2/4/2022

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

Hello and welcome to the Post Holdings First Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call and Webcast. Hosting the call today from Post are Rob Vitale, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Jeff Zadoks, Chief Financial Officer. Today's call is being recorded and will be made available for replay beginning at 12 p.m. Eastern Time. The dial-in phone number is 800-839-5324. No passcode is required. At this time, all participants have been placed in a listen-only mode. It is now my pleasure to turn the floor over to Jennifer Meyer, Investor Relations of Post Holdings, for introductions. You may begin.

speaker
Jennifer Meyer
Vice President, Investor Relations

Good morning, and thank you for joining us today for Post's first quarter fiscal 2022 earnings call. With me today are Rob Vitale, our President and CEO, and Jeff Zadoks, our CFO. Rob and Jeff will begin with prepared remarks. and afterwards we'll have a brief question and answer session. The press release that supports these remarks is posted on our website in both the investor relations and the SEC filing section at postholdings.com. In addition, the release is available on the SEC's website. Before we continue, I would like to remind you that this call will contain forward-looking statements which are subject to risk and uncertainties that should be carefully considered by investors as actual results could differ materially from these statements. Additional information regarding these risks and uncertainties is discussed under the forward-looking statement section in the press release we issued yesterday and other press releases we have issued with respect to the proposed distribution of our interest in Bellring Brands, which are posted on our website. We also urge you to read the registration statements, the proxy statement and prospectuses, the related amendments of these filings, and other documents related to the proposed distribution of our interest and borrowing brands that have been and will be filed with the FCC because they contain important information. These forward-looking statements are current as of the date of this call and management undertakes no obligation to update these statements. As a reminder, this call is being recorded and an audio replay will be available on our website. And finally, this call will discuss certain non-GAAP measures. For reconciliation of these non-Gantt measures to the nearest Gantt measure, DR Press released issues yesterday posted on our website. With that, I will turn the call over to Rob.

speaker
Rob Vitale
President and Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Jennifer, and thank you all for joining us. Despite a challenging environment, we delivered a quarter largely in line with expectations, and we continue to maintain our expectations for the full year. However, as you all know, the degree of uncertainty remains high, and we face variables that lend both risk and upside to our outlook. While our outlook continues to be presented on a basis consolidated with bell ring, respective outlook remains largely unchanged. We will initiate post-Remainco guidance no later than our next earnings call, by which time we expect the separation to have been completed. With respect to the separation execution, I have some updates. First, we've been cleared by the SEC to move forward with the transaction. Second, we expect to complete the transaction by the end of March. We expect the amount of cash that will be distributed to Bellerin stockholders, including Post, to be approximately $400 million. Finally, we will pro-rata distribute approximately 78 million Bellerin shares rather than exchange any of them for Post shares. This transaction required and continues to require considerable effort across both organizations, and I want to thank everyone involved. With respect to near-term business results, each segment had two overarching themes. First, cost inflation ran ahead of pricing actions. We have taken the pricing needed to offset known inflation in all segments, but with varying effective dates. Second, each segment had unmet customer demand, resulting from shortages in labor inhibiting production and or shortages in transportation, resulting in unshift orders. In U.S. cereal, consumption for our branded products continues to run ahead of pre-COVID levels by nearly 2%. and our related market share is just shy of 20%. Pebbles, in particular, continues to show strong growth. Last quarter, I mentioned we may have seen an inflection point in the value trade, and so far that is holding. Our value segment sequentially improved throughout the quarter. A shift to value in the category is margin dilutive to post, but it's profit accretive. Food service performed as expected, meaning it had a weak profit quarter, as this segment was the one most dramatically impacted by costs running ahead of pricing. This refers to non-pass-through prices, as pass-through prices automatically reset. We have taken nearly $150 million in annualized pricing, with the majority beginning in Q2, but includes pricing occurring into the third quarter. Moreover, labor gaps persist in food service. However, no plant was worse and several improved. We continue to expect sequential improvement towards recovery to pre-pandemic levels of profit in 2023. During the second quarter, we are experiencing some soft demand resulting from the Omicron COVID variant. Nevertheless, we now understand that the volumes bounce back quickly as variants recede, and we expect the softness to be limited to a month or two. Refrigerator retail made great strides this quarter. Our staffing levels are much improved, and we saw far greater capacity utilization. Most products remain on allocation, so we remain below our potential, but I am quite pleased with the progress. Weedabix continues to be a rock-solid performer. All the factors our U.S. businesses face are present in the key U.K. market. Their pricing and mix is pacing favorably. Delrayne will have his call shortly. Suffice to say that it continues to perform well in a great category, but that current year results are constrained by insufficient capacity. On balance, I would say we navigated the first quarter effectively. We feel good about how we are managing the controllables, and we are remaining nimble enough to adapt to curveballs as they come our way. In terms of capital allocation, we continue to be an active buyer of our shares. Jeff will provide the details. We continue to actively explore acquisition opportunities, both large and small, across the business. We will not undertake an acquisition that jeopardizes our execution in a challenging year, but we believe there are opportunities to find value that complements our efforts. I want to close with some comments about our outlook. We expect to see similar aggregate results in Q2 with considerable improvement in food service and the expected sequential decline of Bellerin. We then expect significant second half acceleration stemming from price realization, improvements in supply chain execution, food service volume recovery, and Bellerin capacity expansion. As I mentioned, assuming the spin proceeds to plan, We will provide separate standalone guidance for the remaining business no later than our May call. Thank you for your time this morning and your continued support. With that, I will turn the call over to Jeff.

speaker
Jeff Zadoks
Chief Financial Officer

Thanks, Rob, and good morning, everyone. First quarter consolidated net sales were $1.6 billion, and adjusted EBITDA was $263 million. Net sales increased 13% and benefited from approximately $98 million from recent acquisitions, volume demand recovery in the food service segment, and pricing actions across each segment. Higher manufacturing, input, and freight costs continued to pressure margins this quarter, and internal and external labor shortages disrupted supply chains. Similar to last quarter, throughput declined and per unit product costs increased. Additionally, our customer order fulfillment rates suffered. Turning to our segments and starting with post-consumer brands. Net sales and volumes increased 14% and 8% respectively. Excluding the benefit from the private label cereal and Peter Pan acquisitions, net sales and volumes declined 1% and 9% respectively. This primarily resulted from year-over-year softness across value in private label cereal products and our exit of certain low-margin business. Honey Bunches of Oats was also a driver of the decline. as we lap the prior year club promotional activity that did not repeat this year. Serial average net pricing increased 9% driven by favorable product mix and pricing actions. Adjusted EBITDA decreased 5% versus prior year, primarily driven by higher manufacturing costs resulting from supply chain disruptions across freight, supplier reliability, and warehousing. These disruptions drove declines in throughput and, along with lower volumes, poor fixed cost of absorption, causing higher manufacturing costs per pound of production. Our pricing actions mitigated the effect of raw material and freight inflation. Weed-based net sales increased 4.5%, benefiting from a stronger British pound-to-U.S. dollar exchange rate and higher average net selling prices, reflecting lower trade spending and base price increases. Volumes declined 4% as growth in new products was not enough to offset declines in all other products. Specifically, prior year benefited from COVID-related increase in home consumption and customers increasing inventory ahead of Brexit. Supply chain disruptions, most notably in packaging and transportation availability, contributed to the volume declines and drove a 3% decline in adjusted EBITDA. Our food service business saw net sales and volume growth of 24% and 13% respectively and were lifted by higher away-from-home demand and distribution gains. Revenue growth continued outpaced volume growth as revenue reflects the impact of our commodity cost pass-through pricing model and other pricing actions. Although we saw year-over-year growth this quarter, total segment volumes remained below pre-pandemic levels. Adjusted EBITDA was relatively flat to prior year, benefiting from volume recovery and improved average net pricing, which was only able to partially offset increases in freight costs, poor fixed cost absorption, and other costs to produce. We expect the price-cost relationship to significantly improve in the second quarter as more of our pricing actions take effect. Refrigerator retail net sales increased 4% and volumes decreased 5%. Excluding the egg feeders and all-mark acquisitions, and Willamette Egg Farms, the business we divested on December 1, net sales and volumes declined 2% and 7% respectively. Pricing actions drove increases in average net pricing for side dish, sausage, and cheese products. Supply chain constraints, most notably around labor availability, suppressed side dish and sausage volumes. Recall our ability to build our side dish inventory ahead of the holidays man spike was limited. Adjusted EBITDAs increased to approximately $36 million and was pressured by lower volume, significantly higher style, cheese, and egg input costs, increased freight, and higher manufacturing costs. Bellring net sales increased 8.5% and benefited from pricing actions across both Premier Protein and Dynatize. Premier Protein net sales increased 4.5%, a slower rate than recent quarters, resulting from shake capacity constraints. Diametized net sales grew 41%, benefiting from price increases, strong velocities, and distribution gains. Higher raw material and freight costs drove a decline in segment gross margins. You can hear further detail about Bellrain's results on our conference call later this morning. Moving to cash flow, we generated $106 million from operations in the quarter. Our working capital increased slightly, reflecting a decrease in payables and increased inventories for U.S. cereal and powders at Bellring. Regarding capital markets activities, during the quarter we purchased 1.5 million of our shares at an average price of $103.37 per share. Our remaining share repurchase authorization is approximately $330 million. Our net leverage at the end of the first quarter as measured by our credit facility was approximately 6.4 times. On this basis, we expect a deleverage between three quarters and a full term once we have completed all steps in our separation of Bellman. We anticipate completion of all steps will reduce post-growth debt by $1.3 to $1.6 billion. During the quarter, we issued $500 million in principal value of senior notes as a tack-on to our 5.5% senior notes due in December 2029. Our debt ladder remains low-cost, insulated from rising interest rates, and has no near-term maturities. When combined with our under-run revolver and strong cash flow, we maintain significant financial flexibility. With that, I'd like to turn the call back over to the operator for questions.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

And at this time, if you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your touchtone phone. You may withdraw your question at any time by pressing the pound key. Once again, that is star and 1. And we will take our first question from Andrew Lazor with Barclays. Please go ahead.

speaker
Andrew Lazor
Analyst, Barclays

Great. Good morning, everybody.

speaker
Jason English
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Good morning.

speaker
Andrew Lazor
Analyst, Barclays

Rob, I think when Post provided its initial fiscal 22 EBITDA guidance, I think it was predicated on the thought that inflation will have peaked and labor markets have sort of normalized. And obviously, you reaffirmed the full year guidance today. So I'm trying to get a better understanding, I guess, of if, in your view, inflation has peaked and labor expectations have played out as you initially built into guidance. or maybe it's more of a matter of having built in enough flexibility and guidance to deal with what still feels like a very unsettled environment, at least in listening to so many of the other companies that have reported thus far. So maybe you could get into that a little bit more. I'm trying to get a feel for how that played out and what that means for your expectations on those metrics as we go into the latter part of the year.

speaker
Rob Vitale
President and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, so first I would say that it certainly remains an unsettled environment, so we're not trying to take any exception with that comment. What I would characterize the year shaping up to reflect is a pretty strong ability to get pricing where needed so that the PNAC pricing that it costs well negative this quarter is moving in the right direction. And we feel good about that because of the inflation. Now, obviously, if inflation accelerates from here, that could have a different potential outcome. and I would say that the labor situation and supply chain is not worse and it is marginally better. We are significantly better in some segments and we are no worse than others. So I feel that specifically to post, we're making progress. I would by no means want to say that it's smooth sailing ahead. We still have some choppy waters, but sitting here at quarter end, we still have a I think good shot at delivering on our expectations for the year barring dramatic changes in the macro environment.

speaker
Andrew Lazor
Analyst, Barclays

Okay. Thanks for that. And I think you mentioned it might have been specific to post-consumer brands, but I want to make sure I understood it, that your comments from last quarter about having just really started to see a bit of an inflection in sort of the value brands, you know, sort of private label side of things, it has been holding. That's correct. Yeah, and is that specific to post-consumer brands, or does that go for sort of 8th Avenue as well? And the reason I ask is, in trying to track all of these various categories across the space, in terms of either trade down or private label trends, still just not really seeing it in the broader industry data. And maybe that's not exactly how your specific businesses are behaving, so I'm trying to get a little more clarity on that and what you're seeing.

speaker
Rob Vitale
President and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, so we... The comment was specifically related to post-consumer brands where we saw a flattening of our value segment, which includes the mom bank portfolio as well as private label. It was a fairly dramatic flattening after some double-digit declines earlier in the calendar year, approaching even by the end of the year. There are some exogenous factors. Of course, there was a competitor with some strike issue creating some problems. Strange factors in the demand dynamic within the category that could also be contributing. But we've also seen some improved volumes in our private label businesses in 8th Avenue volumes, although margin or pressure. So, you know, by no means is this data that you could extrapolate very far, but it reinforces what we thought three months ago.

speaker
Andrew Lazor
Analyst, Barclays

And then just lastly would be, I think we'll get into a lot more detail on this in the Bellerin call, but I may have heard you say that expected deceleration at Bellerin in 2Q, and I just want to make sure I understood what was driving that. Thanks so much.

speaker
Rob Vitale
President and Chief Executive Officer

Normal seasonality. We had from a promotional cadence and a new year, new you shipping timing to have a sequential dip into Q2, so nothing more than the normal, and it was already factored into the prior guidance and prior expectations.

speaker
Rob Dickerson
Analyst

Great. Thank you.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

We'll take our next question from Chris Crowe with Stiefel. Please go ahead.

speaker
Rob Vitale
President and Chief Executive Officer

Hi, Chris.

speaker
Chris Crowe
Analyst, Stifel

Hi. Good morning. I just had a question if I could ask you first. In terms of the proposed spinoff of the Bellring shares, just to get your perspective on that, and obviously there are varying scenarios that you explored as part of the distribution. I just thought it would be good to hear your perspective on why it's just a spinoff. Is that Bellring valuation, post-valuation? Just wanted to get some thoughts on why you settled on a spinoff of the shares.

speaker
Rob Vitale
President and Chief Executive Officer

Well, if you go back to when we announced it, we tried to announce the whole smorgasbord of opportunities to execute because these things have a long period of time. I mean, a long execution timeline, so you're trying to hit a fairly loose target. And as we approach execution point, it strikes us that there's significant opportunity in both shares, and it doesn't make sense to trade one for the other. Neither is particularly, in our opinion... Yeah, okay.

speaker
Chris Crowe
Analyst, Stifel

I guess I'm just curious, a split-off would have been an immediate way for Post to retire a large chunk of its shares, depending on how much it would split off. So I guess with that aside now, assuming that does not occur, would you expect to be more aggressive on purchasing the Post shares then with this improved balance sheet once you get the distribution completed?

speaker
Rob Vitale
President and Chief Executive Officer

Well... Before I answer that, let me go back to the premise of the question. I think, yes, we would have had an opportunity to shrink a lot of Bellring shares, but at a cost of using what we think are very attractively priced, meaning low-priced Bellring shares. That would have been a way to shrink a lot of those shares at what we think would have been a very expensive cost in terms of giving away a lot of upside for Bellring. Going back to the second part of the question, the We certainly have the option to be more aggressive and share buybacks once the transaction is complete, but as we always do, we would look across the landscape and compare that to opportunities to invest externally as well. So we wouldn't necessarily commit to a course right now. We would certainly view that as one possible course.

speaker
Chris Crowe
Analyst, Stifel

Okay, thank you. And just one quick one if I could. You talked about I think each business had some missed sales or lost sales opportunities throughout the business due to capacity constraints. I guess I'm curious, do you have any frame of reference for how much that is? Or I'm sure it depends by business, no doubt. And then is that just less of a factor in Q2 and Q3? Does it just get better sequentially each quarter based on your expectations, I guess, for labor and your availability of products?

speaker
Rob Vitale
President and Chief Executive Officer

Our supply chains are certainly getting better. Worst case, staying the same. The larger driver of our having unmet demand was transportation. We are continuing to see situations in which we are unable to get trucks to move product and we have inventory sitting in the wrong place. So, you know, I would say that it's also not getting worse. Perhaps slowly getting better. but the lowest truck factor is still very high, historically high. So, you know, I don't think that we're through the woods yet on transportation, both cost and availability. That could be another couple of months.

speaker
Chris Crowe
Analyst, Stifel

Okay. Thanks so much for your time.

speaker
Rob Vitale
President and Chief Executive Officer

Thank you.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

We'll take our next question from Michael Lavery. Please go ahead. With Piper Sandler, your line is open.

speaker
Michael Lavery
Analyst, Piper Sandler

Excuse me. Yeah, good morning. Thank you. I just was curious if you could give a little bit more color on 8th Avenue. I know in the past you've given that standalone financial information. I may have missed it somehow. I don't think I saw that this time. What's the update on how that's going?

speaker
Rob Vitale
President and Chief Executive Officer

The business has underperformed. We've been on the We've had some previously discussed execution issues around expanding our capacity in peanut butter. We continue to very much like the categories we're in. We think the pricing will come through, but it's taken longer than we expected. From an overall post perspective, we don't talk about it much because from a contribution to our overall value, we took out the entirety of our capital investment a couple years ago, and we have what amounts to an option value position in the company. So simply from a matter of relative value, we don't talk about it a lot, but we've and some internal factors.

speaker
Michael Lavery
Analyst, Piper Sandler

Okay, that's really helpful. Thank you. And then just on Weetabix, you know, partly from different COVID restriction dynamics, the entire grocery store in the UK is seeing declines and even excluding currency. It looks like you were, you know, you had sales up modestly. It sounds like driven by pricing, but Is that a timing shift? Is it just share gains? Can you help us maybe understand a little bit of what's giving you such a lift there? And partly with in mind just how to think about modeling the rest of the year.

speaker
Rob Vitale
President and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, over the course of the pandemic, we picked up about a share point in Weedabix. So that's a key driver as well as pricing. So, you know, between the two, that has given us the lift you're reflecting on.

speaker
Michael Lavery
Analyst, Piper Sandler

X currency, would a similar kind of modest, you know, flat to slightly upbeat be probably appropriate for the balance of the year?

speaker
Rob Vitale
President and Chief Executive Officer

I was commenting in British Pound, so in currency, if you go back a couple of years, Jeff, you want to?

speaker
Jeff Zadoks
Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, currency this quarter was slightly favorable, but on a year-over-year basis, it's slightly unfavorable.

speaker
Michael Lavery
Analyst, Piper Sandler

Okay, great. Thanks a lot.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

We'll take our next question from Bill Chappell with Trita Securities. Please go ahead.

speaker
Bill Chappell
Analyst, Trita Securities

Thanks. Good morning. Good morning. Rob, can you just give us, as we're going into 2022, what's your thoughts on the state of the cereal market, both U.S. and U.K.? I mean, I guess the thought is, There were certainly more consumers that came into the category with the start of the pandemic. It probably extended as the pandemic has extended. And so the concern is, or the question is, how many of those consumers do we retain as one day the pandemic ends or people go back to kind of their normal lives? How much of that drop-off have we already seen, and how much do we see kind of in the future? So just any thoughts of is the category – That much better than it was two, three years ago in terms of health, or are we going to go back to kind of where it was two, three years ago?

speaker
Rob Vitale
President and Chief Executive Officer

You're asking somewhat of a crystal ball question, of course, so I'll treat it with that level of...

speaker
Bill Chappell
Analyst, Trita Securities

I won't hold you to it. Thank you.

speaker
Rob Vitale
President and Chief Executive Officer

I think that, first of all, it's been a difficult analytic process because we've had external factors. I think that Some consumers left just this past quarter because of unavailability of product. But my intuition, and that's what it is, tells me that we're in a zero to one, maybe one and a half growth category. Once you get through the noise of a key strike, the different variants, the consumer behavior that has caused some premiumization, once you factor all that out, and get into a normal run rate or somewhere between 0 and 1, 1.5, which is 100 basis points to 200 basis points better than it was pre-pandemic. And then, of course, there's whatever the new pricing dynamic is going forward from today.

speaker
Bill Chappell
Analyst, Trita Securities

Got it. So you think we're at the normal level, not necessarily have a drop on a volume basis to come?

speaker
Rob Vitale
President and Chief Executive Officer

I think that's right. I think we actually could see some volume. You've seen a couple of different exogenous events.

speaker
Bill Chappell
Analyst, Trita Securities

And just as a follow-up on that, as you look, or follow up to kind of Andrew's question, as you look across your categories, do you see any one being more or less elastic than the others as you pass underneath pricing?

speaker
Rob Vitale
President and Chief Executive Officer

You know, not yet. Not right now. Elasticity feels very low across the landscape.

speaker
Bill Chappell
Analyst, Trita Securities

Okay, great. Thank you.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

We'll take a next question from Jason English with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

speaker
Jason English
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Hey, good morning, folks. Can you hear me? Yes, all right. I wasn't sure if I was muted or not. So, food service. Your annualized rate of eat-at-the-doc office quarter is tracking somewhere around 150. And, Rob, I think I heard you say you expect to be back to pre-COVID levels in fiscal 23, which is just around three times. So, We've got to walk from a 150 run rate to 310, 150 gap. Give me the building blocks that get us there. I think I heard you talk about a lot more pricing, like is that over and above the commodity pass-through? I'm sure you're going to get hit with some other offsets that are going to eat into some of that. And I'm sure you also have a lot of operational improvements you're trying to attack. Just help me get the building blocks so that I and the investors can get comfortable on that walk.

speaker
Rob Vitale
President and Chief Executive Officer

Well, let's keep it real simple and just say you take – The current quarter times four and add $150 million of pricing. That gets you to $3 million. Now, obviously, there's going to be some improvement. There's going to be some operational improvement. There's going to be some additional cost. I'm trying to keep that as very simplistic. But when you look at the magnitude of the pricing versus the cost we've already incurred, It's a pretty clear runway.

speaker
Jason English
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

So let's keep it simple then. You say you're implementing that 150 annualized run rate in 2Q, probably not all the 4-in-3 by 2Q, but it should be in 3Q. So are we back to that sort of run rate as fast as the back half of this year?

speaker
Rob Vitale
President and Chief Executive Officer

No, no. It'll be phased in throughout Q2 and Q3, so it's much more of a run rate build.

speaker
Jason English
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Okay, but we can at least look forward to 4-in-3.

speaker
Rob Vitale
President and Chief Executive Officer

It's much more in terms of confidence for Q4 and 2023 than trying to reflect on a number for Q2 or Q3 of 2022.

speaker
Jason English
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Understood. Understood. And I guess I'll just pass it on. I've got more questions, but I'll leave some for the others. Thanks. Thanks, Chris.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

We'll take our next question from Rob Dickerson with Jeff Rees. Please go ahead. Yes.

speaker
Rob Dickerson
Analyst

Great, thanks so much. Two quick questions. Just given all the commentary on, you know, pricing, PNOC, margin getting progressively better as you get through the year. Obviously, gross margin was down, you know, substantially in Q1. And then, you know, you get to kind of the guide on the EBITDA side. I mean, it seems as if You know, kind of the sequential progression in Q2 should get better relative to year-over-year in Q1. But then as pricing is kind of fully implemented throughout the year, you know, are we, you know, or should we be assuming that you should be able to recover essentially, you know, at least the majority, if not all and more, of that gross margin pressure you saw in Q4? So basically, just as we get through the year, can we actually see gross margin up kind of as we exit the year?

speaker
Rob Vitale
President and Chief Executive Officer

Let me make sure I understood the way you sequenced it because in my comments I made the reference that Q2 will look a lot like Q1. So the real step up is Q2 to Q3, not Q1 to Q2. So while there could be slight marginal improvement, we really have a first half, second half story because of the time pricing. So if the rest of the question is related to gross margin These are the prior year. I would say the answer is yes, we can see getting back to prior levels, but prior levels too have some noise in them. I don't particularly want to comment on long-term gross margins right now because I think there are too many variables yet to play out, but we certainly feel like we can expand margins back to where they started or at least ended the last year.

speaker
Rob Dickerson
Analyst

Okay, fair enough. Helpful. And then just secondly, as we kind of all go through the different segments, refrigerator retail, you know, volumes, you know, down a bit, not down in all categories. Some commentary, you know, just around some capacity constraints, you know, but, you know, as we look at, you know, Q3 compares obviously a little bit easier. and in the back hatches overall. So I'm just curious, you know, is there a kind of expectation that maybe the capacity environment, you know, for you specifically, you know, with just some side dishes, let's say, can get a little bit better as they get through the year and as long as, you know, elasticity holds and consumer demand there, that there could be an expectation for that business to gradually improve as well as they get through the year. That's it.

speaker
Rob Vitale
President and Chief Executive Officer

Thanks. Yeah, very much so. And I think that... One of the things that I think is important to keep in mind is that the particular timing of the capacity pinch point in refrigerator retail was a challenge for 22 because it's the one business that we have that has a considerable amount of holiday seasonality. So we were not able to build the inventory that we normally would have built to support Thanksgiving and the Christmas holidays. So absent that volume, we will track below prior year. But if you look Thanks, Rob. Thank you.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

And we'll take our final question from Ken Zaslow with Bank of Montreal. Please go ahead.

speaker
Ken Zaslow
Analyst, Bank of Montreal

Hey, good morning, guys. Hey, Ken. Just two questions. What actions can you take and have you been taking to ease the labor and transportation? Are there things within your control that you've been doing to change the direction of how that is, how that's happening?

speaker
Rob Vitale
President and Chief Executive Officer

Well, labor is... Thank you for joining us. Companies like ours are doing, so it's a pretty broad array of tools we're trying to throw against the problem. Transportation, we're a price taker in a commoditized market right now, so that one's a bit tougher. We have some businesses that have longer contracts and some that have shorter contracts, so the key variable is where you are on contract cycles right now.

speaker
Ken Zaslow
Analyst, Bank of Montreal

Okay. And then just longer term, You do it every now and then and you kind of give like, hey, how you think of the longer term businesses of where you are. Can you give a quick view on that? It's been a little bit because there's been some obviously COVID and there's been some issues going on. Can you just frame a little bit of where you think the growth of each of the businesses are? Again, 15, 20 seconds for one. Just wanted to make sure that we're aligned with how you're thinking about it longer term, not just this year. And I appreciate it. Thank you.

speaker
Rob Vitale
President and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, you know, in this forum, I'll do that qualitatively versus quantitatively vis-a-vis how we thought about it pre-pandemic. So if you think about cereal, both in the U.S. and the U.K., we view it as a steady, maybe a slightly faster-growing or slower-shrinking business than it was previously at the bottom line with better pricing and steady cash generation, really similar to the way it performed previously. With refrigerated retail, you know, specifically around the Bob Evans side dish business, we have, you know, equal if not more confidence in the quality of that character and our position in it. That one is very difficult to prove out through the numbers right now because there's been so much disruption around supply chain and staffing. But, you know, we clearly see as the staffing and availability of product comes back, so too does the demand. If you look at our food service business, and Bellring, I think you know how Very substantial growth ahead of it, and as I've already talked about in terms of the decision to spend versus split, we are acting in alignment with that expectation of further growth. Food service is the one that obviously gets the most attention, and we would have to argue that once we get through the rebase of the pandemic and we see where volumes settle, that our growth trajectory is really Consistent with where we entered the pandemic, what we don't know still two years in is where does travel ultimately land, where do offices ultimately land. There may be a couple of points of exposure to the baseline, but we think the growth is intact.

speaker
Ken Zaslow
Analyst, Bank of Montreal

As always, I appreciate it. Thank you guys very much.

speaker
Rob Vitale
President and Chief Executive Officer

Thank you.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

And this does conclude today's Q&A session as well as our conference call for today. You may now disconnect your lines and have a great day.

speaker
Jason English
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Thank you. Thank you.

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