B&G Foods, Inc.

Good day and welcome to the B&G Foods second quarter 2021 earnings call. Today's call, which is being recorded, is scheduled to last about one hour, including remarks by B&G Foods management and the question and answer session. I would now like to turn the call over to Sarah Gerlum, Senior Director of Corporate Strategy and Business Development for B&G Foods. Sarah?

Good afternoon and thank you for joining us. With me today are Casey Keller, our Chief Executive Officer, and Bruce Waka, our Chief Financial Officer. You can access detailed financial information on the quarter in the earnings release we issued today, which is available at the investor relations section of bgfoods.com. Before we begin our formal remarks, I need to remind everyone that part of the discussion today includes forward-looking statements. These statements are not guarantees of future performance, and therefore, undue reliance should not be placed upon them. We refer you to B&G Foods' most recent annual report on Form 10-K, and subsequent SEC filings for a more detailed discussion of the risks that could impact our company's future operating results and financial condition. BNG Foods undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. We will also be making references on today's call to the non-GAAP financial measures, adjusted EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA before COVID-19 expenses, adjusted net income, adjusted diluted earnings per share, and base business net sales. Reconciliations of these financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures are provided in today's earnings release. Stacy will begin the call with opening remarks and discuss various factors that affected our results, selected business highlights, and his thoughts concerning the outlook for the remainder of fiscal 2021. First, we'll then discuss our financial results for the second quarter, as well as expectations for 2021. I would now like to turn the call over to Casey.

Good afternoon. Thank you, Sarah. And thank you all for joining us today for our second quarter earnings call. We are pleased with the company's performance in the second quarter and our prospects for the remainder of the year. As we expected, the second quarter was the most challenging to lap from a comparative perspective given that Q2 2020 occurred at the height of pantry loading and stocking during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, performance remained elevated relative to 2019. As many of you know, this is my first earnings call at B&G Foods. I've now been in the role as CEO for about six weeks. So for the folks on the line that I haven't met yet, it is a pleasure to meet you, Day, over the phone. I'm certainly looking forward to meeting many of you in person over the coming months as we get back into the cadence of in-person investor conferences, industry events, and trade shows. While I am mostly in listen mode for now, I will be happy to share some of my observations so far and then come back over the coming quarters with a more detailed discussion around strategy, the portfolio, as well as our opportunities and challenges at B&G Foods. Obviously, one of the biggest drivers of industry performance for the past year and a half has been the COVID-19 pandemic. In many cases, this is a matter of portfolio DNA. What are the brands? What are the categories? Coupled with management's effectiveness in keeping employees safe, mitigating business risk, maintaining supply, and maximizing opportunity. Here at B&G Foods, we have done a pretty good job. At the height of the pandemic in Q2 last year, we generated some of the largest growth numbers in the packaged food industry. Today, COVID continues to be a concern in everyday life across the country and around the world. But with the passage of time and the increasing proportion of the population that has been vaccinated, we expect gradual, if uneven, recovery and normal economic activity. We do have opportunities coming out of the pandemic, though. When I look at the consumer trends that accelerated during the pandemic, e-commerce, comfort brands, baking, cooking, enhancers, flavorings, and seasonings, there are lots of opportunities for the B&G portfolios at the center of these trends. We clearly aren't going to match 2020's net sales on our base business, but we are a larger business than we were in 2019, driven by continued growth and interest in cooking, baking, and eating at home. B&G's base business is up 7% on a two-year stack from 2019. Within the portfolio, our spices and seasonings, baking, and meals brands are up 20% versus Q2 2019. And specifically on spices and seasonings, which is about 20% of our total company portfolio and aggregates to be the number two spices and seasonings business in the United States, net sales are up more than 20% from Q2 2019, and remains well positioned coming out of the pandemic as more consumers continue to cook more often at home. Also, the spices and seasoning portfolio is about 15 to 20% food service. So we are also benefiting as restaurants and eating establishments reopen and more Americans are dining out again. Our baking portfolio is also seeing positive trends in the post-pandemic world. Recent studies show that even in spring 2021, Approximately 65% of consumers were baking at home at least once per week, lifting the prospects of our growing list of baking brands that includes B&G food stalwarts such as Br'er Rabbit and Grandma's Molasses, as well as more recent additions such as Clabber Girls and Crisco. We will spend more time talking about Crisco, but so far after eight months of ownership, we are very encouraged by the category trends and the top-line performance of this business. Another significant impact coming out of the pandemic is inflation, and at unprecedented levels. We are seeing inflation on key cost inputs across the portfolio, particularly in many tradable commodities, packaging material, and freight. The impact on our base portfolio is approximately 3% to 4%, but much higher on the Crisco business, where soybean oil costs have doubled from last year. At B&G Foods, we identified the risks of inflation early and acted to raise prices to recover higher input costs. We will see more impact from both inflationary costs and pricing moving into the P&L through Q3 and Q4, with some lag effect on the timing of pricing implementation with customers. Finally, I wanted to give you my perspective on B&G Foods overall and some thoughts on how we move forward. This company has grown net sales and adjusted EBITDA at a greater than 10% compound annual growth rate over the last 17 years since its IPO in 2004. The company was built upon a successful track record of acquisition-related growth. We have successfully acquired and integrated more than 50 brands into our company since it was established in 1996. For sure, some of the brands are a little old and stodgy, but many of these generate significant cash. Many other brands and businesses that we have acquired, including spicings, spices, baking, and meals, still have incredible opportunities in front of them. Our goals are to continue to increase sales, profitability, and cash flows through organic growth and discipline acquisitions of complementary branded businesses. Going forward, What you should expect from me is stronger focus within the portfolio on where we will grow, invest, acquire, and create value. Much more to come on that in future meetings and calls. Thank you for joining us today. I will now turn the call over to Bruce for a more detailed discussion of the quarter. Bruce.

Thank you, Casey. Good afternoon, everyone. As Casey mentioned, We had a strong financial performance during our second quarter, despite some very challenging comparables. A year ago at this time, we were still, for the most part, sheltering at home, had little hope of an effective vaccine in the near future, and saw the majority of the away-from-home eating industry shut down, other than a budding recovery of takeout dining that began midsummer last year. April, May, and June of 2020 were the peak months of COVID-19, and Americans were still eating the majority of their meals at home, creating unprecedented demand for shelf-stable and frozen packaged food products, the types of products that we sell. In fact, when we reported our second quarter results last year at this time, we were discussing net sales growth that was up nearly 40% and adjusted EBITDA growth that was up nearly 45% from the prior year. Margins were also up significantly. This year, as we lap those pandemic-enhanced results, I think it is also important to view the second quarter in the context of its comparisons to Q2 2019. While sales were lower than March, April, and May months of last year, net sales finished nicely ahead of pre-pandemic levels for the quarter, and we continue to track to the mid-single-digit increases over 2019 levels that we had been talking to for some time. We are seeing many of the consumer behaviors that we witnessed last year persist, driving a sustained increase in the numbers of Americans preparing their meals at home and eating at home on a daily basis. As Casey said earlier, we are seeing consumers cooking, baking, and eating at home more frequently than they had pre-pandemic. Another factor worth mentioning before we get deeper into our results is inflation. At the beginning of this year, when we were delivering our Q4 results and outlook for the year, we raised our concerns about inflation as the broader economy restarted and began to more fully adapt to the impact of COVID-19. I hate to use the word unprecedented too loosely, but we are certainly seeing inflation with little recent precedent. While our conversations about inflation may have seemed early at the time, It is now hard to read, watch, or listen to the news without hearing about inflation. Inflation is here, and it appears that it will likely be here for some time. In some cases, that means costs are up marginally, and in other cases, particularly for tradable commodities, costs may be up as much as double digits from last year's pandemic depressed levels. At B&G Foods, we acted quickly to take price across large parts of our portfolio to help offset inflation and preserve our margin structure. We have now executed list price increases in approximately 80% of the brands in our portfolio. While we were covered with many forward purchases, in many cases throughout portions of the year, this mitigates the damage, but the cost increases still hurt. And while we are taking price, it largely comes with a lag effect, setting up a fairly common phenomenon where the margins may be compressed a little bit more than we would like to see them in the short term, but are expected to remain fairly stable in the long term. We expect these inflationary pressures to persist and that conversations about inflation and price increases will continue well into 2022. And now for the 2021 Q2 highlights. We reported net sales of $464.4 million, adjusted EBITDA before COVID-19 expenses of $85 million, adjusted EBITDA of $83.8 million, and adjusted diluted earnings per share of 41 cents. Adjusted EBITDA before COVID-19 expenses as a percentage of net sales was 18.3%. Adjusted EBITDA as a percentage of net sales was 18%. Net sales of $464.4 million were down $48.1 million, or 9.4%, from the peak of COVID-19. Q2 2020, but up $93.2 million, or 25.1%, from pre-COVID Q2 2019. Crisco, which we acquired in December 2020, generated $58.4 million of net sales in Q2 2021. Base business net sales, which primarily exclude Crisco and approximately one and a half months of CleverGirl net sales, were up $26.4 million, or 7.1%, compared to 2019. As a reminder, we acquired Clabergirl in May 2019. We continue to believe that we will see a material lift, say mid-single digits in net sales, over the levels that we experienced in 2019. Comparisons to 2020 are obviously driven by a decline in volumes but we are also seeing a benefit from price, which includes list price increases, trade span optimization, and a little bit of mix. For the recent quarter, price mix was a benefit of approximately $6.2 million, bringing us to approximately $12.8 million of benefit for the first two quarters combined. We generated adjusted EBITDA before COVID-19 expenses of $85 million in the second quarter of 2021. a decrease of $21.9 million, or 20.5%. During the second quarter of 2021, we incurred approximately $1.2 million in incremental COVID-19 costs at our manufacturing facilities, which primarily included temporary enhanced compensation for our manufacturing employees, compensation we continue to pay manufacturing employees while in quarantine, and expenses related to other precautionary health and safety measures. We expect to see continued reduction in these costs, which averaged about $1.5 million per month during the height of the pandemic and have averaged a little less than a half a million dollars per month in the second quarter of 2021. Inclusive of these costs, we reported adjusted EBITDA of $83.8 million, which is a decrease of $18.8 million or 18.3% compared to last year's second quarter. Adjusted EBITDA as a percentage of net sales was 18% in the second quarter of 2021 compared to 20% in the second quarter of 2020. Adjusted EBITDA as a percentage of net sales was 19.1% in the second quarter of 2019. Adjusted diluted earnings per share was 41 cents compared to 71 cents in Q2 2020 and 38 cents in Q2 2019. Spices and seasonings continues to be one of the key drivers in the portfolio. Net sales of our spices and seasonings, including our legacy brands such as Accent and Dash, and the brands we acquired in 2016, such as Tones and Weber, were approximately $99.3 million, a little bit more than 21% of our total company net sales for the quarter. Net sales of spices and seasonings were up by approximately $0.7 million, or 0.7% compared to Q2 2020. Net sales of spices and seasonings were approximately $18.1 million, or 22.2%, compared to Q2 2019. Spices and seasoning sales remain elevated across all of our brands and channels, and we are seeing a real benefit as consumers repeatedly demonstrate their interest in trying new recipes while cooking and eating at home. Among our other large brands, Maple Grove Farms, which generated $20.2 million in net sales for the quarter, was up $2.2 million, or 11.7%, compared to Q2 2020, and up $2.4 million, or 13.4%, compared to Q2 2019. Maple Grove Farms benefited from both strong retail demand as long as a recovery in its food service business. Ortega generated net sales of $40.9 million and was down $5.9 million or 12.7% compared to Q2 2020, but was up $6.9 million or 20% from Q2 2019. Ortega is a call-out brand that is still benefiting from COVID-like demand, but we are selling products as fast as we can make them, particularly taco shells, taco sauce, and chili peppers. and unfortunately due to internal and external supply chain constraints, we are still not able to capitalize fully on the demand opportunity. Ortega is a brand that we are very much leaning into, and our operations team is working hard to expand capacity and maximize this opportunity. We have a similar story with Las Palmas. Las Palmas generated net sales of $8.8 million, was down $3.4 million or 27.7% compared to Q2 2020, but was up $1.2 million or 15.2% compared to Q2 2019. Similar to Ortega, Las Palmas was not able to fully capture the continued demand opportunity with supply constraints in chilies due to crop issues. Cream of wheat, which has been one of our largest beneficiaries of the consumer patterns emerging from the pandemic, generated $14.2 million in net sales for the quarter. And while down $3.8 million or 20.8% from Q2 2020, cream of wheat was up $2.5 million or 21.9% from its pre-pandemic Q2 2019 levels. Green Giant had a tough quarter that combined the most challenging COVID comparison in our portfolio with the most challenging supply chain constraints as we wait for the new vegetable pack. Green Giant generated $105.7 million in net sales, down $58.4 million or down 35.6% compared to Q2 2020, and down $7.2 million or 6.4% compared to Q2 2019. Green Giant will continue to face tough comparisons and supply chain constraints until we largely get through the pack season in the third quarter of this year. However, we do expect a strong fourth quarter once we are fully loaded on inventory. We generated $111.6 million in gross profit for the second quarter of 2021, or 24% of net sales. Gross profit was down when compared to Q2 2020 gross profit of $134.1 million, or 26.2% of net sales, but margins were up almost 100 basis points sequentially, when compared to Q1 2021 gross profit, which was 23.3% of net sales. As we discussed earlier, we are seeing low to mid single digit input cost increases in our base business, coupled with double digit increases for Crisco. These increases also include low to mid single digit increases in factory wages, low single digit increases in packaging, and double digit increases in freight. These costs were largely offset part by our pricing initiatives as well as an aggressive forward purchasing strategy and by various cost savings initiatives in our manufacturing facilities. Gross margin was also negatively impacted by the inclusion of Crisco in our results. Crisco comes with a higher depreciation rate than the base business, thus margining us down nearly 100 basis points for the quarter, although this impact is netted out for adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA margin purposes. These pressures were offset in part from a lapping of COVID-19 expenses, which were just $1.2 million for the quarter compared to $4.3 million during Q2 2020. Selling general and administrative expenses were $47.1 million for the quarter or 10.1% of net sales. This compares to $44.3 million or 8.7% for the prior year and 10.7% in the second quarter of 2019. The dollar increase in SG&A compared to last year ago levels is almost entirely driven by a $4.6 million increase in warehousing costs, coupled with $1.9 million in incremental acquisition-related and non-recurring expenses, which primarily relate to the acquisition and integration of the Crisco brand, as well as $0.3 million in increased advertising and marketing spend. The increase in warehousing costs was primarily driven by the Crisco acquisition and customer fines related to COVID-19 shortages and delays. These costs were partially offset by decreases in selling of $2.5 million and decreases of general and administrative expenses of $1.5 million. As I mentioned earlier, we generated $85 million in adjusted EBITDA before COVID-19 costs and $83.8 million in adjusted EBITDA in the second quarter of 2021. This compares to adjusted EBITDA of $102.6 million in Q2 2020 and $71 million in Q2 2019. Interest expense was $26.7 million compared to $24.8 million in the second quarter last year. The primary driver of the increase in interest expense was the acquisition of Crisco. As a reminder, we financed the entire $550 million acquisition price with debt, a combination of revolver draw and new term loan. The revolver currently costs us a little less than 2% in interest, and the term loan a little bit less than 2.75% in interest. Depreciation and amortization are also up year over year, driven primarily by CRISCO. Depreciation expense was $14.8 million in the second quarter of 2021. compared to $10.6 million in last year's second quarter. Amortization expense was $5.4 million in the second quarter of 2021, compared to $4.7 million in last year's second quarter. We are still expecting an expected tax rate of approximately 26% for the year, but taxes were a little higher than that in this year's second quarter due to some discrete tax events. at an effective rate of 26.8% for the quarter compared to 26.2% in last year's second quarter. We generated 41 cents in adjusted diluted earnings per share in the second quarter of 2021 compared to 71 cents per share in Q2 2020 and 38 cents per share in Q1 2019. We remain encouraged by these trends. Despite the tough comparisons against 2020 and the continuing challenges of COVID, we still expect to achieve company record net sales for the year, reflecting a mid to high single-digit increase in the base business net sales compared to 2019, and coupled with the addition of Crisco, in line with the $2.05 to $2.1 billion net sales guidance that we provided in March. And despite the continued inflationary pressures that we face, we are continuing to target the 18% plus adjusted EBITDA margins that we have generated in recent years. However, because we are not fully able to estimate the impact of COVID-19 cost inflation and our cost inflation mitigation efforts will have on our results for the remainder of fiscal 2021, we are unable at this time to provide more detailed earnings guidance for the full year of fiscal 2021. A couple quick call-outs from a modeling perspective. As I mentioned earlier, interest expense depreciation and amortization are continuing to trend higher than last year as a result of the Crisco acquisition. We expect full-year interest expense of $105 to $110 million, including cash interest expense of $100 to $105 million, depreciation expense of $60 to $62 million, amortization expense of $21 to $22 million, and an effective tax rate of approximately 26% for the full year. Finally, as a reminder, last year's third quarter included an extra week as a result of our 53rd week during the fiscal calendar of 2020. At the time, we estimated that the extra week was worth approximately $35 million in extra net sales. Now I'll turn the call back over to Casey for further remarks.

Thank you, Bruce. As I said at the beginning of the call, we had a fairly strong quarter despite lapping Q2 2020, which benefited from peak COVID-19 demand. The quarter played out pretty much as management expected, and the company remains on track to deliver the mid to high single-digit growth ahead of 2019 that it set as a target for this year. I am digging in and enjoying my early days at B&G Foods. And I look forward to sharing more of my perspectives on the company's performance, strategy, and portfolio in the time ahead. This concludes our remarks, and now we would like to begin the Q&A portion of our call. Operator?

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you'd like to ask a question, please signal by pressing star 1 on your telephone keypad. If you're using a speakerphone, please make sure your mute function is turned off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. Again, press star 1 to ask a question. We'll pause for just a moment to allow everyone an opportunity to signal for questions. And we'll take the first question from the line of Carew Martinson with Jefferies. Please go ahead.

Hi, this is Oliver Grossman on for Carew. What products would you say you have been better able to take price in and which are you having more trouble with and why would you think that's the case? I think you mentioned that 80% of the portfolio has seen price increases, so any color there would be helpful.

Yeah, I can start, and then Bruce can talk a little bit. You know, I think we disclosed that we've taken pricing on 80% of the portfolio at this stage because we've seen the inflation and input costs, you know, that pressure has been pretty broad across the portfolio. You know, we – I would say, you know, and I – The increases on our core portfolio before Crisco are probably smaller, but depending on the item. So we've been pretty successful at being able to, you know, implement those with customers. And, you know, we have very strong justification with the inputs going up. I mean, Crisco is, you know, significant when you're, you know, your primary component is soybean oil and that goes up by 2x, which is what it has happened since, you know, we acquired the business. Those are obviously some tougher discussions, but we are getting through those because, you know, all of our customers in the industry see that those soybean oil costs are up that much. So I would say, look, overall, you know, this pricing environment, you know, customers feel it. We obviously have, you know, very tough but productive discussions about it. But we've been able to largely have successful discussions around pricing and get it implemented, and some of it is still yet to come. We just announced it, but it hasn't been implemented fully until probably a couple months.

Great. Thank you. And then just lastly, how much top line do you think that you guys have left on the table due to the capacity constraints that are not letting you fully meet demand?

I think that's a hard one to give at this time. I think it definitely depends on the category. I mean, certainly green giant, our sales would be significantly higher, you know, in canned and in frozen corn on the cob where we're relying on Mother Nature and, you know, we'll get the product and so will our competitors when Mother Nature comes in, you know, throughout the crop season. So that's one where we're certainly hurt. Spices and seasonings. you know, up something like 20% compared to 2019, actually up versus last year. If we had unlimited supply, we'd have a lot more sales. You know, I think you go down the portfolio piece by piece and you see that.

Or Tega, you know, we had taco shells and taco sauce. We've been kind of struggling to keep up with demand on those two and, you know, have plans to get additional capacity in place, but it's not there yet.

Static Guard, if we had unlimited supply or sales, would probably be kind of close to the same until people are out and about and using static guard on their clothes when they go to work.

And that's an availability to spray cans that's been the issue.

Great. Thank you very much.

Ladies and gentlemen, if you find that your question has been answered, you may remove yourself from the queue by pressing star 2. We'll take the next question from the line of Andrew Lazar with Barclays. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon and welcome, Casey.

Thank you, Andrew.

Maybe I wanted to start off, Casey, I know you're not ready to sort of lay out sort of the go-forward strategy in a whole lot of detail yet, but maybe just want to get a sense, you know, historically, right, the company's had a very successful strategy of sort of keeping the core relatively stable to growing very modestly, and then kind of supplementing growth with, you know, capital allocation around, you know, dividend policy and then accretive deals. And maybe it seems that B&G may have strayed a little bit from that strategy, maybe the past few years, looking for a Just trying to get a sense of if it's your intention to sort of take B&G back to its roots, so to speak, or move in an entirely different direction. And I've just got a follow-up.

Yeah, I'd say, you know, and, Andrew, I do want to say that this, you know, six weeks in, I think I'd be crazy to say I understand everything about this company and know everything about where we need to go. But, look, I am digging in. I'm starting to form some, you know, ideas about what we need to do and working those with the team. I would say my approach is to say we need to do what has been working at B&G well, which is stabilizing the shelf-stable portfolio or even getting modest growth out of it and then making sure that we're bringing in accretive acquisitions that are complementary to the things that we do well, that we can build in and bolt in pretty successfully. And the company has done a remarkable job of that. I would say the one... piece that I'm going to probably build on top of that is, you know, we've gotten to a stage where we compete in lots of categories with lots of brands and I don't think they're all created equal. I think there are some categories and brands and segments that, you know, we will, we are better equipped to add value, create value by bringing them in here, either through, you know, organic growth or synergies or other things that, So you'll probably hear me talk about places that we really want to play and where we believe we can win and where we believe we'll be more successful at adding significant value creation beyond just sort of bringing them in-house one time. So it's a little early for me to talk about that, but that's kind of how I see it. So I don't want to walk away from what P&G has done well, and I will honor that and make sure that we do those things well. But I think we do need a little bit of focus on the places that we want to invest, grow, acquire, where we would prioritize going forward in the future. But still maintain the principles of buying smart and doing the right things for the business.

Thanks for that. And then, Bruce, I think I heard you say that you're sticking with the 18% plus EBITDA margin. I wasn't sure, and I may have just missed it. Was that also for this year or just kind of, you know, over time? Because I know you also talked about, you know, the typical lag that we have in timing between pricing and inflation and all of that.

Yeah, fair enough. I mean, look, I think in this quarter you certainly saw the compression on margins. We were a little bit less than we were 2019. Certainly no expectation on our side that we would have hit 20%. For this quarter, we're still targeting an 18% EBITDA margin because we think that's the right thing for the business and what we should be able to produce. And probably at the lower end of that 18, 18.5 that we talked about earlier in the year, but that's still our goal.

Great. And I guess just on that then, what is – because, you know, there are a bunch of food companies obviously that aren't. able to reach their, let's call it, normal EBITDA run rate from a margin perspective this year, just because of, again, the timing lags and the things that are typical with how this works in a rising input cost environment. I guess, is it that you were faster to get pricing implemented, got additional productivity? I'm trying to get a sense of what's sort of making up that are making up for that gap or that timing lag to still allow you to get to, you know, that type of margin for the year?

Sure. I mean, look, not saying it's going to be easy. There's certainly going to be challenges and there's always risks. But as we highlighted when we gave our fourth quarter results and our outlook for the year in the beginning, you know, part one, we weren't giving formal guidance this year because we thought that there would be many challenges coming out of COVID and both from a sales standpoint, but also thinking through the cost side. And we have that. You know, in theory, we should have a margin benefit from Crisco this year because it is a higher margin business. But as we've said, you know, that's an area where we've seen input costs, an area where we've taken pricing. And kind of the same, to a lesser degree, on the portfolio. We acted quick in terms of taking pricing, but we're still seeing cost increases. And so... I wouldn't go too crazy with building an EBITDA margin upside opportunity for this year because I think, like everybody else in the space, we're going to see challenges. But we still think that's the right margin for the business.

I would say, Andrew, just very quickly, I believe just looking from the outside coming in here that B&G did call out inflation earlier and acted on pricing earlier than a lot of the rest of the industry, which is now followed pretty aggressively. The second thing I would say is that we did a good job on certain commodities of protecting ourselves. So having coverage, you know, fairly long, you know, we did that with soybean oil. So in the first half, we haven't seen a huge impact. We'll see more impact coming through Q3, Q4, because we were hedged or protected longer on some of the things that have gone up, you know, dramatically. And then The last thing is just, you know, sort of a focus on costs and cost savings and making sure that, you know, from spending to, you know, supply chain costs that we were doing everything possible to get productivity. And I think it's the combination of all those that's going to enable us to stay, you know, around that 18% number. Thank you.

We'll take the next question from the line of Michael Lavery with Piper Sandler. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good evening. I wanted to get a little bit more specific. You said you've got some good coverage on commodities, but I know when you were calling out inflation pressures or concerns earlier in the year, the fourth quarter was a big wildcard there. How covered is that now? Is there still a good amount of exposure? And can you give us any sense of how you may be positioned for 2022?

Not in a position right now to give our 2022 guidance.

I don't mean guidance. Are you 20% covered on commodities, 30%, 10%, something like that?

Not something that we would disclose at this point.

I think it's fair to say that we were pretty well covered through... And I'm talking about, you know, against the increases. So, you know, we're actually fairly covered through this year, but we were covered against the larger increases through the first half of the year. The second half of the year, we will have pricing rolling through to help us offset the increasing costs that are going to be flowing through our inventory and P&L. So that's kind of what's happening. So, you know, we'll have pricing coming into a larger effect as we see more of the costs flowing to the P&L in Q3 and Q4.

And I also think that's something that's going to remain fluid. I mean, we're seeing what seems like inflation across the board. Four months ago, no one was talking inflation when we had our call. Now everybody's talking about it, and you are hearing, oh, even the retailer is talking about taking price. You know, if we continue to be in an inflationary environment in 2022, there's probably more price increases. If we end up not being in an inflationary environment and some of these cost increases go away, we'll have to watch that as well.

Okay, that's helpful. And just to maybe follow up on the pricing side, you correctly note that you were kind of a leader here talking about this earlier as an issue than your peers. But I guess then you're also now saying that you've got the lag between the pricing and coming into effect and the inflation pressure. Is it just that the inflation's moved so quickly? Is it just that you were trying to be careful to take pricing, you know, to not take pricing too soon. And then you've got a gap. Can you help us understand some of the mechanics around the timing?

Yeah, I mean, there's certainly a conversation you can have with customers around price when you have input cost increases. And you have to see that materialize so you can verify and validate those cost increases and then put them in place. And so it still takes time. And, you know, I think our point was We are aware of it. We suspect a lot of people were aware of it and seeing it. Like I said, we prepared ourselves and we were ready to act quickly, but there still is a lag effect.

That's basically when do we see the costs really going up, which, by the way, they have been increasing over the last six months. When do we take pricing as well as the timeline for getting it implemented with customers. I mean, most customers are going to insist that we have a 90-day lead time when price increases. So it's just those timing factors. But, you know, we try and get it in line as much as possible, but usually there's some lag effect.

Okay.

Thanks so much.

We'll take the next question from the line of William Reuter with Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Hi. I was wondering, you know, often some retailers reset their shelf space during the middle parts of the year. It didn't happen a lot during COVID. I was wondering if there were any changes in shelf space that you expect kind of over the next month or two for any of your key products.

People are trying to get back to the normal cadence as much as they can.

I mean, we don't – honestly, we're just now getting indications from most of the major retailers that they're doing category reviews and beginning to do new shelving sets and planograms. So we don't have a lot of information yet because that process is really just getting going. You know, we're in initial discussions around some of our new innovation items that are going to be coming to market now and over the next several months. But I think it's a little early to understand what's happening with category reviews, and even some customers now are shifting some of the timing of those around. So, you know, we don't have any information to say one way or another what's going to happen. Plus, you know, I don't suspect that we will have a lot of, you know, vulnerabilities. It'll be more about, you know, how do we optimize our SKU assortment and, you know, how do we bring new innovation into the markets.

Okay, and then just one follow-up if I can. On the supply chain disruption in Green Giant, you were on allocation with certain products. I guess where do we stand on that now, and are you continuing to have a shortage of certain inputs such that some of your customers are not able to fully provide them all the products that they'd like?

Certainly on the canned side for Green Giant, we're still just now getting into the pack season, and that begins – basically now weeks ago and continues through just past the end of the third quarter. And so that's a position that's steadily improving and trying to get back to normal.

Great. That's all for me. Thank you. Thanks, Bill.

Your next question comes from the line of Jenna Gianelli with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Hi. Thanks for taking my question. You talked about obviously your desire and interest to continue opportunistic M&A, but I guess given there are some in your terms to maybe be on pause in terms of the pipeline. And then just remind us again potentially how high you're willing to take leverage and just commentary on evaluation. Thank you.

Yeah. So, great question. We're always looking. I mean, at B&G, it's hard to go more than a year or two here and there without seeing a couple acquisitions. Don't know what the next one is. You know, we're less than a year removed from Crisco. But we are always looking. I think certainly as Casey develops his strategy for the company, you know, there's going to be areas that we're going to focus on where we see more or less opportunity. There's an opportunistic aspect of willing buyers. willing seller in order to find willing buyer. And so that'll continue to evolve. As far as leverage, we've got a target ratio of four and a half to five and a half times. And so we're a little bit above that, but not too far above. But that's certainly a consideration that has to make the math work, both from evaluation and how we're paying for things. And so always willing to look, always willing to do the math on how to fund something. And we'll see where the next one comes from.

That makes sense. And then I guess I have to ask, you have some callable debt. How are you thinking about addressing that, potentially coming to market, taking advantage of the favorable high-yield market, et cetera? Thank you.

Great question. Similar answer to the M&A, which is I wish there was an opportunity to get out in the high-yield market. It's very, very attractive rates. We're happy with our capital structure today, but we are getting a little bit closer to the you know, to the maturity on the 2025s, although it's still a ways off. I think we've got to look and evaluate, and if there's something to do structurally, that's great. But right now, we're very happy with our capital structure, both on the floating side and the bonds.

Thank you so much.

We'll now take the next question from the line of Rob Dickerson with Jefferies. Please go ahead.

Great. Thanks so much. Hey, Rob. Hey, how's it going? Casey, how are you? Good. Bruce, just a direct question. I know there's no guidance outside of revenue provided for the year given all the moving parts, but just kind of given the commentary here in the Q&A around you're trying to hold this 18% EBITDA margin for the year and then giving revenue guidance. I'm not going to ask you what your EBITDA guidance is, but haven't you kind of implied what that EBITDA guide is? I just want to make sure there's not something else in there that would prevent the rest of us on this call, myself included, to kind of go that way. I'll start with that. Thanks.

I think just for us, there's a recognition, as there has been all this year and really beginning last year, that we're in unprecedented times, and it's just harder to put a fine number out there. knowing all the risks and, in some cases, opportunities of what COVID has brought for us, you know, and what happens in the coming months ahead in terms of, you know, what are restrictions and ability to eat in restaurants or not. And so there's a lot of unknowns out there. You know, our guidance or lack of guidance this year is a reflection on that. All right.

Fair enough. A lot of volatility. I would say on top of that, not only volatility in the COVID environment and expectations of what's happening. I mean, you can look at the Delta variant now and say, you know, it's hard to figure out what's going to really go there. But there's also a lot of volatility in the inflationary environment, which I think makes, you know, giving earnings guidance hard when you can't see exactly, you know, what's going to happen and what's going forward. So I think, you know, look, we are targeting the 18% earnings margin. We just think there's too much volatility in the costs and the external environment to really be able to pinpoint it.

And certainly part of the thought process behind how and where we gave guidance this year was there isn't a lot of unknowns and we didn't want to be in a situation where we're in an earnings call, whether it's the second quarter or the third quarter, debating, you know, you're a tenth above or a tenth below. an EBITDA margin number. We're going to do our best, but there's risks. And like you guys said, a lot of other companies are seeing a lot more margin compression than we have.

We'll continue to do this. Yeah, it all makes sense. And then I guess I don't hear you calling out as much, or maybe it is in there. I'm just not reading it the right way. It's just kind of supply chain. I know you still call out some of the capacity constraint on Green Giant, what's happening there. I know part of your network is Comand. But, you know, was there anything too where you kind of foresee back half, you know, that gives you some kind of pause on just overall supply chain complexity, inclusive labor and capacity, what have you?

Yeah, it's all very much there for us like it is for a lot of people who are doing manufacturing or relying on co-packers. I think last year at this time there was concerns, could you get your factory staffed? And we were pretty lucky in terms of not having the massive shutdowns like some of the folks on the protein side had. I think now there's risks to different brands and different products coming. that we have, and it's kind of plus or minus, but for the most part, reasonably healthy. But sure, I mean, we could sell a lot more, as we called out Ortega, if we had unlimited taco shells. We could sell a heck of a lot more. You go into most stores, you see shells not fully stocked. With that said, we're still putting up decent sales numbers relative to 2019, so it's less about do you have product to sell and more about do you have enough to sell to maximize the demand opportunity. Certainly, certain brands and certain products, we have that.

Spices and seasonings, it's kind of a good problem to have. We're running that factory full out, and we're trying to hire new people in this environment. It's tough. There are some areas of our business where we're trying to add capacity. It's not... terribly easy right now, but we're going to get it done. In some places, it's about new lines. In some places, it's about bringing on, you know, additional labor. So we're trying to work through all this to maximize the opportunities from, you know, our portfolio.

All right, great. And then just last thing quickly, you know, I know you said up front kind of the conversations with retailers seem to be somewhat ongoing, but as you get through the year, obviously there's some complexity in kind of where those costs go as we move forward. But if we sit here today, you know, when you go and talk to that retailer, you know, I'm assuming, like you were saying on Crisco, you know, I'm assuming some hedges roll off on a kind of go forward rolling basis. My assumption here is you're trying to kind of price to those rolled off hedges later, right, as you think through into 2022 versus getting what you can now and then trying to go back at the end of the year, just trying to figure out that, you know, how you think about that pricing dynamic relative to what your visibility is just off a spot today.

Yeah. I mean, I think ultimately we have to price the business off of what the, what the longterm input costs are going to be. And so, you know, look at the end of the day, we need to price so we're not margin compressed over the longterm. And as we've, kind of said repeatedly on this call, there may be some margin compression in the short term. Our goal is to maintain our margins over the long term. Got it.

All right. Thank you so much. Really appreciate it, guys.

Your next question comes from the line of Carla Casella with J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead.

Hi. Most of my questions have been answered, but on the new capacity front, you're talking about building capacity. Is that something that could come on in third quarters? Is that something that's more fourth quarter next year in Ortega and the others where you're talking about constraints?

Yeah, I mean, it's probably more fourth quarter and first quarter of next year, to be honest. There might be some slight impact in Q3, but it's really a Q4 on the taco sauce and the shell line won't come on for another six months. But I think you could count on, and then on the supply constraints on Green Giant, that's really about the pack, the seasonal pack, as Bruce talked about.

Okay, great. And then could you just talk about whether you're starting to see, as we come further out away from COVID and lockdown, whether you're seeing any changes in promotional environment or cadence among the different product lines, like frozen versus shelf, Anything you can call out?

Yeah, I think, you know, what we've seen during the COVID pandemic, you know, last fall and even this spring is, you know, promotions, there's less foot traffic in the store during kind of promotional time for traditional promotional timeframes, call it Easter or whatever. And so the liftoff promotion is a little bit less, but we expect as, you know, things begin to normalize that that will improve. So we're kind of, you know, we're not pulling back on promotion necessarily in the fall period. You know, we're expecting that there will be some promotion events. and that promotion will be a little bit better than it was last fall in the middle of the pandemic. But it's gradually returning, and we're just trying to follow that and make sure that we're moving in line with what we see from promotion activity at retailers.

Okay, great. Thank you.

Thank you. We'll take the next question from the line of Ken Zaslow with Bank of Montreal. Please go ahead.

Good evening, everyone. Hey, Ken. Casey, as you kind of look at the business, a lot of CEOs come out and say, hey, look, I have a 100-day plan, a year plan, a three-year plan. I know you're not in the position to tell us about what the plan is, but do you have a plan in which you're going to set up your plan, I guess, and how are you going about it, and what is your philosophy in going through that, and when will we know more, and what's the schedule to which you're going to reveal what your plans are on a longer-term basis.

Yeah, I have a plan and a timeline that I'm working against, and typically it's at least 100 days before I'm at a point where I'm really willing to talk about it, and that's because I'll spend my first weeks, months in the company thinking, just trying to understand where do I see value? Where do I see value creation happening? Where do I see the capabilities? Where do I see what businesses are working and not working? How do we want to think about resource allocation within the company across these things? Where have we been successful in the past? What do we need to change to maybe be successful in the future? So I think you can expect that I'll begin to lay some of this out oh, you know, call it three to six month timeframe. Probably when we have this call again in November, I'll be able to provide, you know, some more detail about where do I see us going and where will we focus and, you know, what kinds of, you know, initiatives and priorities we'll put in place. And, you know, and this is all, you know, I've done this a few times now. So to me, it's all about figuring out what's working, what's not, working with the team to align on a strategy to drive higher value creation, and then putting the plan in place and communicating what we're doing to you all and investors, et cetera. So I'm on track with that. It's just six weeks is probably... a little premature to say more than that, just because I think, you know, I want to do my due diligence. I want to work with the team. I want to make sure that we're aligned and I want to make sure that I'm coming out with from a real knowledge base in terms of where I want to go. But I will tell you that I do see very clear opportunities about what we can do to improve value creation, drive value creation. Like I said before, building off, I think what B&G has done well in the past is and maybe enhancing that with more focus within the complexity of the portfolio that we have in terms of where we can drive value and where we can create value for shareholders and for the business.

Fair enough. I'm not sure who to say this question to, but as you look at the Crisco business, can you assess the business case given the situation that you're in with the renewable diesel side of it? And, you know, I'm assuming, obviously, the profitability is pushed out, but how do you see that business case playing out? And should we think about it in a different perspective? And, again, not this year, but I'm talking about in the next two to three years. That would be where I'd leave that question. Thank you.

Yeah, we feel very good about Crisco relative to where we built our model and we built the M&A case. Input costs are up, you know, This is an area where they are higher than some of the other categories, but pricing is also up and also higher than where it is in some of the other categories. We feel very good about where the top line trends are going. Really like the category. Feel really good about just the overall consumer trends for things involved in baking. It's very strategic for us and complements things like the molasses businesses and the clabber girl that we bought back in 2019. So happy with the acquisition. Would have preferred input costs to become favorable to us rather than go up, but it's also a category where us and our competitors, kind of like most of the things across the board, are taking price to reflect the change in input costs.

My last question is, If you assume that the hedges roll off, will your margins be restored to the 18 to 15, 18 to 18.5% margins with all the pricing and actions that you're doing and then the capacity coming online and thinking about obviously the capacity constraints, the vegetable crop coming in. So if you kind of fast forward and say, hey, everything stays still from here, but time just goes by, would you say that that 18% to 18.5% margin is doable?

You'd have to tell me what input costs are going to be a year from now.

If everything was just stable, if everything just stopped, time would stop. The price inflation stopped, your hedges rolled off, and you got the capacity restored from the vegetable crop, and you just kind of went forward from here, would you have restored all the actions and everything?

Again, if prices stay permanently up at the levels where they are, I think you'll see people take list price up more.

Philosophically, our philosophy is that we will price to recover higher costs with the help of some productivity efforts to help us maintain margins and and profitability. That is our philosophy, and that's what we'll drive. And, you know, it's a matter of what time period you want to talk about and, you know, the lag effect of being able to implement those things. But, yes, we are going to price and cost save to make sure that we maintain margins, if that's what you're asking.

Yep, I appreciate it. Thank you guys very much.

Your next question will come from the line of Eric Larson with Seaport Research Group. Please go ahead.

Yeah, thank you, everyone. And I also pass on my welcome to you, Casey, and good luck.

Thank you.

So I know that this whole thing's been beaten already to death, but on the last call, I think one of the very few last comments that Dave Wunder made was that the cost inflation rate was rampant, and it was getting worse. That's kind of how he left it. And have you seen your costs – have you seen the cost side kind of starting to flatten out, or is it still rising? And does that mean that you have to go back to your customers and take another bite at the apple at pricing? I'm curious as to what the second and third derivative is on – and your input cost price increases or cost increases?

I'd say, look, we've taken pricing actions this year, including some recent pricing actions to make sure that we're pricing against the environment that we see for the next six months. I would tell you that we're now in, you know, really analyzing, you know, what do we think costs will look like on certain key commodities next year? And do we need to be prepared for additional pricing and watching that? So it's a moving game. You know, in some categories, you've seen it, it's gone up a lot, but it's starting to stabilize. In other categories, we're still seeing some increases that are being projected into the early part of next year. But we watch this pretty carefully and we will plan. And I think we'll have to make some decisions about where our costs are, input costs, inflation are relative to the pricing we have out there. And do we need additional pricing actions given what we see as justifiable input cost increases? And as Bruce said, that's a It's kind of a moving target. We can't really say what that looks like in 2022 next year, although I will tell you that I don't think inflation is transitory right now. I think we're going to be looking at inflation in some areas for more than just the next six months. We'll be looking at some inflation impact next year. But that's part of what we do to manage the pricing and look at that. And we already have kind of plans in place to say how would we execute if we needed to based on input costs.

Okay. Thanks.

Hopefully that helps a little bit. Yeah.

Yeah. No, it does. Last follow up here, given all the, the, the, the weird, you know, volume movements, COVID related from last year, where obviously the industry's down a lot because of tough comps, et cetera. Can you attribute any of that to price elasticity yet? Is it too early on some of the products? I mean, it, it's probably pretty hard to actually analyze if there's any negative elasticity at this point, but I'd be curious on your thoughts on that.

I think the easy answer, and it's probably not a full answer, but the easy answer is we have taken price and we're relatively happy with where our sales are coming out so far this year. And so jury is still out because we're only six, seven months into the year. But so far, sales trends are holding up to kind of where we talked about when we started to think about 2021, even if you went back to the end of 2020. We are trending at that, you know, mid, maybe a little bit better than mid single digits higher than 2019.

Got it. Fair enough. Thank you.

Honestly, the place we're going to look at elasticity the most is Crisco because that's where the magnitude of the input cost and the magnitude of the pricing is the highest. And that really hasn't rolled into the market yet. So in Q3 and Q4, we'll have a better read on that. But that's, if you ask me personally, which one am I watching pretty close, it's that one. I mean, I'm tracking that almost weekly to see what's happening. And as Bruce said, so far we have not seen We have not seen any real elasticity from the pricing that we've already taken. It's been implemented in kind of late May, June is when we saw the first waves of things coming in.

Thank you, Casey. I appreciate the call. Thanks. Thanks, Eric.

And there are no further questions at this time. I'd like to turn the conference back over to management for any additional or closing remarks.

I think we'll just go ahead and close. But, you know, this is Casey. You know, I want to say thank you for joining today and thank you for all the great questions. And, you know, I look forward to, you know, talking to you more about, you know, what I'm seeing and where do we want to go in the future. And as I said, I think there'll be plenty of opportunities, you know, around the November call and maybe even other times thoughts around that that we can have those conversations. So thank you very much.

Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's call. Thank you for your participation and you may now disconnect your lines.