Post Holdings, Inc.

Welcome to the postholding third quarter 2020 . At this time, all participants have been placed on a listen-only mode, and the floor will be open for questions following the presentation. If you would like to ask a question at that time, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. If at any point your question has been answered, you may remove yourself from the queue by pressing star 2. So others can hear your questions clearly, we do ask that you please pick up your handset for best sound quality. And lastly, should you require operator assistance, please press star zero. I would now like to turn the call over to Daniel O'Rourke, Investor Relations for Post.

Good morning. Thank you for joining us today for Post's third quarter fiscal 2024 earnings call. I'm joined this morning by Rob Vitale, our president and CEO, Jeff Zadix, our COO, and Matt Maynor, our CFO and treasurer. Rob, Jeff, and Matt will make prepared remarks and afterwards we'll answer your questions. The press release that supports these remarks is posted on both the investors and the SEC filing sections of our website and is also available on the SEC's website. As a reminder, this call is being recorded and an audio replay will be available on our website at postholdings.com. 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. 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.

Thank you, Daniel. In Q3, we delivered another quite solid quarter. That enabled us to increase our full-year guidance. While never fully satisfied, we are quite pleased with the business performance, including recent acquisitions. I'm certain you noticed we have been aggressive in purchasing our own shares. The solid performance is against the challenging and transitioning consumer environment. Inflation is cooling, but so are labor markets. Meanwhile, rapid cumulative change in pricing over the last couple of years has impacted consumer behavior across channels. We expect to work through this reference price phenomenon in both retail and food service channels over the next year. Key highlights of the quarter include strong consumption of both our branded and private label cereal products, Ongoing outperformance in our pet business versus our underwriting case. Significant mix improvement in value-added eggs. We expect these highlights to be sustained in FY25. On the other side of the ledger, our refrigerator retail segment underperformed as trade investment cannibalized base volume without sufficient incremental lift. We are addressing the appropriate level of trade spending. Looking ahead to 25, we expect a more stable consumer environment, which, along with lapping 24, will support more favorable volume trends. The capital markets and the M&A market support further strategic action. Our leverage is at historically low levels, and we will tend to be reactive with capital allocation. Our business model and our diversification enable us to adapt to changing conditions, and we will remain clear-eyed as we consider the best allocation of your capital. Now Jeff will provide more context on the quarter.

Thanks, Rob, and good morning, everyone. Starting with PCB, both our grocery and pet food products contributed to another strong quarter of profit performance. Within grocery, cereal volumes were challenged, although we performed better than the category as we slightly increased branded share in both dollars and pounds. Carryover pricing combined with excellent operating and supply chain performance continue to be the main profit drivers within grocery. Zero category volume finished the quarter down 4.1 percent. Despite not seeing an immediate recovery as we last snapped this quarter, we continue to expect category volumes will normalize to the historical CAGR of down approximately 1 to 2 percent. For the pet food business, our category share remained fairly flat in total and across our brands. Recall, however, in the last half of the prior fiscal year, our pet food sales revenues and volumes benefited from the one-time replenishment of customer inventories as we improved customer fill rates from the low 70s to the low 90s. Strong manufacturing performance continued to drive our results. The closure of our Lancaster, Ohio cereal plant and our pet integration continue to remain on track with a planned exit from the Smucker's TSA in the first half of fiscal year 2025. Moving to food service, we had a good quarter with very strong product mix. In addition, we benefited from the final run out of avian influenza pricing related to the November 2023 outbreak, as well as elevated customer promotions in the quarter. Overall, egg volumes were flat despite slowing restaurant food traffic. However, our mix continued to improve with 15% volume growth in our highest margin precooked egg products. Lastly, we continue to encounter some delays in achieving our full RTD shake manufacturing run rate. The ramp up has been slower than we anticipated, but we made significant progress during the quarter. Recognizing that it is hard to track the impact of avian influenza quarter to quarter, We will share that our expectation for food service adjusted EBITDA in the fourth quarter is approximately $100 million. Our refrigerator retail business had a significant pullback in profitability. While we were encouraged to see dinner and breakfast size volumes up 4% and 6% respectively, this growth came with significantly higher than expected trade costs. We are recalibrating these investments and anticipate sequential segment profit improvement in the fourth quarter. From a commodity standpoint, sow prices were a significant headwind versus prior year, further pressuring Q3 adjusted EBITDA for the segment. On the positive side, we continued to see strong manufacturing and cost management performance across the network. Turning to Weedabix, UK cereal category vines moderated to a decline of 1%, and we saw flat vines within our branded and private label biscuits. Continued improvement with supply chain and service levels combined with incremental pricing on some private label products drove sequential margin improvement from Q2. In addition, the business successfully completed phase one of its ERP conversion and is on track for the second larger phase two in the fall. With that, I'll turn the call over to Matt.

Thanks, Jeff, and good morning. Third quarter consolidated net sales were $1.9 billion and adjusted EBITDA was $350 million. net sales increased 5% driven by recent acquisitions. Excluding acquisitions, sales declined 5% driven by lower overall volumes in our retail businesses and the impact of our food service pricing pass-through model. Supply chain performance and fill rates remain strong, while commodity inflation on balance is neutral. Finally, SC&A increased as we continued targeted marketing investments in our retail businesses. Excluding the benefit Of pet food acquisitions from both the current and prior year quarters, post-consumer brands net sales decreased 3% and volumes decreased 6%. Average net pricing, excluding pet food, increased 3%. Volumes declined primarily in non-retail and branded cereal. Segmented adjusted EBITDA increased 28% versus prior year as we benefited from the strong contribution of pet food and improved grocery performance. Weetabix net sales increased 1% year-over-year. Sales benefited from the D-side acquisition and a nominal foreign currency tailwind of 80 basis points from a stronger British pound. On a currency and acquisition neutral basis, net sales decreased 5% and volumes decreased 6%, driven by a decline in non-Biscuit products. Segment adjusted EBITDA increased 24% versus prior year, led by the easing of commodity pressures and improved manufacturing leverage as we built inventory in the quarter ahead of our ERP go-live. Food service net sales decreased 5% while volumes increased 2%. Revenue reflects the pass-through of lower grain costs and a net reduction in pricing due to the wind-down of avian influenza price headers from last year. Volumes reflect increases in both egg products and potato products. Adjusted EBITDA decreased 17% as we lapped the benefit of egg market imbalances and elevated avian influenza price adders in the prior year. These headwinds were partially offset by favorable mixed shift to higher margin precooked eggs. Refrigerated retail net sales decreased 7% while volumes were flat. Average net prices declined as a result of increased trade in the portfolio, primarily for dinner sides. Variable side disc volumes were offset by distribution losses in egg products. Segment-adjusted EBITDA decreased 37%, reflecting lower net pricing and a significantly higher sell cost compared to prior year. Turning to cash flow, in the third quarter we generated $272 million from operations driven by strong profit performance and sequential improvements to working capital. Capital expenditures in the quarter were approximately $110 million driven by continued investments in pet food capacity and the expansion of our Norwalk, Iowa pre-cooked egg facility. For the last 12 months, cash flow from operations was $966 million and capital expenditures were $391 million, netting to $575 million of free cash flow. Given the strong cash flow, we maintained our net leverage at 4.3 times in the quarter while repurchasing 2 million shares at an average price of approximately $104 per share. In the month of July, we repurchased an additional 300,000 shares at an average price of approximately $105 per share. In addition, our Board approved a new $500 million share repurchase authorization that begins next week. Finally, given the strong performance in the quarter, we again raised our guidance to a new range of $1,370 to $1,390. With that, I will turn the call back over to the operator for Q&A.

Thank you. And the floor is now open for questions. At this time, if you have a question or comment, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. If at any point your question has been answered, you may remove yourself from the queue by pressing star 2. Again, we do ask that you pick up your handset when posing your questions to provide optimal sound quality. Thank you. And our first question will come from Andrew Lazar with Barclays. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everybody. Good morning. On food service, I'm curious, you spoke to the ongoing run rate in EBITDA in that segment, I think last quarter, of around $95 million, but sort of acknowledged that it had kind of been running above that, but didn't sort of formally change it at that point. I'm curious where you see the ongoing run rate for food service EBITDA now, and partly I ask that because as we think ahead to fiscal 25, trying to get a sense of whether that could be a year-over-year headwind, right, lapping what was a strong year in food service next year, or if you think the ongoing run rate is somewhat higher or more consistent with what we've seen this year.

Sure. Andrew, we think the run rate is around $105 million. And, again, the difference between that and $100 is pressure we're going to see in Q4 related to avian influenza costs we're going to incur ahead of pricing kicking in.

Yeah, got it. And then in measured channel data for PET, which certainly does not tell the whole story, it looked like consumption decelerated pretty meaningfully on a sequential basis in the quarter. And I guess I'm trying to get a sense of whether something sort of changed in terms of maybe not seeing as much trade down to mainstream in PET as you had been seeing, and if the planned reinvestment has sort of started to kick in yet, or if that's still to come.

Yeah, Andrew, really two drivers there. One, there's actually seasonality in the pet food category, so you do see a pullback between Q2 and Q3 every year. The other piece for us, though, specifically was we had new distribution gains in Q2, so there was a pipeline fill in particular for nine lives. So those are the two components of the sequential decline. Other than that, we're kind of in line with where we expect to be.

Got it. And lastly, just... Last quarter, I think, Rob, you mentioned having seen a meaningful increase in sort of the M&A pipeline. You mentioned private equity-owned assets have sort of aged and such. And I'm trying to get a sense, obviously, your leverage is now lower than it's been in a while, and you've been taking advantage of that around share repo. But any change to sort of that M&A landscape one way or the other that you've seen since last quarter?

If anything, it's accelerated in terms of the amount of opportunities we've been considering. Obviously, we take our time in considering those, and the pipeline may take a long time to mature to a deal, but the market feels very active right now.

Thanks so much.

Thank you.

Our next question will come from David Palmer with Evercore ISI. Please go ahead.

Thanks, and good morning. I'm just going to continue on that line of questioning about how you're feeling heading into fiscal 25. I'm wondering how you're feeling about pet synergies, productivity, visibility, anything that kind of gives you dry powder for what seems to be a starting point where you're going to want to stabilize volume. You know, pet's post-consumer brand volume is down 6%. I would imagine that you'll want to dial up promotion spending to address that. So I'm just thinking about things that could be incremental. You mentioned the TSA sunsetting with Smucker. Any thoughts about how the gives and takes for 25 would be helpful? Thanks.

Yes. So on the serial side, obviously we've got the Lancaster closing that's on track. There'll be a contribution to the positive. So that's right-sizing some capacity or overcapacity we have now. And then I would say Beyond that, in post-consumer brands, just your comment about down 6%, there were a couple factors in the quarter around serial volumes. We were really in line with the category. Beyond that, we saw a discontinuation on our side with some skew rationalization in Canada. And then also we've seen just a general pullback in KCCO or government volumes in terms of bid business across the board, but those are really the two outliers relative to category performance and our own. But I would say Lancaster's the positive to offset some of what you talked about in potential volume pressures.

You want to give us an estimate of what that could mean to EBITDA and the timing of that in fiscal 25?

We talked about Lancaster as being a $25 million contribution for the full year, and we're on track to be there. So, again, to your point, there's volume pressures. If they persist, there could be promotional, although we're pretty rational in terms of our promotional outlook.

Great. Thank you.

Our next question will come from Ken Goldman with JP Morgan. Please go ahead.

Hi. Two quick ones to start, if I may. One, I didn't quite hear you on the TSA timing. Is that shifting the exit into 2025 now? I think it was previously scheduled for the fourth quarter of this year. Please correct me if that's not right. And then I also was hoping for an update on the timing of the Michael plan. I wasn't sure if we had heard that.

So the TSA with Smucker, there's no change in the timing. There's a part of the COPAC arrangement that lingers into the first part of fiscal 25, but we're on target to exit the back office TSA at the end of our fiscal year. And then the question about food service, could you say that again?

I just didn't understand if there was any change in the guidance on the timing of the Michael plant opening.

No, we didn't. our prepared remarks didn't comment about that. But the timing of Norwalk, if that's what you're talking about the expansion of protein shakes.

Oh, thank you. I'm not saying it clearly. But yes, thank you.

Yeah, no, the plant is open. It's the it's just our ramp up has been slower than we expected. So So I guess the way to put it is yes, the profitability from that are expected profitability from that has been delayed beyond what we had previously communicated.

Thank you. And then one more, if I can, just on SG&A. You know, broadly over the last 12 months, your SG&A has grown much more rapidly than your sales. And I know you've talked about increasing marketing, but it brings now your SG&A as a percentage of sales over the last 12 months back up to kind of the range it was, you know, for many years, around that kind of mid-18%. until it dipped the last couple of years. I'm just curious, is it fair to kind of think about this percentage as a good number to model ahead, you know, understanding that we'll never stay exactly there? Or are there reasons to kind of think that SG&A dollars will continue to rise at a meaningfully faster pace than revenue?

Yeah, I think a couple of things. You mentioned A and C. We definitely have some targeted additional investments there that we may recalibrate. Also, given the overperformance in the portfolio, there's definitely some elevated stip or bonus within some of our segments as well that would reset next year.

Okay, thank you.

Our next question will come from Matt Smith with Stiefel. Please go ahead.

Hi, good morning. I wanted to go back to the food service business. You have a, you have the expanded capacity coming online at Norwalk. Could you remind us when that capacity comes online and your visibility into the pipeline of filling that capacity and what it could mean for further distribution opportunities?

Yeah, we, we still have another year of construction or so on Norwalk. So that would really be, you know, fiscal 26 when that would come online. And then there'd be a ramp period that's typically, you know, could be as long as 12 months. in terms of filling that plant.

Thank you for that. And if we could move to the refrigerator retail business, you invested in some promotional activity to bring consumers back into or to induce trial and get consumers to trade back up into your brand. Can you talk about why the lift wasn't as strong as you had anticipated and where you go from here to to improve your volume trajectory?

Sure. Again, as we mentioned, we're recalibrating that. Honestly, we overshot. There's a bit of a look back in that as well. It's kind of a six-month tail, so some of this is Q2 related as well, but we get the full tally. Of the spends there, we just didn't see the list in Q2 and Q3 to support the amount we spent in terms of promo. Again, we're recalibrating that. But what happened essentially is this quarter, as an example, was a 4% increase in sides. I think to support that level of spend, we would have expected something north of 10. And instead, we subsidized some base sales that were on promotion, which deteriorated profitability.

You mentioned a longer look-back period for those promotional events. Are you able to recalibrate that fairly quickly, or does that take a couple of quarters to pull planned promotions out of the market?

Yeah, we are. I mean, I think with the knowledge of that, again, I think as a reminder, just as a comparison to cereal, I think is a good analogy is, you know, cereal is a very mature category with a lot of history behind promotions. As a reminder, we haven't been able to promote in refrigerated retail a much different category than cereal. We just don't have that history. So definitely underestimated the level of promotional activity that happens. But we have recalibrated the accrual and our expectations in the quarter, so we feel like we have it ring-fenced and adjusting that going forward. So we feel like we've got a good handle on it.

Thank you, Matt. I'll pass it on.

Our next question will come from Michael Lavery with Piper Sandler. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning. Good morning. You mentioned how branded cereal is outperforming private label, but we keep also hearing so much about how the consumer is stretched. How do you maybe just reconcile the cereal dynamics? And I think you also said you expect a little bit more stable, you know, the consumer to be in a maybe stable at least or a little bit better place in fiscal 25. Is Is there a little bit of read-through from serial, or how do we think about where the consumer is there?

Let me start with the initial comment. Private label outperformed branded in the quarter.

Oh, sorry. Okay. I misheard that.

And I think the comment around the consumer behavior going forward is more about the acceptance of, the pricing environment that has moved so rapidly and has taken some time to grow accustomed to. So it feels like, you know, we intentionally use the word that the consumer is in a transitional mode in that we are now going from a super hot labor market to a cooling labor market, cooling inflation. So I think that it should be generally constructive for volumes to get past the reference price adjustment. and it should be constructive for more value products as we see a bit of a cooling in the labor market. So we tend to think that the consumer environment will be more constructive next year on balance, but there are certainly some puts and takes.

And would you characterize that as likely across all your categories, or do you have somewhere you would call out maybe more likely to see extended pressure?

Certainly in cereal, given its maturity, we continue to believe within the Bob Evans brand there are opportunities to do considerably better. Again, as Matt mentioned, we let our trade skills get a bit rusty, having been through a period in which we didn't really try to create demand. Value-added eggs continues to outperform the overall volume trends broadly across food, both away from home and in-home. So I think the comments would be most applicable to cereal with varying degrees of application to the other categories.

That's helpful. And just on PET, can you give an update on kind of the spending trajectory and how to think about just timing and where that's directed in terms of, you know, kind of which brands and how that's playing out?

And when you say spending trajectory, you mean of incremental investment in things like advertising? Exactly, yeah. It's mostly around our more premium brands that are larger. So, you know, I don't want to get into details around particular cadence and spend, but, I mean, you can look at the portfolio and into it where we would choose to invest.

Okay. Thanks so much.

Thank you.

Our next question comes from John Baumgartner with Mizuho Securities. Please go ahead.

Good morning. Thanks for the questions. First off, coming back to refrigerated retail and the trade promo, just to clarify, Matt, if I remember correctly, last quarter, I think there were some customer-funded promotions that I think seemed promising in terms of the consumer response. And you mentioned the dust is still settling here on Q3, but were there any material changes in terms of type of outlet, type of program, or maybe even geography relative to the customer-funded approach from Q2?

No, the comment on customer was really around Q1, and that was during the holiday season, so that would be maybe the different dynamic is that's the peak season where we're seeing really good volumes, and then a little bit of seasonality in Q2, and then there is no seasonality benefit in Q3, but I would say that's really the difference, which is Q1 is a very, very strong quarter. Okay, and then

Okay, thanks for that. And then Rob, I wanted to come back to food service and the volume growth there. Are there certain segments within Away From Home where your distribution growth is skewing in particular? And then for your existing business, the exposure to breakfast, Are you seeing any sort of shift within that day part where precooked eggs are particularly resilient or if there's more trading down to less expensive items? You mentioned eggs are outperforming, but I'm not sure if that's just due to a smaller base effect relative to other offerings that are out there. Maybe it's too granular, but just curious if you have any observations on sell-through more broadly at retail. Thank you.

Yeah, the precooked business, which is the highest value add and highest margin business, continuing to perform very well. In fact, grew 50% volumetrically over the quarter. We are seeing changes in some of the foot traffic patterns across restaurants and QSRs, which I'm sure you've seen reported by some of the larger ones that have been within the last couple of weeks. So there is some offset in terms of where that business could be going, but the value proposition of that particular product is such that it's a great way to take labor out of back-of-house operations, and we think it will continue a long-term trend irrespective of the short-term vagaries of some of the foot traffic issues.

Thanks, Rob. Thanks, Matt.

And our next question comes from Rob Dickerson with Jefferies. Please go ahead.

Great. Thanks so much. Rob, just around the commodity complex, as you kind of think through next year, are there any potential kind of offsetting benefits, maybe in some of the more grain-based categories in which you play, that could help support profitability, kind of despite seeing this volume pressure if it weren't to correct immediately, on top of, let's say, some of the right-sizing of commodities?

As we look at it right now, there's fairly balanced benefits, as you mentioned, from grains, but then there's some offsetting inflationary items such as packaging and sugar as a couple of examples. So I don't think we see it as a huge benefit. At the same time, we're not currently expecting it to be a huge detriment either.

uh so fairly balanced as we head into the next fiscal year all right cool um and then just quickly all read effects um you know you called out in the release um and comments just the you know margin uptick uh off of some i guess pricing it sounds like maybe you know part of that portfolio um the margin uptick was uh was impressive right uh on a sequential but then also on a year-to-year basis and i'm just curious again as we think through say q4 you know um next year is that step up like somewhat sustained like is that kind of more of a you know kind of a new you know uh a new margin um kind of base for that business or could there be you know some other flow through uh impacts that would kind of bring that back down thanks yeah a couple things uh as matt said in his prepared remarks there's a benefit this quarter

because of inventory build. So we have an ERP conversion that is going to hit at the beginning of next fiscal year. And in preparation for that, we're building inventory to manage through any bumps in the road that might occur. And because of that, we had an absorption benefit in the third quarter that you wouldn't expect on an ongoing basis. With that said, we certainly expect that Q2 and Q1 of this year were more the trough. and that our expectation is that we'll begin migrating towards the more historical margin profile of that business. But to be fair, Q3 was a step up. That's more of a step than we would expect on the trajectory that we eventually get to. So maybe a clear way to say it, expect a little bit of a step down, but still the trend line will be better than where it was at the beginning of this fiscal year. Okay, very helpful. Thank you.

Our next question comes from Mark Parenti with Wells Fargo Securities.

Hey, good morning. Thank you for the question. First on PEC, you talked through some of the drivers of the sequential slowdown in sales from Q2. Just doing some simple math implies some further expansion on margins, even as you're stepping up advertising around the premium brands. So maybe just a little more color on the margin progress there.

Yeah. So, I mean, I think a lot of our margin progress has been more around just the flow-through of the manufacturing efficiencies that we've had and the stabilization there is the bigger driver. We've taken some of those dollars and reinvested behind the brands and ramped ANC. But I'd say manufacturing performance and cost are really the keys for the margin improvement.

Okay, thanks. And then CapEx stepped up this year with a pet investments, well, the shake me in the bathroom ramp. So much of these projects carry in the next year, he spoke to a facility timing, just any context there and how we should think about CapEx levels for 25. I guess, thinking through free cash flow conversion ahead.

Yeah, these are definitely multi-year projects, certainly Norwalk and Bloomfield, and I think the way we've talked about it is we expect 25 to be very similar to 24 in terms of the CapEx range we have and spend.

And Mr. Trent, did this answer your question?

Yeah, thank you.

Thank you. And we will take our final question from Carla Casalo with J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead. Great. Thank you.

A couple of follow-ups. You talked about the environment both in food service and retail, but is your expectation that we should see trade spending pick up as we go into the back half of this year? And is it consistent across categories? Are you seeing more need for trade spend in one versus another? And then I have one question on M&A.

I think we will likely see a little bit of an uptick in trade spend, but it will be targeted and not, you know, knee-jerk reactive. I think the best example being the way we spent in our Bob Evans brand. You know, we need to make sure we get the lift that is intended with the trade spend. And I'm sorry, Will, is there other questions?

Well, I'm wondering, is it more targeted in one category versus another, or one category more exposed?

No, we'll – where we think there are pricing opportunities to benefit from trade spend across the portfolio, we'll execute there. As we go in, the primary focus is on potatoes, side dishes.

Okay. And then the other question was on the M&A environment, and Peter just talked to the – deal flow and if there are any – if the opportunities are getting more interesting or levels coming to more fair, I think in the past you just talked about your rational type levels for the sellers.

Yeah, I'm sorry, Carly. You're a bit echoing, so I'm not sure I got all of the questions, but I'll do my best. I think we've seen a period of time in which there have been lower than average P.E. exits. So we're seeing more opportunities from PDE owners of consumer assets. We always are of the opinion that corporate owners should do portfolio pruning. So there are some opportunities in that area. So I would say the same thing I said in my prior comments that the quantum of opportunities has increased significantly year over year and even sequentially. that doesn't mean anything will happen because we want to be very disciplined with respect to how we allocate capital. And as long as we're trading beneath the average of the multiples of which we can acquire on a post-synergy basis, we will just stay the course and allocate capital into our shares. So good environment, well, a plentiful environment from an opportunity perspective, whether that converts anything or not, too early to say.

Okay, great. Thank you.

Thank you.

And we have now reached the conclusion of the question and answer session. This will conclude today's Post Holdings Third Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call and Webcast. Please disconnect your line at this time and have a wonderful day.