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.
spk09: Good day and welcome to Post Holdings' fourth quarter 2022 earnings conference call and webcast. Hosting the call today from Post are Rob Vitale, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Jeff Saddux, Chief Financial Officer. Today's call is being recorded and will be available for replay beginning at 12 p.m. Eastern Time. The dial-in number is 800-839-3742. 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.
spk00: Good morning, and thank you for joining us today for Post's fourth quarter fiscal 2022 earnings call. With me today are Rob Vitale, our President and CEO, and Jeff Daddix, 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 investors and the SEC filing sections 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 risks and uncertainties that should be carefully considered by investors as actual results could differ materially from these statements. 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-GAAP measures to the nearest GAAP measure, see our press release issued yesterday and posted on our website. With that, I will turn the call over to Rob.
spk07: Thanks, Jennifer, and thank you all for joining us. Before commenting on our results, I want to congratulate both Jeff and Matt in connection with the announcement earlier this week. Jeff is ideal for this role in that he has a deep knowledge of each business as well as the trust and the respect of each business leader. And Matt has been a key architect of many of Post's sophisticated financial transactions. I look forward to working with each of them in their new roles. Post ended the year in strong fashion. Anchored by exceptional performance in food service, we delivered a quarter with nearly $280 million in adjusted EBITDA and a year with over $960 million in adjusted EBITDA. This represents a respective growth rate for the quarter and year of 32% and 8%. Moreover, we look forward to delivering EBITDA growth rates above our historical norm through at least 2024. I would characterize 2022 as having been dominated by inflation management and ongoing supply chain challenges. We expect 2023 to be focused on margin restoration. I will comment more on that shortly. As I mentioned, food service had an exceptional quarter. I'm quite proud of the performance of this team, having now entirely recovered from the depth of COVID and added to the segment's profitability. In addition to facing the global pandemic, We have navigated an avian influenza challenge and done so exceptionally well. For those of you who have been around a while, you may recall that this experience tends to make us a more effective competitor in a more profitable company. That is not to say it comes without risk. There is always a risk that we may be impacted. Our food service segment has been quite resilient now through different environments. We believe we are well positioned for a consumer pullback in that we skew to the less sensitive breakfast day part. To date, we have seen no sign of a pullback from away-from-home consumption. Both consumer brands, too, had a solid quarter. Our branded consumption dollars grew to 19.4 percent. At the same time, we experienced a bit of a category trade-down to value and private label, both of which are profit accretive. Key trends from the year continued in the quarter. We continue to be disciplined in price realization relative to inflation, and we continue to work our way back to pre-pandemic levels of supply chain execution. Refrigerated retail exited 2022 in a markedly improved manner over last year. Recall that last year, supply chain woes inhibited our ability to build inventory for the all-critical holiday season. This year, inventories are at a solid level and customer fill rates dramatically improved. High egg prices inhibited volume and profit in this segment, but on balance, it has made great progress. On a local currency basis, Weetabix continues its rock-solid performance. We continue to face headwinds in currency translation, and we expect ongoing pressure on our consumers and our cost structure. Last night, we provided guidance for 2023 of 990 million to 1 billion 40 million of adjusted EBITDA. Even at this level of growth, we still have opportunity for earnings acceleration, driven primarily by margin recovery. Over the last three years, enterprise-wide EBITDA margins have decreased approximately 440 basis points. Roughly half of this decrease is attributable to growth in food service and attractive acquisitions that yield lower EBITDA margins, so mix-related. The remaining half is our addressable opportunity. Attacking this opportunity will be a multi-year effort focused on several areas, including maintaining pricing discipline vis-à-vis input cost inflation, stabilization of supply chain costs and performance, better leverage on fixed assets within refrigerated retail, and improvements in manufacturing asset reliability aimed at minimizing plant downtime. We do expect to face some temporary margin pressure in the U.K., as energy prices remain at historically high levels. Nonetheless, this bucket of margin opportunity is what affords us the confidence to reference above average EBITDA growth over a multi-year trajectory. With respect to cadence, we anticipate a fairly even split of adjusted EBITDA between the first and second half, with food service favoring the first half and retail channel businesses favoring the second. As you know, We expect to monetize our remaining ownership in Bellring in the next several months. Net of our Bellring position, our leverage ratio is 5.4 times, and positions us for M&A. The market for M&A is interesting. The high-yield market is choppy and struggling to absorb some high-profile credits. Our August financing left us with a cash-rich balance sheet. Post is an advantage buyer in a challenging financing environment, and we welcome all opportunities. In addition to M&A, we continue to see additional opportunities in our own securities. As appropriate, we will invest in our bonds, our equity, our internal operations, and in non-organic growth. We expect the capital expenditures in 2023 to yield attractive incremental EBITDA, competitive with other forms of capital allocation. You all know in 2021, Post sponsored a novel corporate-owned SPAC. We have until May to identify an attractive partner for a business combination. While we continue to believe this is an elegant tool for corporate finance, our timing was terrible. We continue to seek opportunities, but we will certainly not chase an opportunity simply to transact. We're perfectly comfortable acknowledging that some experiments fail. In closing, I want to thank everybody for a successful 2022 against a backdrop that bordered on chaotic. We've had over two years of heightened uncertainty, and my confidence level is higher than it has been since COVID began. With that, I will turn the call over to Jeff.
spk08: Thanks, Rob, and good morning, everyone. Fourth quarter consolidated net sales were $1.6 billion and adjusted EBITDA was $280 million. Net sales increased 16.5% and benefited from pricing actions in each segment and continued volume recovery in our food service business. Supply chain disruptions eased slightly, but our per-unit product costs remained elevated and our customer order fulfillment rates remain below optimal levels. Turning to our segments and starting with post-consumer brands, net sales and volumes increased 13% and 2% respectively. Cereal average net pricing increased 10.5%, driven by pricing actions partially offset by unfavorable product mix. Peter Pan, Pebbles, Private Label Cereal, and Mom Bags drove the volume increase. Declines in honey bunches of boats partially offset these increases as we lapped a change in the timing of a club promotion. Adjusted EBITDA increased 10% versus prior year as volume growth in our pricing actions outweighed significant cost inflation. Weedabix net sales decreased 8%. In local currency, however, sales were up approximately 8%. A significantly weaker British pound caused a foreign currency translation headwind of approximately 1,500 basis points. Net sales benefited from significant list price increases and sales from the recently acquired UFIT brand. These benefits were partially offset by unfavorable mix reflecting growth in private label products. Excluding the benefit from UFIT, volumes declined 9% as growth in private labels was not enough to offset declines in other products, which were largely driven by supply chain constraints and related shortfalls in order fulfillment. Segment adjusted EBITDA was 13% lower than prior year, primarily because of the aforementioned foreign currency translation headwind. Unfavorable mix also weighed on profitability this quarter. Our food service business saw net sales and volume growth of 37% and 4% respectively. Revenue growth continued to outpace volume growth as revenue reflects the impact of inflation-driven pricing actions the effect of our commodity cost pass-through pricing model, and avian influenza-driven pricing actions to offset higher costs to procure eggs on the spot market. Segment-adjusted EBITDA grew to $110 million, benefiting from improved average net pricing and volume growth, which combined mitigated the impact of higher costs to produce. Refrigerated retail net sales decreased 1%, while volumes decreased 15%. Excluding the divested Willamette Egg Farms business, net sales increased 3% and volumes declined 7%. Pricing actions drove increases in average net pricing across all products. Side dish and sausage vines were relatively flat, while volumes in egg and cheese products declined. In addition, elevated egg costs and limited cage-free egg availability from avian influenza hurt both volume and margins. Overall, segment volumes were pressured by changes in promotional timing when compared to the prior year and modest elasticities resulting from inflation-driven price increases. Segment-adjusted EBITDA increased 49%, benefiting from pricing actions and favorable product mix. This was partially offset by higher dairy and egg costs and higher manufacturing costs. Turning to cash flow, we had a strong quarter generating $165 million from continuing operations. Improved profitability and working capital were the key drivers of this quarter's improved performance. For the full year, cash flow from continuing operations was $384 million, with $241 million coming in the second half of the year as our profitability improved sequentially throughout the year. Capital expenditures were $88 million in the fourth quarter and totaled $255 million for the year. As a reminder, annual maintenance CapEx is approximately $190 to $200 million. This year's elevated CapEx was primarily driven by construction costs related to our new RTD-shaped manufacturing facility for Bellring. As you saw in our guidance, we expect continued elevated capital expenditures in FY2023. as we complete this project and make additional investments in equipment reliability and other profit-enhancing projects. Moving to capital markets transactions, in the fourth quarter, we issued $575 million in principal value of 2.5% convertible senior notes that mature in 2027. We used $100 million of these proceeds to repurchase 1.1 million of our shares at a price of $90.30 per share. For the full year, we purchased 4.9 million of our shares. Subsequent to the end of the quarter, we purchased approximately 200,000 shares at an average price of $82.76 per share. We now have $283 million remaining under our share repurchase authorization. Our net leverage at the end of the fourth quarter as measured by our credit facility was approximately 5.6 times That leverage decreased 0.6 times versus the third quarter, reflecting both growth in adjusted EBITDA and a reduction in our debt, resulting from the debt-for-equity exchange completed in August. With that, I'd like to turn the call back to the operator to do Q&A.
spk09: Thank you, sir. At this time, if you would like to ask a question, please press the star and 1 on your touchtone phone. You may remove yourself from the queue at any time by pressing star 2. Once again, that is star and 1 to ask a question. We will pause for a moment to allow questions to queue. And again, that's star 1 to ask a question. We'll take our first question from Andrew Lazar with Barclays.
spk02: Great, thanks. Good morning, everybody.
spk07: Hey, good morning, Andrew.
spk02: Maybe to start off, Rob, I think last quarter you had provided some sort of preliminary guidance for fiscal 23, and I think it was basically annualize the second half of 22 run rate, and then obviously clip whatever makes sense from a foreign exchange perspective. I guess by our math, this would get Post roughly in line with sort of the high end of its sort of now formal guidance range, sort of trying to get a sense whether there was something that had changed or if this is more just conservatism in the event of kind of unforeseen challenges and such.
spk07: A little bit of conservatism, but also – The fourth quarter overperformed a bit, so that comment would have been more appropriate given our outlook versus the actual...
spk02: Got it. And then I guess that leads me into the next one around the outperformance. Obviously, profitability, as you talk about in food service, certainly came in well ahead of expectations and maybe even looks like it even far surpassed what Post had been delivering pre-pandemic. So I'm just trying to get a sense if there was something discreet in the quarter that provided sort of the outsized benefit or if this is more of a run rate we should think about for this business moving forward. Thanks so much.
spk07: No, as you recall from our prior experiences with these businesses, exigencies, they can create some disruptions in the pricing mechanism, and sometimes they work in our favor. So we had some unusual earnings in the quarter, and we've tried to reflect that in our guidance as not being repetitive. I think that what we are seeing is continued strengthening of the core franchise, and we expect the profitability to normalize at higher levels than pre- It gives us continued confidence in the growth rate in perpetuity, but we're not trying to suggest that annualizing this quarter is a current run rate for the business. Great.
spk02: Thank you so much.
spk07: Thank you.
spk09: Thank you. Our next question comes from Chris Grow of Stiefel.
spk05: Hi. Good morning. Hi, Chris. Hi. Hi. I just had a question for you around the gross margin and really pricing to cost inflation. Just understand, as you look forward here, it looks like pricing has caught up with cost inflation. I know that's a broad statement, but generally across your business, your gross margin was up a little bit sequentially. Does that continue to improve throughout 2023, as you think about or talked about, like this this margin recovery phase you're entering, is there an expectation that supply chain disruptions get better, but also that the pricing has caught up to the inflation and we should see that manifest itself in a stronger gross margin throughout the year?
spk07: Yes, obviously there's some uncertainty around future trajectory of inflation. But, you know, as you lap the pricing, you know, we still have some catch-up to do. But equally important is we make sure we're running more efficiently with fewer unplanned outages and all the things that we've been dealing with the last two years. Those all flow through gross margins. So we do expect to see gross margin expansion in 2023, and we expect it to continue on into 2024.
spk05: That's great. Thank you. Just a quick question for you. Weedabix is a unique business, but an area where they've seen a little trade-down to private label. Obviously, they capture some of that, which is good. I just wanted to get a sense of any areas of your business where you're seeing that incremental price competition, any incremental trade-down? Maybe just a comment around elasticity. Do you just naturally build in a higher rate of elasticity going forward and see how it goes? So far, elasticity has been great for your business, if you will. very favorable.
spk07: Yeah, and starting at the end of that, in general, that condition remains. Elasticities continue to be relatively low, and I think it's just the reality of inflation being as widespread as it has been. So relative choices are remaining relatively the same because inflation is so widespread. But as the absolute price grows, we are starting to see some trade down to private label in North American cereal, the UK is a little bit different because the inflation has been more dramatic and specifically tied to home energy. So the trade down there has been a bit more dramatic. We're not seeing it broadly outside of cereal. And I think as I commented in my prepared remarks, we don't see the slightest sign yet of pullback in away from home consumption, which has frankly surprised us a little bit. So right now it still feels like the consumer is in a pretty solid state.
spk05: Okay. Thank you for that, Culler.
spk09: Thank you. Thank you. Our next question comes from Michael Lavery of Piper Sandler.
spk03: Thank you. Good morning.
spk07: Good morning, Michael.
spk03: It had called out restoring more normal food service margins in 4Q, and obviously we saw that, and they were even a little ahead of what we might have been modeling. But can you give us a sense of how that looks going through 2023? And is there more upside? Have you sort of hit the run rates? And I guess I'll tack on my follow-up now, which is at the broader level as well. You touched on total company above average EBITDA growth. Looking ahead, and you touched on margin restoration, how much can you get ahead of prior margins as well? I know that would be a little bit further out, but maybe just at a high level margins and then food service margins would love some color on both of those.
spk07: Yeah, so food service margins, you know, as I suggested in my remarks, tend to normalize at higher levels than prior to an experience like the, whether it's COVID or AI or whatever the emergency may be, because I think that the business is so competitively advantaged and the biosecurity is so good and the cost structure is so impressive that it really does allow for a demonstration of the value of the relatively unique proposition that we offer. So, you know, in crisis, character is revealed, and I think that's what happens in situations like this with our food service business. By no means do we expect the margin to remain as elevated as it has been in the last couple months, but we expect it to remain or to become institutionalized at a higher level than it had been historically. With the rest of the business, you know, I'm not ready to say that we will get past margins that we had entering COVID. I think, you know, broadly margin structures are under pressure as we start to rethink supply chains. And I'm talking about not just post but very broadly. So, you know, I think our objective is to recover those couple hundred basis points of margin that came from the things that we can manage. And I'm making a distinction between the fact that food service grew and that we've acquired some businesses at lower margin structures, very attractive acquisitions, but lower margin structures. So we're laser focused on getting back to Brighton if we see opportunities to expand beyond that. Obviously, we won't stop there, but that's not where we're targeting as we speak today.
spk03: Great color. Thanks so much.
spk09: Thank you. Thank you. Our next question comes from David Palmer of Evercore ISI.
spk04: Thanks. Good morning. Another one on food service. Obviously impressive EBITDA. Could you talk about maybe some of the drivers there, what perhaps is outsized versus what you think would be a typical quarter? And you mentioned that the fourth quarter was something we shouldn't annualize. I'm wondering if there is a typical quarter. I'm looking at the third quarter, that $85 to $90 million range. If you think that might be more of a typical quarter that we could think of in terms of annualizing for fiscal 23?
spk07: Yeah, I mean, we specifically give guidance at the enterprise level to allow ourselves room to be wrong at the individual company level. And one of the things we think that we offer investors is the benefit of a portfolio, and I think that nothing has demonstrated that more than the last couple of years. So, you know, I think I don't want to get into the game of giving individual segment guidance, so I'm going to dodge that question a little bit. In terms of some of the things that were unusual in the quarter, there were some competitors that had some supply issues that we were able to take advantage of. There was some pricing in the marketplace that was been unusual given, again, some of the exigencies. We performed very well. We're able to react to it to keep our customers as well filled as possible, even though we're not filling at really very attractive rates ourselves. So I don't want to call this a normal quarter. It was a quarter in which we took advantage of opportunities that we had, and we did it well. But most importantly, what we are trying to do is continue to service our customers as ably as we can, make sure our value proposition is supportive of their business efforts. And I think something to recognize about the long-term prospects for Michael Foods is that Michael Foods and our food service segment, I sometimes use those interchangeably, our basic selling proposition is that we take labor out of operators. And as labor escalates and as labor becomes more challenging from even an availability perspective, our selling proposition becomes that much more valuable and provides a tailwind to our volumes, which ultimately then drives margin.
spk04: And then just a quick one. Can consumer brands and refrigerated retail, do you think that we should see shipments, ship sales more or less approximate consumption going forward? Or do you think maybe even a little bit more than that if some of these supply chain constraints ease out there and you get some increase in inventory and fill rates? Thanks.
spk07: Yeah. So, I mean, within, you know, plus or minus a couple percentage points that they should track each other, there will be periods of time when Retail inventories happen to flow a bit, but in general, yes. And, you know, I think both companies continue to have supply chains that are not where they need to be, and that has a cost aspect, and that has an inhibition of volume aspect that we need to remedy. Thank you. Thank you.
spk09: Thank you. Our next question comes from Bill Chappell of Truist Securities.
spk06: Hey, good morning, guys. This is Stephen Langeloff from Truist. This is Stephen Langall for Bill's Chapel. Thanks for taking our question.
spk03: Sure.
spk06: I wanted to kind of touch on labor. We've heard from some of the other players in the food space that they're still kind of experiencing some minor issues at some of their facilities, and you kind of mentioned some challenges last quarter. Is there any color you can kind of provide on how the labor situation is progressing and how things are shaping up for 23?
spk07: Thanks. What I would tell you, Stephen, is that the quantum of labor has improved a bit. But what we still face is a higher than ordinary turnover level. And if you now look at that having compounded for three years, we have, in general, a less experienced workforce than we had in 2019. And that less experienced workforce has knock-on implications in terms of the efficiencies within our factories and within our supply chain. Labor is generally better, but there are some second-order effects that we are all dealing with that we will continue to deal with for some time as we train and retain this less experienced or less tenured portion of our workforce.
spk06: Awesome. Thanks very much, guys.
spk07: Thank you.
spk09: Thank you. Our next question comes from Ken Zaslow of Bank of Montreal. Hey, good morning, guys. Morning.
spk01: Hey, Jeff, as you kind of think about your new role, you walk into this role, and I know you've been there, so you kind of know the things you're going to do, but can you talk about what your strategy is as you walk into this new role? What are your priorities? And where do you think you can affect the most change?
spk08: Sure. The primary goal that I have is to try and seek out opportunities for the collaboration between the business units. We've made some strides in that regard over the last couple of years, but I think there's still opportunity to push that ball forward. We've breeded the culture of each of our businesses being independent, which is very important to their independent operations, but there are opportunities that we've foregone over these years to better collaborate, perhaps improve our cost structure, perhaps improve opportunities for other activities that we can hopefully over the long term reach an equilibrium that both benefits from our scale as well as maintain the independence of the operating companies to maintain their focus on what specifically drives their profitability. So that's a a long-term objective, so it's going to take some time to get some of those improvements, but that's where we're going to try and focus.
spk01: And my last part of this question is, what milestones do you expect to achieve, or is there an order for which that you expect to hit certain divisions, or is it just, again, bringing everything together? But what are your key milestones? Thank you very much.
spk08: To be honest with you, Ken, we haven't established that, but that's something we can talk about down the road.
spk01: I appreciate it. Thank you.
spk09: Thank you. We've reached the allotted time allowed for Q&A. This will conclude Post Holdings' fourth quarter 22 earnings conference call and webcast. We thank you for your participation. You may disconnect at any time.
spk07: Thank you.
Disclaimer