Vintage Wine Estates, Inc.

Good afternoon, and thank you for attending today's Vintage Wine Estates Third Quarter Fiscal Year 2022 Results Conference Call. My name is Donyell, and I will be your moderator for today's call. All lines will be muted during the presentation portion of the call with an opportunity for questions and answers at the end. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. I would now like to pass the conference over to our host, Deborah Pawlowski of Investor Relations of Wine Estates. Please proceed.

Thanks, Danielle. And hello, everyone. We certainly appreciate your time today and your interest in vintage wine estates. Joining me on the call are Pat Roney, our founder and CEO, and Terry Wheatley, our president. Also joining us today, we are welcoming Chris Johnston, our new CFO. Pat and Terry are going to provide an overview of our third quarter fiscal year 2022 financial results and discuss our strategy for growth as well as our outlook for the remainder of the year. After that, we will open the call for questions. As you are aware, we may make some forward-looking statements during this formal discussion, as well as during the Q&A session, which are outlined on slide two. These statements apply that future events are subject to risks and uncertainties, as well as other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from what is stated here today. These risks and uncertainties and other factors are provided in the release as well as with other documents filed with Securities and Exchange Commission. These documents, which are the press release as well as the slides that are accompanying today's conversation, can be found on our website. During today's call, we will also discuss some non-GAAP financial measures, which we believe will be useful in evaluating our performance. you should not consider the presentation of this additional information in isolation or as a substitute for results prepared in accordance with GAAP. So if you will now turn to slide three on the quarter deck, I will turn it over to Terri to begin. Terri?

Great. Thank you, Deb, and welcome, everyone. Our third quarter results were excellent with net revenue growth of 68% over last year. This strong growth was driven by impressive increases in volume across all segments. Organic growth was 44% while acquisitions contributed $11.4 million in net revenue in a quarter. While our omni-channel market strategy is a key differentiator for us, our direct-to-consumer business is clearly our gem. Our brands continue to outperform with broad market appeal Those that garner headline status include, of course, our Bardog brand that has taken the market by storm, but also Firespeed has a very strong appeal across a broad demographic. Our customer is very pleased with how well the photograph brand is performing for them, and our Clopagos brand is a strong, well-recognized name in many homes. Operating income expanded nearly five times to $900,000 and adjusted EBITDA increased 38% to a record level 14 million. As a percentage of net revenue, adjusted EBITDA was 17.7 compared with 21.6 in the prior year period due to the combination of acquisitions not being fully integrated and higher costs not yet covered by pricing actions. Pat will talk more about expected synergies and timing. On the acquisition front, we continue to execute on our strategy with the acquisition of Meyers Beverage Group in January of this year. On slide four, you will see our omnichannel marketing strategy provide the competitive advantage as we remain fairly evenly balanced among our three business channels. With the delivery of private label programs, our B2B channel had a very strong quarter benefiting from the addition of Meyers. For our wholesale business, off-premise sales were up against tough comparisons with last year's quarter, which was still impacted by COVID restrictions that kept folks more or less at home and ordering online. Nevertheless, depletion volume growth was 2.4% and was 7.6% for our top-tier brands. Our DPC channel is a hallmark of Vintage Wine Estates and continues to validate the success of our omnichannel strategy by reaching the consumer through multiple touch points. One of our latest examples of expanding our reach to the consumer is our partnership with Travel and Leisure Wine. I should mention as well our new product line initiative, Nextdrinks, which is focused on the development, marketing, and sales of alternative beverage products. We believe alternative beverages share many synergies with wine, and this adjacency presents an opportunity for further growth through diversification. We plan to leverage our operational expertise across new categories to build greater value as an enterprise, although our core will always be wine. Nextdrinks creates a product line category exclusively devoted to developing brands in the alternative beverage space that encompasses alternative packaging, flavors and infusions, non-alcohol, low alcohol, and CBD-infused beverages. Tracy Mason has joined us to lead this new operation. Tracy brings a breadth of sales and marketing experience in the beverage alcohol industry. We will anchor the Next Drinks portfolio with our Ace Cider business and plan to launch new alcohol-removed hemp CBD-infused Ace Cider products in the latter half of this year leveraging ACE's product development and production capabilities as well as its channels to market. We also acquired intellectual property rights to the women-focused, low-calorie, botanical, and cannabinoid-infused sparkling beverage brand, Jim & Jane, which we plan to reformulate into a hemp CBD and adaptogen-infused product to allow for national retail distribution. With that, let me turn it over to Pat to talk more about our results, the recent acquisitions, and our outlook. Pat?