Performance Food Group Company

Please stand by, your program is about to begin. If you need assistance on today's conference, please press star zero. Good day and welcome to PFG's fiscal year Q2 2022 earnings conference call. If you would like to ask a question at the conclusion of the prepared remarks, please press the star key followed by the number one on your telephone keypad at any time. I would now like to turn the call over to Bill Marshall, Vice President, Investor Relations for PFG. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, and good morning. We're here with George Holm, PFG's CEO, and Jim Hope, PFG's CFO. We issued a press release regarding our 2022 fiscal second quarter and six-month results this morning, which can be found in the investor relations section of our website at pfgc.com. During our call today, unless otherwise stated, we are comparing results to the same period in our fiscal 2021 fiscal second quarter. Additionally, occasionally during our call today, as noted, we are comparing results to the same period in our 2020 fiscal second quarter. The results discussed on this call will include GAAP and non-GAAP results adjusted for certain items. The reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to the corresponding GAAP measures can be found at the back of the earnings release. Our remarks on this call and in the earnings release contain forward-looking statements and projections of future results. Please review the cautionary forward-looking statement section in today's earnings release and our FCC filings for various factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially from our forward-looking statements and projections. Now I'd like to turn the call over to George.

Thanks, Bill. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our call today. I'm pleased to be able to share PFG's outstanding second quarter results and discuss our strategic goals and objectives. We had another active quarter, which included the announcement of a new management structure, continued integration of Coremark, and a food service acquisition in the southeastern U.S., I will address each of these items in turn and provide additional color on the direction of our company and where we are headed. Last quarter, we discussed our vision to transform PFG beyond a traditional food service distributor into a leader across a variety of channels and product offerings. During the past few months, we have aligned our operating management and report structures with this vision. We believe this new structure will increase our speed and agility capturing new lines of business, and our cross-selling capabilities. We have already seen the cross-selling between food service and convenience bear fruit, which I will discuss in more detail shortly. As you saw in this morning's earnings release, we have also realigned our reporting segments to reflect our strategy and management structure. We will now report three segments, food service, convenience, and VISTAR. The convenience segment includes all the business that came with EB Brown and Cormark acquisitions. The Vistar segment will reflect the legacy Vistar channels, including theater, vending, office coffee, retail value stores, and corrections. There were no changes to our food service segment. This new reporting structure not only aligns our organization with our strategic vision, but also gives our investors additional financial information. and a deeper look into business trends across different units. One of these units is our combined convenience store distribution operations. This includes the Cormark organization, which we acquired in September of last year, and the E.B. Brown business, which we acquired almost three years ago. Over the past five months, these two entities have worked quickly to come together as a united front in our efforts to build upon their combined strengths in the convenience store space. As we discussed in our last earnings call, we're off to a fast start with quick business wins across traditional convenience business as well as food service into convenience. Today, I can announce that we are in discussions with several additional customers to bring new business in this space. When we announced the core market acquisition, we had very high expectations for the value we would create by bringing that business to PFG. I am pleased to say our expectations are being realized and the future looks very bright. This could not be possible without the dedication and hard work of so many talented associates and a strong management team, including those who are new to the organization from Coremark, as well as our EB colleagues. The two teams have come together to form a cohesive unit, and as we had expected, have proven to be an excellent cultural fit. The integration has gone smoothly, and we're ahead of schedule in several areas, including finance, procurement, HR, and IT. The story is very similar to our success with Reinhart, which you are familiar with. On many occasions, you have heard me speak about our excitement with Reinhart. I'm pleased to say that our enthusiasm remains high. Last quarter, we highlighted the pace of independent growth that Reinhart has experienced. which has continued to outpace the strong results from our legacy performance food service business. Today, I would like to highlight another encouraging aspect of the success with Reinhardt. Our success in food service is driven by many initiatives. However, one of the most important elements of the strategy is growth of our PFG performance brands within the independent segment. These high-quality brands are important for our customers as they provide a differentiated offering at a reasonable price. It's also important for PFG as it separates us from the competition and comes at a higher margin per case than the national brands. Our performance brands today represent a significant portion of all cases sold to independent restaurants. And while we are seeing success across the company, this is another area where Reinhart is growing faster than the legacy business. It is rewarding to see our strategy play out and inspires us to continue along the growth path. We also added to our food service business with the acquisition of Merchants Food Service at the end of the quarter. Merchants adds to our food service scale and reach, filling in space in the southeastern United States. We are not providing financial details of the transaction, but historically Merchants has operated at an EBITDA margin that would be accretive. We are excited to welcome the Merchants Associates to the PFG family and look forward to many years of success. Altogether, our food service business is executing at a very high level. Our performance in the independent channel continues to drive our overall segment results. In fact, our market share gains in the independent channel accelerated sequentially from the first quarter to the second quarter compared to two years ago. This included strengthening the pizza, Italian, Hispanic, and seafood concepts. We are very pleased to see our momentum in food service continue, particularly in independent restaurants. Finally, let me comment on our Vistar business before turning it over to Jim, who will provide color on our results and financial position. As you know, Vistar's channels were some of the hardest-hit areas over the past two years, including significant impact to theater and office costs. I cannot speak highly enough about the effort this organization has put into achieving these results. There are many bright spots at Distar, including the areas of retail, corrections, and travel, all of which experienced second quarter 2022 net sales above 2020 levels. We are also very encouraged by the recent trends in the movie theater channel. While that business is still below levels of two years ago, it experienced significant improvement sequentially, along with a strong box office showing late in the calendar year. While January and February may not see the same level of box office product, we expect the strength to resume in the spring and early summer seasons. In summary, we have remained active in the pursuit of building upon our strength as a food and food service distribution leader. Our underlying path to success is simple. It starts with our customers and a relentless focus on helping them succeed. This has resulted in significant sales growth, particularly within high-margin channels and product categories. We seek to keep our organization lean and use operating efficiencies to grow EBITDA faster than sales and expand our margins. We then look to reinvest these profits back into the business to produce a sustained cycle of organic growth and for opportunistic M&A, We intend to tightly manage our working capital to generate long-term free cash flow with the goal of generating high shareholder returns. I'll now turn it over to Jim for an update on our fiscal second quarter and financial position.

Thank you, George, and good morning, everyone. As George mentioned, we are very pleased with how our business has performed. Our associates have stepped up to the challenges, and they continue to deliver for PFG and our customers. Our organization has thrived during the last two years, and we've taken advantage of multiple opportunities. We have reached the point where we have turned our attention to producing sizable sales and profit growth. Our financial position supports the investments we believe will produce these strong results. Let me provide an overview of how we stand financially before a quick review of our second quarter results. I will then finish with our guidance for the third quarter and full year and the assumptions and expectations within those forecasts. We ended the quarter with $2.3 billion of total liquidity. Our liquidity position reflects the acquisition of merchants, which we financed with our ABL and closed on December 31st. While there's no financial results for merchants to report on our income statement, The balance sheet and cash flow statement fully reflects the addition of that business in the final days of the fiscal quarter. Turning to cash flow, in the first six months of fiscal 2022, we generated approximately $154 million of operating cash flow. The team continues to do a fantastic job managing our working capital position overall. And the uptick in inventory in the quarter was a planned use of cash and the result of building consumer packaged goods inventory ahead of anticipated price increases. I'll talk more about the CPG procurement activity and the impact on our financial results in a moment. PFT invested $68.5 million of capital expenditures over the first six months of the year. resulting in positive free cash flow of $85.3 million. And with that, let's quickly review some highlights from our fiscal second quarter business performance. As George mentioned earlier, we have adjusted our reporting structure to align with management changes made in December. And going forward, we will report these three segments, food service, convenience, and VISTAR. Vistar represents the non-convenience channels within the prior Vistar segment, while our new segment convenience includes the EB Brown and Cormark operations. At an enterprise level, net sales increased 87.6% in the quarter to $12.8 billion, driven by a full quarter of Cormark's sales results in addition to inflation-driven pricing and a continued recovery in the business environment. Total case volume increased approximately 40% in the second quarter and was up 15.5%, excluding the contribution from Cormark. As a reminder, the high selling price of tobacco products, in addition to high rates of inflation, impact the difference between case volume increases and our top line growth. Independent cases increased 21% in the fiscal second quarter as we continue to see solid momentum in our independent business. Total PFG gross profit increased 57.7% compared to the prior year quarter, including the addition of the Cormark business and the independent case growth, which I just mentioned. Cormark contributed $245.2 million to gross profit. Food cost inflation continued to move higher in the quarter. Our weighted food cost inflation was about 12.5%, up sequentially as we continued to experience double-digit increases in our food service commodities, including seafood, meat, poultry, eggs, and groceries. The rate of inflation was sequentially higher in the second quarter compared to the first quarter across each business segment. However, VISTAR and convenience inflation remains below that seen in the more commodity-heavy food service segment. With that said, we have continued to successfully pass along these increases. Gross profit per case was up over 66 cents in the second quarter compared to the prior year period, including the acquisition of Cormark. which contributed approximately 12 cents per case. We have continued to make progress in the labor front in our efforts to reduce temporary and contract workers. As we disclosed in the press release this morning, our temporary contract labor costs increased $34 million compared to the prior year period, an $18 million improvement from the first quarter increase. The $34 million includes both direct contract labor costs and associated travel costs. As we discussed last quarter, we will not see the full benefit of those cost reductions immediately, as a reduction in temporary workers is largely replaced by full-time associates. However, over time, we should realize savings from these initiatives as full-time worker productivity improves. We remain optimistic that the labor situation is headed in the right direction, and we expect to be in a much better position by the end of the fiscal year. In the second quarter, PFT had reported net income of $8.4 million. Adjusted EBITDA increased 52.6% to $241.1 million. Diluted earnings per share was $0.05 in the second quarter, while adjusted diluted earnings per share was $0.57, an increase of 62.9% year over year. Let's close with our outlook for the remainder of fiscal 2022. As we have discussed, we had a very strong second quarter with net sales coming in at the high end of our expectations and adjusted even out better than anticipated. The better-than-forecast adjusted EBITDA was a result of strong underlying business fundamentals, a slightly better-than-expected labor market, and procurement gains in several consumer packaged goods categories. We are increasing our full-year outlook to incorporate the better business trends. We expect third-quarter net sales to be in a range of $12.9 to $13.1 billion. Adjusted EBITDA for the third quarter is anticipated to be within a $220 to $230 million range. For the full year 2022, we look for total net sales to be in a $50 to $51 billion range. A $500 million increase from our prior outlook. For adjusted EBITDA, we anticipate a $970 to $990 million range. an increase of $30 million on both the bottom and the top end compared to our prior guidance. Our guidance assumes a slow but steady improvement in the labor market and efficiency gains from full-time workers to accelerate in the fourth quarter of the fiscal year. We have also included a small benefit for the six months we will own merchants in the fiscal year. In summary, we are extremely pleased with the first half of our fiscal year. We posted a strong quarter, which has fueled optimism for the back half of the year. This has reflected in the increase to our full-year guidance ranges, both on the top line as well as profit. Our company is positioned to build upon our momentum, driven by our constant focus on our existing customer base while adding high-profit new accounts across channels. The CoreMark integration has proceeded very well, both culturally and from a business perspective. We expect these initiatives to produce sales growth ahead of the industry average and long-term margin expansion. Our balance sheet is strong, which we believe gives our company the flexibility to invest in value-creating projects to drive organic growth. Associates across our organization have been working tirelessly to improve business results, and at the same time, they're making PFG a fantastic place to work through their dedication to each other and those we serve. We appreciate your interest in Performance Food Group, and with that, we'd be happy to take your questions.

At this time, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star 1 now on your telephone keypad. To withdraw yourself from the queue, you may press the pound key. Once again, that is star 1 to ask a question. We'll take a question from Mark Cardin of UBS.

Good morning. Thanks a lot for taking my questions. So overall, it sounds like your efforts to grow your workforce are progressing quite nicely. When you think about your more permanent workforce, are you expecting structural wage pressures to be any steeper than what you may have expected three months ago, or are you starting to see some stabilization there?

Yeah, this is Jim. No, I don't expect them to be any steeper than we saw three months ago. We've done a whole lot of work, and I'd say appropriate work, to get wages right market by market and make sure that we've done what we need to do to be able to recruit the right people. I really think now it's about given the new folks that we've brought into our workforce time to learn the process, be trained, and start to see some good solid productivity improvements. So we feel good about where we're headed. We've got good work to do, and I think those things will all pay off.

Great. And then as a follow-up, how impactful has Omicron been to your business, and how does it compare to what you saw with Delta? And then related to that, how has it impacted your staffing both in 2Q and 3Q to date?

Yeah, I would say that through the Delta period of time, it probably had maybe a little less impact on labor and maybe a little bit less impact as well on the marketplace. But the Omicron was so quick. And what we saw was a good deal of absenteeism because of sickness, But fortunately, they were getting back faster also than before. And that helped to alleviate it. Also, it helped that it came in January, which is a lower volume time of year anyway.

Great. Thanks so much, guys.

We'll take our next question from Alex Slagle of Jefferies.

Thanks. Good morning. Great to see things coming together so well and weathering the storm. I was curious if you could provide some more color on how the food service sales within the convenience channel have trended recently more broadly and for you directly as we've kind of progressed through this Omicron and emerged back to normalcy in some parts.

Well, we've seen a good surge in our food service business and the convenience just really led by a couple of accounts. We still have a good bit of work to do. I did hear from Scott McPherson that runs our convenience area that actually January was the highest increase in non-tobacco sales for Cormark that he can remember. And he's been there close to 30 years. So it's going well. We just have a lot of work to do to get it where we need to go.

Okay. And with the core market, I mean, anything surprising you about the integration and the business as you've had some more time to see them gel together with legacy businesses and see it in action? I know your initial thoughts were fairly positive, but curious if – learned anything new or got any more color on that?

Well, culturally, they're doing really well, the two companies that have come together with, you know, very few issues. And then, unlike with Reinhart, where there were probably more differences, certainly more product differences, we've been able to get the integration around HR, finance, procurement faster than we were able to do that with Reinhart, where we you know, really needed to take a little bit more care. So, you know, we're very pleased, and we're also very pleased just with the staffing and the management at Cormark.

Got it. And follow up, again, I don't know whether on the productivity commentary that you provided earlier, Ian, I know that's Definitely a pressure. I don't know if you have anything on the magnitude of that impact, how we should think about that as we're building out our models.

I think it would probably be as anyone would expect when you bring a large number of new people into the supply chain. We follow a lot of process. There's good discipline. We want everybody to work safe and be productive. And I think it's learning the process is what I'm talking about that takes some time. We are right on track. I would say that I'm really pleased with how our supply chain leadership all the way down to supervisors on the dock and our truck drivers are doing. I think the magnitude comment would be more about time, that we're on track, and that was all contemplated in the guidance we provided.

Got it. Thank you very much.

We'll take our next question from Edward Kelly of Wells Fargo.

Hi. Morning, George, Jim, Bill, everybody. Gretchen, a really solid quarter here. I wanted to ask you first just a follow-up on the labor cost side. Labor inflation generally is something that I think we've heard a lot of concern about from the investor base. We heard from one of your big competitors yesterday that, you know, they just don't believe underlying labor inflation is going to be that bad. But that doesn't really seem to jive with sort of like what you hear about warehouse worker pay, driver pay, et cetera. So my question for you is, you know, what are you seeing if we sort of like, you know, forget about the temporary costs, but underneath of that, like what are you seeing from a wage inflation standpoint um in your workforce how does that compare to you know what it has been historically and where do you see that going like is this a headwind that we should be concerned about yeah um thanks for the question we have said all along that some of this would be structural and some of the increase would be transitory we've never thought it would all eventually go away

And clearly that's going to be the case. We think it's manageable. We think we've found the right balance in how we pay our folks in our supply chain. You know, I think the best way to quantify for you is how we feel about it has been specifically quantified in our guidance, and that's what informed our guidance. I'm not at a spot where I'd put out a number right now, but... I think we've seen most of it, and we've absorbed it, but at the end of the day, we're going to keep up with where we need to be to make sure we're able to recruit, hire, and retain good, solid folks to work for PFG, and we're doing that right now.

Okay. And then I wanted to ask you about fill rates and where you stand currently with fill rates, particularly as we look to getting into what I think we all hope will be a very strong sort of spring, summer period. Do you think the industry will remain challenged during this period, and do you think that you're in a position where you can continue to accelerate share gain during this period if the opportunity arises?

Yeah, this is George. Of course, we always think we can continue to increase our share. We're seeing in the food service part of our business the inbound fill rates continue to get better And it's been great to see we're doing particularly well with center of the plate. And, you know, we're well into the 90% for inbound fill rates. When you get to our convenience business and our Vistar business and more with, you know, CPG companies, I guess I would say, we're not seeing much in the way of improvement yet. All we can give for guidance with that is what we're being told. And what we're being told is that it will gradually get better, but it's going to be around for a while, the shortages.

I guess I was really kind of asking George about your, you know, your outbound rates and, you know, where you stand from a, yeah, like a labor perspective. And if we're going to have a good, you know, strong spring, summer, are you ready? Are you more ready than others? I guess that's really where I was kind of asking.

Okay. Yeah. As far as our outbound fill rates, you know, they continue to improve. A little hard to track in our convenience and this to our business because we customers will continue to order the same items that aren't available. So it's hard to tell, but our food service is definitely improving. And as far as from a labor standpoint to be ready, we continue to hire, we continue to train, we continue to see the turnover reduce. I guess more the churn reduced than the turnover. We don't really have an issue with with longer-term employees. It was more around churn. And the biggest thing that we see is continued reduction in our dependency on temporary workers. That's been tough. You know, you don't get the same commitment and quality from a temporary employee that you get from a full-time person. Great. Thanks, guys. Thanks, Sid.

We'll take our next question from Jeffrey Bernstein of Barclays.

Jeffrey Bernstein Great. Thank you very much. Two questions. One, I'm just wondering if you could talk a little bit about market share gains, maybe your perspective on performance food versus the industry, stripping out the obvious M&A. But I think you mentioned independence, maybe market share accelerated. I'm just wondering, is that more from Are they new accounts or is it further penetrating existing accounts? Are there any big differential between change versus independence? How do you think about your market share?

Yeah, as far as share, you know, we really only have one reporting that we get. And, you know, that certainly has all the broad liners in it, not much in the specialty area. But we've done what we consider to be a great job of continuing to gain share. and over months where we had gained a good bit of share last year. Our independent has really, within food service, has driven all of our growth. We actually have been running behind the previous year in our chain business. We have a very large funnel in our chain business, but as we're determining kind of what our costs are going to be moving forward, we've been cautious. there. Sequentially, from fiscal Q1 to fiscal Q2, our growth got better for independent, and we're actually in a position now where all of our performance food service distribution centers are running above two years ago in independent case sales, and much above in dollar sales because of the inflation that we're dealing with.

Understood. That's encouraging. My other question is just, George, now that you do have three distinct operating segments, I guess investors have to digest that, but how do you think about the long-term opportunity set for each, maybe the growth for each relative to kind of the overall performance food group or which segments have the greatest opportunity, whether it's M&A or just more organic?

Well, our greatest opportunity sits in our largest area, and that's the performance food service, particularly with independent. Like I said, we've got some things to figure out with our chain business. But our independent continues to do well, and we don't see anything that would cause that to slow down. Vistar has two channels in particular that have not come back yet, and that's theater and office coffee. And I would call our value stores somewhat challenged as well from a cost-to-serve standpoint. So great future there. I would say our three retail automated facilities where we do a good bit of retail and we do a good bit of Internet fulfillment are doing just fantastic. I mean, the improvement has been just great to watch. So I feel great about the future with Vistar. And convenience, we talk a lot about convenience food service, and I feel that we're off to a great start and we're going to do well there. But the biggest opportunity is still the convenience business. I mean, I think we're positioned well for it where, you know, it's got good synergies from a procurement standpoint with Fistar, and we have a robust funnel there as well. And we have new business that's coming on board in this quarter and in our fiscal fourth quarter that will be very helpful to the core business of Quark.

Understood. Thank you very much.

Thanks.

We'll take our next question from John Heinbacher of Guggenheim.

Hey, George, I wanted to start by drilling into the Cormark pipeline that you referenced. Is the bulk of that large multi-year contract business, as opposed to the independents, can you dimensionalize the size of that? Could that add 5% or 10% to the locations that Cormark serves? And then if it is the large piece, the large multi-year contract accounts, How much roughly would you be giving away in margin, right? Was that margin pretty close, right, because the drop size is pretty close to an independent?

Well, yeah, what I would say is that the independent is where we're growing the fastest and by a significant amount, and that's within both, within EB and Cormark. And EB has been doing that for a couple years, and it's, accelerating right now within Cormark. I give our people a great deal of credit with that. That is our focus. Then the new business that we have in Cormark that's more sizable, one is a little bit under a quarter of a billion a year, a traditional mix, maybe a little heavy tobacco. And the other one is in excess of 100 million a year and has potential beyond that, So, you know, it's about a $17 billion business, so it takes a lot to move the needle. But those two will help us move the needle, but the biggest thing is that we continue to grow that independent.

And then secondly, one of the comments I think you made recently or last quarter was that you were not as aggressively looking for new business on the food service side Because you were concerned about service levels, right? You didn't want to disappoint. Have we gotten past that where you've ratcheted up the aggressive pursuit of new accounts and food service?

Definitely on the independent front. Like I said, when it comes to the chain, we've got a big pipeline. I would suspect everybody in the industry has got a big pipeline as we've all disappointed customers. But the independent, we're gonna be as aggressive as ever.

Okay, thank you.

Thanks, John.

We'll take our next question from Lauren Silverman of Credit Suisse.

Thank you guys very much. So just first on pricing power, can you talk about your confidence in pricing power and being able to push through the inflation and remind us what you're generally comfortable pushing through in a normalized environment and should we see a more challenging consumer backdrop? What are your expectations and your ability to push price? And then, sorry, related, just on a prior question follow-up, have you been able to price to cover underlying wage rate increases?

Well, we've, with this, what I would call excessive inflation, we've done a great job of passing that on in the independent area. And Surprisingly, so we're not comfortable with this type of inflation and we don't like to see that for our customers. You know, we just don't. It's a lot for them to deal with and we continue to encourage them to raise their menu prices and most are doing that. They're also pretty shrewd as to how they price and specials they run and what items to use. So that part of our business has gone well. When you get to the chain business, A lot of it's fee-based. We certainly have seen, you know, secret, you know, that labor's high. As Jim mentioned, some of it's transitory, but some of it is not. So we've had parts of our business there where we've been able to get that through, even when we were under a contract, and we've had some that have been extremely resistant. And, you know, that's just our job to manage our way through that. But, you know, that story hasn't ended yet. It's one of the things that makes me feel real good about where we're situated today because that part of our business, that national chain business, is tough. And distribution centers where that's all we do, we are really having a tough go, and we've been able to overcome that as a company And I do feel that labor is going to get back to a more normal state, you know, once we get through this last variant. And, you know, I have high hopes that we'll be able to reach agreement with our customers as to what's fair.

Great. Thank you for that. And then you called out an increase in food service gross profit per case driven by favorable mix shift, independence, and private label. Can you talk about where your mix is with the performance brand and how you think about the biggest opportunities to increase that going forward? Is it awareness, expanding the portfolio of options, or is it primarily just growing independent?

Within our independent, we've had several weeks where we've gone over 50% our brand. You know, it's something we always wanted to get to. And quite frankly, I will admit, I didn't think we'd get there by now. And then a bright spot with it is Reinhart, where we adopted many of their brands. And we've kind of learned, gone through this process, where those brands fit and where we need to get in legacy performance brands to get us where we need to be, maybe from a quality standpoint or from a pricing standpoint. And, you know, we've left that for our Reinhardt people in the field to make those decisions with, you know, a lot of direction from us, and I guess I would say a lot of coaxing. But they're very close to 50% their brand, and between their brand and our brand, okay, which I guess I should say both are brands now. That's one of the encouraging things with merchants is we bring them on board because they do use the same brand portfolio that Reinhardt has. They were a member of the same procurement group. And we've already been through this. And I think that we'll be effective quicker with them than we were with Reinhart, albeit being much smaller. But we are in a position today where Reinhart is growing their independent business faster than performance and doing extremely well against two years ago. And their brands... I just continue to see us grow the combination of those two brand portfolios.

Great. And just the final question on merchants and just your broader appetite for growth for food service acquisitions in 22 as you think forward, whether you're seeing increased activity and interest in M&A.

Well, you know, we always say the same thing, that we're opportunistic. We're pretty serious about paying down debt right now. We're like any company. We've got certain ones that are prized, right? And if one of those became available, we wouldn't hesitate. But right now, we're pretty focused on paying down debt.

Great. Thank you, guys.

Thanks. We'll take our next question from Jake Bartlett of Truist Securities.

Great. Thanks for taking the question. You know, my question is just back on Omicron. You know, in restaurants, most have talked about an impact of deceleration in December into January. So I'm wondering about, you know, in your case growth and specifically maybe independence, Did you see the same sort of thing? Was there, you know, a slowdown, you know, in December into January? Perhaps you're not seeing as much just with shared gains, but any commentary on just the cadence and the impact on the top line from Omicron?

Yeah, you know, we're trying to figure that out, actually. You know, we certainly saw it in chains even in December, which we didn't see it in independent markets. we were pleased with the January we had. It was certainly a little bit softer and independent and a good bit softer in the chain business. We don't know how much was weather, how much was Omicron. It certainly gave us a chance to give a better level of service. And I guess I would say get caught up and and let our people work a little bit less. But it wasn't a big difference. We were really pleased with with our results, both top and bottom line in the month of January.

great that's really helpful and then and then also just in terms of the costs um you've broken out the the impact of the temporary workers um but i'm wondering what what else what other costs might be temporary in the business right now that that you'll eventually lack um that would include your sign-on and retention bonuses maybe overtime costs recruiting costs what what else is in the in the cost structure right now that maybe might go away

Yeah, I'll give you one that's worthy of thought, and we mentioned it a little bit earlier, but I think you made a very good list there. The one to add would be productivity, that as time goes by and the training kicks in, we'll see improvements in productivity. I can't give you a number. I can't quantify it, but I can tell you it will be helpful, and it's probably the most important one to add to your list.

Great, great. Thank you. And last question. In terms of the impact of your processes, your sales systems, obviously you've seen the impact on Reinhart and the acceleration of independent sales growth there. I'm wondering about the opportunity at Cormac. What kind of a change in the sales growth just by – You know, being under your ownership and your processes, do you think, you know, what can we expect? Should we expect to have a similar, you know, acceleration of growth from that business versus what we saw, you know, when it was, you know, pre-acquisition? I'm just wondering the opportunity there.

Well, you know, they're improving now, and I would contend that would have happened whether we merged with them or didn't. I think that we... have a culture where we're really focused on the independent operator in our businesses in general. And I hope that that culture will move into them as well, and I'm quite sure it will. We're seeing some real initial success in independent, but I do believe that would have happened anyway. Then when you get to the food service part of it, which sometimes gets lost in the huge volumes that they generate, you know, primarily because of tobacco sales, we'll have the two sales forces working together closely without losing sight of the fact that their core business in both of them are the most important. But I think that that from a Culture standpoint will help us, and I see that already. A big part of food service when you get to convenience is pizza and chicken. And Hispanic is pretty big. And that's our strengths as a company. That's what we do the best in in food service. So I think that, I would say I don't see any reason that Cormark wouldn't be able to grow faster than they've grown in the past. They didn't have the tools in food service that they're able to get today. And the great part of that is they recognize that. They recognize that in our early conversations. They saw it as a real positive for the companies to be together. So it's not like us saying, you know, we're going to show you how to do this. They know what they're doing. It's just they didn't have those capabilities and the inbound capabilities, and they didn't have the brand. They didn't have the volume in food service, really, to have a brand of their own. So it's exciting. I mean, it's a great time for Cormark and for our organization with them.

Great. I appreciate it.

We'll take our next question from Nicole Miller of Piper Sandler.

Thank you. Good morning. I wanted to ask about sales channels, like by percentage. And the three reporting segments, we can obviously calculate at that level. But if you think about pre-pandemic and pre some of these acquisitions you've been discussing today, for example, within 66% food service, it used to be, I think, something like, you know, 30, 40% national chain and healthcare, hospitality, education, 12%. You know, those metrics, right, the restaurants within food service, national chain independent, and the other business lines, now that they're different and the recovery hasn't been the same in each channel, can you give us a little bit of an outline of where those stand today?

Not much different than in the past other than the addition of Cormark. You know, the independent within food service continues to be a bigger part of our business, but within the independent, you know, we're still biggest in pizza and Italian, and actually, you know, we're lapping some pretty big numbers from last year in pizza, and we're still running double-digit growth, so extremely pleased there. And then, you know, when it comes to, oh, contract feeding and lodging and and healthcare. That's not really what we do. I mean, we do some of it. And then we've always been heavy chain as a company, and we like the chain restaurant business. And you'll see a bigger emphasis on that again as we have a real feel for where our costs are going to be going forward. But I still see us growing faster in independent than we So I hope that answers your question, or I guess as best as we can.

Yeah, I think just the fact that it's relatively unchanged, because where I'm going is trying to understand gross profit margin. And the idea, I think, you know, if we hear you, is that you've acquired a lot of gross profit dollars, like massive dollar growth. gross profit percentage is down for a number of reasons some of the businesses are different but again a lot of dollars in areas that aren't competitive for you so you can have all of the share and you've acquired growth but how do you think ultimately about reconciling those gross profit dollar and growth opportunities you brought in against gross profit margin percentage like how much is there up for grabs to have that gross profit margin look more like it used to historically?

Well, you know, we look at things per case. So I've got to address this. I want to answer it in the way in which you asked it. You know, we probably, as a management team, don't spend five minutes a week on tobacco, but that's the difference. And, you know, you have a product that's, you know, less than 15% of the cube and, you know, close to 80% of the sales inconvenience. Now that's going to change over time. But what I will say is that our EBITDA margins, we've always grown them unless M&A took us into an area that was much lower. And our growth in that real low margin category is, is only going to come with new accounts. There's not going to be any organic growth at all. And I guess our commitment would be that excluding that, I mean, we're going to continue to grow our EBITDA margins, and it's a business that we have to have to be in the businesses we're in. But we look at what percentage of the gross profit dollars make it to the bottom line, and we continue to improve.

That's fair. Thank you. And then just the last one. It's really helpful to hear about labor, right? And you're talking about moving in the right direction. Overtime's down. It sounds like people are coming back, you know, to work permanently, I guess, right, in the field. Can you talk about turnover in terms of drivers and selectors and how that's been trending?

Yeah, I think the short answer to that, the clear answer is turnover's improving. It's been a challenge. It's still a challenge. It's less of a challenge, and we expect it to improve across the next six months. I would say that backing up from that question a little bit broader, if you think about the factors that drove just a really great quarter for PFG, clearly the independent growth we've talked a lot about drove a super strong quarter for us, and we expect that to continue. It's always been important to us, and it will continue to be important. Vistar's continued recovery has been very helpful, and the progress they're making has really helped drive a great quarter in margin improvement and improvements in labor were another big area that we talked about, and they'll continue to improve across the next six months. And as part of the improvements in labor is an improvement in turnover. All of those things are what contributed to a powerful earnings quarter for PFG and a trend.

Thank you.

We'll take our next question from Kelly Bonia of BMO Capital.

Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking our questions. So many questions. I guess maybe starting with just technology and digital, some pretty big investments by some peers in this space. And I guess I always think of PF, particularly food services, as more of a people space. driven organization, but maybe can you just help us understand where you think you are in terms of technology and digital and Salesforce tools on that front? And if you think you need to make any investments there, I mean, the results clearly speak for themselves, but just thinking over the next several years.

Well, we continue to make investments and we want to make sure that our people have all the tools that they need to address their customer needs. I do feel that over time the digital will be used by more and more customers, so we're making sure that we have what we need. And, you know, we make those investments. We always talk about the people first. We always speak that way to them, too, that, you know, we're going to give them the tools that they need. But the most important thing is that they're making the calls and that they're committed and they love their customer, and that's kind of what we preach. But don't confuse that with us not having the technology that we need. We certainly do.

No, that's helpful. And I guess just as it relates to CORE, some questions and concerns from some investors, I guess, just in light of – where C-stores could be in light of the longer-term transition to electric vehicles. And just curious how you thought about that as you evaluated Cormark and as you think about Cormark much longer term.

Well, needless to say, we did a great deal of work, particularly our strategy person who actually came out of Altria. But we did a lot of work around that before doing the acquisition. And it just came back that, I mean, it could have an impact, but if it did, it would be nominal, that convenience stores are part of people's lives, and it's habitual, and it's not necessarily fuel that's driving that.

That's helpful. And then last one, I think, did you mention something about value stores being somewhat challenged from a cost-to-serve standpoint? Can you clarify what you meant by that?

Well, it's just the part of our Vistar business where the labor's had a larger impact. They're smaller deliveries. And, you know, we're just addressing that with our customer base, and it's going well.

Okay, thank you.

And once again, to ask a question, please press star 1 now on your telephone keypad, star 1. We'll take a question from Peter Saleh of BTIG.

Great. Thank you and congrats on a great quarter. I just want to ask, I mean, last quarter, you guys had mentioned that the vast majority, if not all of your growth was coming from existing customers versus new customers. I think you touched on this earlier. But could you just give us an update and elaborate a little bit more? Is that trend continuing? Or have you seen a little bit of a shift there and you're getting just more growth from new customers?

Yeah, I will do that. Our growth within our customers has continued to be really strong. And the uptick from first quarter to second quarter was almost all driven by new customers, the difference between the two. But we still have just really done a much better job penetrating the accounts. And also, I think that with less accounts out there, those that are open are doing more business. So it's a combination of the two. But going out and pursuing new businesses is something we're going to be very aggressive with.

Thank you. Very helpful. And just on coming back to inflation, it looks like food inflation, commodity inflation was about 140 basis points um higher this quarter versus last quarter um we would have expected that to kind of you know maybe peak and start to come down but what are your expectations here on food costs as we go through the balance of this year do you feel like we've peaked or or are we just going to continue to see these elevated prices for a while i'm not sure we know okay um

part of our increased inflation is, ironically, we're growing the fastest in those categories that have the highest rates of inflation. You know, I think that's labor, and even where, I mean, we have suppliers that the product that they sell, they have plenty of it, and they can't get it to us because they don't have the packaging they use to get it to us. So, you know, a lot of this is, some of it's upstream, some of it's downstream, but It's just going to take time, but we have seen great improvement in food service, and it's very encouraging.

Great. Thank you very much.

And this does conclude our question and answer session for today. I'd be happy to return the call to Bill Marshall for any concluding remarks.

Thank you all for joining our call today. If you have any follow-up questions, please contact us at Investor Relations.

this does conclude today's conference. You may now disconnect your lines, and everyone, have a great day.