wanted to dig into the guidance a little bit, please. Certainly, you know, coming off of a very solid print and some M&A that was just recently announced, um pat and or terry if you could just unpack um the components of that guidance so specifically organic versus inorganic given the guidance is pro forma and then any incremental um color you could offer in terms of the specific segment drivers thank you well i think it's important to note that a lot of our growth last year came organically and we expect to have strong continued organic growth over over the fiscal year but what excites me of course the most is that is that we have
spk03: plenty of opportunities to continue our acquisition capabilities, and especially when we see things like Vanessa, where we can add $20 million of revenue to our direct-to-consumer component, and we have significant other opportunities that we're looking at. So I expect the growth will continue to come from a combination of both organic and acquisition. And we typically have been half organic growth and half acquisitions, and I wouldn't be surprised if we continue on that trend.
spk00: Perfect. And just to follow up on the incremental color at the segment level, please.
spk03: I think that we organically will see a lot of growth in the B2B segment. And then in terms of acquisitions, the direct-to-consumer will be a significant area in the acquisition market. And then as well on the wholesale side, and particularly in wholesale, as we look to establish additional ways to market and opportunities in the shoulders of the wine category. So we really see consistent growth in all three platforms.
spk02: Yeah, and I would add, you know, in our earlier conversations, we've talked about our wholesale segment growing at 6%. You're looking at the trends right now. I know you're looking at and seeing that the 10 to 20, 13 weeks is off 10, but we're going to outperform that. And if you look at some of our focus brands, Bar Dog right now in the Nielsen's is up 68%. We've got really strong growth on Firespeed. Layer cake's going to, you know, just be right at that, what the industry commentators are saying. You know, it's going to be one to two on volume and three to five on value. We're going to beat that in the wholesale side. And it's like Pat said on the B2B, we have some great, exclusive brands lined up that will go into there so that the number that we were talking about earlier about B2B will probably beat that. And direct-to-consumer, we're spot on on the growth right now, thinking that's, you know, anywhere between 8 and 10. So those organic segments, we believe, are on track on our guidance that we've been saying all along.
spk00: Perfect. Thank you very much.
spk07: Our next question comes from Mike Baker from DA Davidson. Mike, your line is now open. Please go ahead.
spk05: Okay, thanks. A couple of questions. One, just a real quick one, just to follow up on that guidance and acquisitions, what's in there. So historically you've talked about two, now you think you'll do three, but your guidance has only included one. So I think that's how you've talked about it in the past. I just want to understand what's in that 255 to 275. Is that...
spk03: one acquisition so if you do two or three it's upside and if it is one is that already this Vanessa acquisition which you've already made but doesn't close yet thanks so when when we talk one acquisition it was really the issue of the size and sometimes we were looking at some perhaps that we have some smaller acquisitions that will translate really to the same of what we provided in our guidance Clearly, Vanessa is a significant acquisition in terms of revenue and opportunity and upside in EBITDA because it's a classic example of the synergies that we look to where we can immediately create value through cost savings. And in that case, tremendous amount of cost savings in the pick and pack side and the winemaking side and putting it onto our platform. I would clearly say that there is upside in the expectations of our guidance through additional acquisitions. At this point, we're very, very comfortable with reaffirming the guidance that we provided, and we'll certainly evaluate that guidance later in the year.
spk05: Okay, thanks. That's helpful. Second one, just more color on some of the margin pressures. I think your adjusted EBITDA, even if you take out that $9 million inventory right down, i was down about three hundred thirty basis points uh... you talk about next uh... is that it is it is it just mixed by channel or within each channel it sounds like there was also a mixed issue of other that i think said within b to b the next was the next hurt the margins within b to b because that others if we if we use the margin that you disclosed or at least uh... you know sort of loosely disclosed uh... by each of the segments it wouldn't account for that three hundred thirty uh... big big point the class of the It's either got to be the mix within the mix, or something else, or maybe something on the cost side. Just a little bit more color on some of the margin pressures.
spk03: So that really is mixed related in a couple of the channels. It's mixed related on the B2B side Some of our larger customers at lower margins, the business accelerated a little bit faster. And same thing on the direct-to-consumer. Again, our higher margin segments are the tasting room and wine clubs, and they continue to be impacted by COVID. Yet some of our home shop, our customers and our television segments and some of our others, we're growing at a much faster rate, and they tend to be a little bit lower margin segments. margin business on that side. And again, on the wholesale segment of the business, the margins that go into the chain groceries are less than the margins that go into on-premise and the independent retailers. So just a combination. But the other key thing to note is that none of our production efficiencies had really kicked in until the start of this new fiscal year with the new bottling line and new warehouse expansion. So again, we continue to be very confident about the growth in our EBITDA margins, and we expect to demonstrate that over the coming quarters.
spk05: Okay, helpful. One more if I could. Just on the impact of the wildfires. So in the press release, it attributes the issue to the 2020 wildfires. I think at past conferences, you talked about not really having an impact from the 2021 wildfires that were raging this summer. Can you update us on that? Should we expect a similar impact down the road from the 2021 wildfires, or has there been any impact at all? Thanks.
spk03: So there really hasn't been any impact at all from the 2021 fires. Kind of funny, the closest fire to any of our wineries is about 200 miles away. And so we've had no impact. The harvest actually is coming in a little bit faster this year. It's a little bit smaller in size than average, but it's a good, very, very high quality harvest. So we're pretty keen on that. And absent of something happening in the next week or two, we're pretty comfortable that we'll see zero impact from 2021.
spk05: Okay, great. I'll turn it over to somebody else. Thanks.
spk07: Our next question comes from Luke Hannon from Canaccord. Luke, your line is now open. Please proceed.
spk04: Okay, thanks. Good morning. I just wanted to start on the direct-to-consumer segment and specifically your e-commerce platforms. I'm just curious to know if you've seen anything with regards to the cohort of customers that you would have added throughout the past 18 months or so. And if there's been any differences as far as average order value or churn that you've seen from that cohort versus maybe some other customers that you have signed up in previous years. Are those customers still ordering with you? Are they ordering it in more amounts? Any color there would be helpful.
spk02: Yeah, I would say we really haven't seen any big differences in the cohorts. Our average order size remains stable through this last year. So I really haven't seen any change in that except, you know, when you see the shift to more on the e-commerce side, our wine clubs were a little bit impacted last year. So that brings it down a bit, but we have so much more in our e-commerce side and our average order size was at or a little bit better. So I wouldn't say there's been a dramatic shift in the cohort in direct-to-consumer. But, you know, you can look at the overall direct to consumer and see last year with our tasting room shut down, like we said earlier, we had platforms set up to be doing virtual tastings, doing outreach, doing advertising. We really did, while our tastings were closed, we really did benefit from a lot of the programs that we had set in place. And we had some different platforms set up for outreach, for text. All kinds of things that went through direct-to-consumer that really set us up to weather the storm that COVID provided.
spk04: Okay. That's helpful. Thanks. Another question I had just on the come back to the guidance. I think it implies close to 500 basis points of margin expansion. I'm just curious to know what some of the drivers are for that. I think probably the big one is going to be the race station facility. Maybe, Pat, if you wouldn't mind just sharing with us what the, I guess, the expectation would be over the course of, say, the next 12 months as far as ramping up production in that facility and maybe a milestone. Yeah, of course.
spk03: You bet, Luke. And so that actually is the primary driver of the revenue of the gross margin expansion. And we have placed the new bottling line in service as of the 1st of July or the start of our new fiscal year. And we have the occupancy permit for the new warehouse. So we're starting to move all of our our case goods into that facility. So we expect that those efficiencies will kick in and we'll see the benefit from that capital investment last year for not only this year, but several years to come.
spk04: Okay. And how, I guess, if you had to put a preliminary sort of timeline on it, how soon would you be able to have that production facility sort of fully ramped and getting the most operating efficiencies out of that, as you expect?
spk03: Well, we're running the new bottling line is expected to run at 70% utilization, and we're currently running in the high 50s. I would expect that we would get up to 70% within the next 30 to 45 days, which is consistent with what our expectations were and the growth for that.
spk04: Understood. Okay. I appreciate the call. Thanks. Thanks.
spk07: Our next question comes from Joseph Feldman from Chelsea Group. Joseph, your line is now open. Please proceed with your question.
spk08: Sure. Good morning. Joe Thelman. You know, a question on acquisition. I mean, you picked up the pace on acquisitions two to three, you know, more like three in 22 and more. Can you provide the landscape on acquisitions? Like, you know, initially there's a lot of wineries that you can acquire, but you're also acquiring a lot of customer-focused acquisitions. So can you share, you know, how the composition of acquisitions will be in 22 and forward? Will it be more like on the customer side, more on the winery side, or you are looking at both? And, you know, what kind of increased the pace of acquisition? What drove the thought process? Like, you know, how is the pipeline looking and stuff like that on acquisition? Thank you.
spk03: And so the pipeline is looking very, very robust, to say the least. Perhaps there are more opportunities for me to execute in the next eight months than we really have to take a look at it and say, just make sure that we can not only make the acquisitions but fully integrate them. And our history has suggested that three per year, three to four per year is a good number for us to do. And then especially when we look at balancing those acquisitions and we make an acquisition plan, that is such as Vaness, which is 100% direct to consumer. We might make another acquisition as we've indicated in the shoulders of the wine category that brings more distribution platforms to us. And, you know, it's more focused on our wholesale go to the market segment. You know, we may make an acquisition of the B2B side, although that tends to be more organic. So I would say that absent of last year, where we really only did the Cundey Estate Winery acquisition, because we're really focusing on getting the company public. And again, of course, during COVID, I would think that it's perfectly normal for us to see three to four acquisitions in this fiscal year. And we will continue to first select on the opportunities for synergies and margin enhancement and acquisitions that provide the value. We'd love it when we can buy a pre-synergy acquisition at a 12x multiple and bring it within the first 10, you know, first 12 months to a 5x multiple or a 4x multiple on EVA. And those are the things that work well for us in our system. So, again, as we said before, no question direct-to-consumer is our number one priority, and it was great to make two acquisitions. that are 100% focused on that segment. Again, we look at the opportunities on the wholesale side. I expect we will continue to see another winery or two acquisitions, but where we can acquire customers in the direct-to-consumer segment or where we can create a new platform that we can get into other things, such as perhaps cannabis-based beverages or ready-to-drink beverages, we're going to look at that as well. But I'm very, very encouraged about the opportunities that are in front of us that fit our acquisition criterions of providing value and allowing us to grow at a reasonable price.
spk08: That's great. Thank you.
spk07: Our next question comes from Daniel Bilesi from Hedgeye. Daniel, your line is now open. Please proceed with your question.
spk06: Thank you. Can you speak to the strengths you're seeing in the B2B channel, and are you in the majority of the retail doors you want to be, and how does that compare to the shelf space opportunity in the existing customers?
spk02: We have tremendous opportunity in B2B right now. We're expanding on B2B. SKUs in some of our – so in Target, we have Photograph. We're expanding SKUs. Hopefully that will go in in spring set. There's multiple customers right now that we're in conversations on on creating new brands for them, so great upside there. So we see the opportunity in B2B with the big retailers as – I don't want to say unlimited, but I would say it is unlimited because the things, the requests that are coming across the desk for either brand expansion that we currently have, new spirit programs in some of the big retailers, the opportunities are in list there.
spk06: Thanks. And then if I could follow up. For the wholesale channel, can you speak to what you're seeing in off-premise and what the difficult compares there and how the pace of recovery is in the restaurants? And if you can remind us what your mix is to your knowledge of how much is sold through the on-premise within wholesale. Thank you.
spk02: Yeah. On-premises is small for us. Overall, it's 5% or less of our total company in on-premise. So even with the shutdowns, it did hurt us, but not as bad as it did maybe some other companies. We are seeing it starting to rebound. Because we don't have brands in the top, let's say, 50, those are the brands that really benefited from the pantry loading that went on during the pandemic. So we are starting to see some really great numbers coming out of July and August. So we're rebounding really strong there. On-premises coming back. Our numbers look great in terms of new points of distribution that are coming back on in on-premises. I will say our national account team and on-premise really worked hard during the pandemic to make sure that even though those restaurants were shut down or big hotels, food service was limited, we held those points of distribution. And now that they're kind of selling off on the inventory that they have stacked up, we're seeing some new authorizations coming through there. So feeling really grateful. very good about the guidance we gave in the wholesale channel we will beat what the current trends are and again those commentators are saying industry commentators are saying that it's a one to two on the table wine in cases and another maybe three to five in value we believe we're going to beat that through um the robust side that we're already seeing in july and august rebounding and Actually, some new authorizations that we're expecting that we'll start setting in March of next year.
spk07: Our next question comes from Mike Baker, again from DA Davidson. Mike, your line is now open. Please proceed.
spk05: Thanks. A couple more follow-ups. Within the EBITDA margin guidance, which looks like it's about 23.6, 23.8 or so, versus 19 and change last year, how should we think about gross margin in SG&A? You know, you have a lot of adjustments in the EBITDA line. You don't necessarily break them down by gross margin in SG&A. But You know, I guess if you add back about $900 million in the annual gross margin number, you get about 38%. What should we think about as the right gross margin level in 2022 within your guidance? Thanks.
spk03: so so the majority of the adjustments we're in the sgna line a little bit in the gross margin with the inventory adjustment as well as the impact on the in the vineyards of the wild wild wildfires but i think consistently on a gross margin basis total total company we're going to look at that 41 to 42 percent kind of range And, you know, obviously, the mix, the direct-to-consumer has the highest gross margin, and adding Vaness and another $20 million of revenue on that side and the SOM company at a very high gross margin, those two will expand their gross margin opportunities. But, again, the B2B segment continues to grow, and we've got a lot of voracious retailers that are looking for more and more growth of their programs. And so I think... When we net it all out, we'll continue to see total gross margins after direct selling costs and direct marketing costs in all three segments to average in the 30% to 32% kind of range, pretty corporate overhead. So that's why we're comfortable with our adjusted EBITDA ranges.
spk05: Okay, understood. One more follow-up, more qualitative perhaps. Any color, commentary, or impact from anything on the supply chain, freight costs? I think one point, barrel costs were way up. Anything you're seeing in terms of inflation in the supply chain or raw material inflation or those type of issues that have really impacted so many retailers to just learn what you're seeing in those areas?
spk03: So I think we're seeing some of the same kind of trends that some of the other retailers are seeing, transportation costs. are up substantially, no question about it, all over the world. They're up and they're up and bringing goods in from Europe and China. And just the ability to get trucking and to get orders out is something that's a bit of a challenge. And the secondary challenge is one that, again, everybody across all segments is having, are labor costs and getting the workforce back to work. And we see challenges in terms of getting people and we've increased, you know, state bonuses and increased some of the salary ranges, but, but those things are, we're not, well, they're not desirable. They are manageable. And that's what we're doing. And our, our, our materials in terms of glass and other packaging are not really going through significant changes in pricing. So that's a good thing, nor, nor our grapes or our, our wine costs. So we're, we're pretty comfortable on that segment of the business. So we're going to, you know, we will continue to have the challenges that all industries are having right now, but we expect to be able to manage through those.
spk05: Okay. Thanks for the additional time. Thanks, Mike.
spk07: There are no further questions. I'll now hand back over to Pat Roney for any closing remarks.
spk03: Well, thank you very much for joining us today. I hope you're as excited as we are about the multitude of opportunities we have to scale vintage wine estates. We look forward to speaking to you again very, very soon, and hopefully we'll have some more exciting news and some more acquisitions to talk about in the relatively near future. Have a great day today.
spk07: This concludes today's call. Thank you for joining. You may now disconnect your lines.
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