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Q42024

1/13/2025

speaker
Operator
Operator

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Neogen Corporation second quarter 2025 earnings conference call. At this time, all lines are in a listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question and answer session. If at any time during this call you require immediate assistance, please press the star zero for the operator. This call is being recorded on Friday, January 10, 2025. I would now like to turn the conference over to Bill Welke. Please go ahead.

speaker
Bill Welke
Head of Investor Relations

Thank you for joining us this morning for the discussion of the second quarter of our 2025 fiscal year. I'll briefly cover the non-GAAP and forward-looking language before passing the call over to our CEO, John Aydin, who will be followed by our CFO, Dave Naimura. Before the market opened today, we published our preliminary second quarter results as well as a presentation with both documents available in the investor relations section of our website. We are in the process of finalizing our quarterly financials, and while we do not expect them to, actual results could differ from the preliminary results being discussed today. On our call this morning, we will refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures that we believe are useful in evaluating our performance. Reconciliations of historical non-GAAP financial measures are included in our earnings release and the presentation, slide two of which provides a reminder that our remarks will include forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks that could cause actual results to be materially different from those expressed in or implied by such forward-looking statements. These risks include, among others, matters that we have described in our most recent annual report on Form 10-K, and in other filings we make with the SEC. We disclaim any obligation to update these forward-looking statements. I'll now turn things over to John.

speaker
John Aydin
Chief Executive Officer

Thanks, Bill. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the earnings call for the second quarter of our 2025 fiscal year. The second quarter reflected steady progress as we saw improvement across the business compared to the first quarter, with core revenue growth accelerating in both of our segments sequential margin expansion, and significantly better free cash flow. In our food safety segment, the end market continues to work through unprecedented times stemming from the significant inflation in food prices and resulting lower levels of food production. However, we've continued to see gradual improvement with our proxy for the global food production beginning to approach flat levels on a year-over-year basis. This gradual end market improvement has coincided with what we see as an increasing focus on food safety from both consumers and regulators, given the number of recent food contamination incidents, some of which have had tragic consequences. From a regulatory perspective, we are seeing an increased level of interest in foodborne pathogen mitigation. Following the USDA's declaration over the summer of salmonella as an adulterant in breaded stuffed chicken products, the agency has more recently proposed an expanded framework under which salmonella would be declared an adulterant in additional raw poetry products. It would also include additional monitoring and sampling requirements. The public comment period for this proposed framework ends next week, with any final determination on the path forward likely to be made in late 2025. The agency also announced last month that it will be taking new steps to strengthen its oversight of facilities producing ready-to-eat food products. specifically in response to several recent foodborne illness outbreaks resulting from exposure to Listeria monocytogenes. The USDA issued a series of notices and directives that provide a more robust approach to Listeria mitigation and include additional data collection and training, as well as enhanced testing by the agency for Listeria species and guidelines for an effective food safety assessment methodology. From a consumer perspective, The fact that food content more broadly was a prominent topic in the recent U.S. presidential election and seemed to resonate with many people bodes well for our market. We fully expect consumers to continue to demand not only the obvious and safe food, but also increasing disclosure on the content of food and beverage products. With the broadest product portfolio in the industry, Neogen is, of course, able to offer solutions to food producers that help to address all of these concerns. Last month, we further expanded our product portfolio in PetriFilm with the addition of Bacillus Sirius Count Plate, which is the first new PetriFilm plate launched in the last seven years, underscoring our commitment to build on this product platform as a part of Neogen. This ready-to-use plate expands our PetriFilm offering to include another persistent food safety threat and eliminates the prep work associated with traditional agar methods. while delivering easy-to-interpret, high-confidence results in as little as 20 hours. We continued to leverage our product portfolio and the increasing focus on food safety to drive growth despite the temporary headwinds from sample collection production and made further progress in the quarter, winning back market share we seeded from shipping delays late last fiscal year. In our animal safety segment, core revenue growth improved 11% from the first quarter. On our last earnings call, We made the observation that we did not believe the lower first quarter revenue in animal safety was the result of a broader destocking trend, and we were pleased to see the return to growth in the second quarter. Despite inventory and the distribution channel being at low levels, growth in the sales of our product out of the channel remained positive. It's difficult to make a call on when the market will turn, but we continue to believe we're operating around cyclical lows and are encouraged by the growth we saw in the quarter. In our genomics business globally, second quarter coral growth was down mid-single digits on a year-over-year basis. We have round-tripped the impact of the strategic shift towards larger production animals and did see growth in our differentiated cattle business in the quarter. This growth was offset by ongoing weakness in the companion animal side of the business, driven by a lower number of pet adoptions and continued inflationary pressure on consumers, as well as a reduced level of outsourced testing. With respect to the integration, we have discrete initiatives underway to drive improvements in the efficiency of our fully integrated shipping and distribution operations, which we will expect to begin to show a benefit in the third quarter. Regarding the relocated sample collection production, the process of ramping up is continuing. All of the product lines are operational, and we believe we're on track to reach prior production levels by the end of the third quarter. Our new Petri film facility continues to progress well. with the first two major shipments of production equipment having already arrived in Lansing, where the extensive process of unpacking, assembling, and rigging for installation has already begun. We are on track for our goal of beginning initial test production in the new facility in the fall of 2025. While our primary focus has shifted to winning in the market, we have also undertaken actions to accelerate the building of a more profitable, focused neogen, During the second quarter, we initiated restructuring actions focused mainly on right-sizing our genomics business to drive a higher level of profitability with a more streamlined operations focused on our differentiated large animal offering. We expect additional restructuring activities in the third quarter as we continue to work on opportunities to protect margins and streamline different parts of our business, including further actions planned in genomics. Over the last several quarters, we've mentioned that portfolio review has been a priority and that there has been a significant amount of work being done to support that. The internal portion of that work is now mostly behind us, and we have multiple projects underway to explore strategic alternatives for a meaningful portion of our animal safety segment. We have not finalized any portfolio moves, but we currently have engagement with other parties that will review opportunities on the basis of creating value for shareholders by improving profitability and further focusing the company on the attractive food safety market. With the first half of the year now behind us, we are updating our full-year outlook. Revenue in the first half was in line with the expectations we communicated, including progress on share recovery. The largest portion of the change in guidance is due to additional foreign exchange headwinds and lower genomics revenue from our restructuring actions. as well as the longer ramp-up period we're working through for sample collection production. The change in adjusted EBITDA guidance primarily reflects the change in the anticipated revenue, as well as a first half margin that was a little lower due mainly to higher freight and distribution costs and some elevated inventory impairments. We have projects underway specifically to address freight and distribution, from which we expect to see a benefit in the second half, in addition to the restructuring actions taken. These initiatives, in combination with higher second half revenue, are expected to support higher margins and build on the progress we made in the second quarter. Now I'll turn the call over to Dave for some more insights into our results for the quarter and our outlook.

Disclaimer

This conference call transcript was computer generated and almost certianly contains errors. This transcript is provided for information purposes only.EarningsCall, LLC makes no representation about the accuracy of the aforementioned transcript, and you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the information provided by the transcript.

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