Fluent Corp

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Consortium's fourth quarter and full year 2022 conference call. Joining us today are the company's CEO, Robert Beavisley, and the company's CFO, Jeff Butler. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the company's prepared remarks, the management team will conduct a question and answer session and conference call participants will be given instructions at the time. As a reminder, the conference call is being recorded and will be available for replay in the investor session of the company's website at www.getfluent.com. Please note that certain subjects discussed on this call, including answers the company may provide to questions may include content that is forward-looking in nature and, therefore, subject to risk and uncertainties, and other factors which could cause actual future results or performance to differ materially from any implied expectations. Such risks surrounding forward-looking statements are all outlined in detail within the company's regulatory fill-ins, which can be found on cedar.com. The company does not undertake the update or revise any forward-looking statements except the extent required by applicable securities laws in Canada. In addition, during this call, the company will refer to supplemental non-IFRS accounting measures, including adjusted EBITDA, which do not have any standardized meaning prescribed by IFRS. As a final reminder on today's call, unless otherwise indicated, all dollar amounts are expressed in US dollars. I would now like to turn the conference call over to Mr. Robert Beasley, the company's CEO. Sir, please go ahead.

Thank you, Brenda, and good afternoon, everyone. We delivered 34% revenue growth and strong cash flow generation in 2022, despite the challenging backdrop for the cannabis industry. as well as the temporary Florida store and cultivation facility closures we suffered as a result of Hurricane Ian. Our ability to capture meaningful market share in Florida, as well as our exit from Michigan, has enabled us to sharpen focus on our core markets. We also laid the groundwork to expand our operational capabilities in both Pennsylvania and Texas while opening new stores in Florida in 2023. Looking at our fourth quarter and recent operational highlights, In Florida, we delivered 26% year-over-year revenue growth in Q4. The strong results were driven by improved production capacity, improved store productivity, as well as opening new store locations, which more than offset the margin compression witnessed by increasing competition in the state. Our new customer acquisition rates continue to rise, and the number of transactions per day in each store has witnessed exceptional growth. We've bounced back from Hurricane Ian with our stores and cultivation facilities now operating ahead of pre-hurricane levels today. Notably, the Sweetwater facility is fully operational after sustaining considerable damage. I'm proud of our team for working relentlessly to get this facility back on line. The last few harvests have had 30% plus THC flower potencies, which is the highest that we've ever seen come out of that facility, illustrating that the facility is truly back in full functioning capacity. Regarding new store openings in Florida, we recently cut the ribbon at three locations, Pensacola Nine Mile, Pensacola Downtown, and Jacksonville Atlantic Beach. The Pensacola stores are off to an amazing start and we expect them to be top performers within the next few months. We now have 31 stores in Florida with the goal of adding five more stores by the end of 2023, three of which are already under contract and in construction. Our new stores reflect the new open concept with a dedicated express and self-checkout space. Most of our stores have drive-thrus. We've restructured our marketing department and have brought in new talent to help access and utilize digital assets and digital marketing. We've greatly decreased our online response times and our customer wait times and all this is above the industry average in Florida. This has resulted in more efficient customer service and increased rates of repeat fluent customers. Our focus on service is really starting to be reflected in the online social media comments as well. From a product perspective, we recently launched dark chocolate bars, which was a complete and total sellout, and are expected to unveil the new BHO concentrate lines in the next couple weeks. This BHO technology increases manufacturing capacity and allows the rollout of concentrate products such as shatter, crumble, and diamonds. We anticipate these products will unlock an entirely new customer group for our sales. In our Tampa facility, we're working on optimizing production and cultivation efficiencies. Live resin production space is complete and equipped and ready to begin operations. We've also streamlined packaging and labeling with new technology. We've automated pre-roll production and expanded the drying trimming capacity to accommodate the increased harvest yields we're now seeing out of the Tampa facility. Given our plans for new stores, as well as improved store productivity, we are currently evaluating opportunities to increase cultivation and footprint capacity at other locations. We've currently cited two possible locations for expansion of cultivation. Looking ahead, both the short and long-term prospects for our business in Florida is very strong. Recreational cannabis use appears to be poised to make it on the November 2024 ballot. Today, over 70% of the signatures required have been gathered. If approved by voters, this would be a meaningful tailwind for consortium for many years to come. It is accepted generally that Florida will be the largest cannabis market in the country once adult use arrives. But even without recreational cannabis, we are positioned to be one of the top five or six operators in the state, per the consistent OMMU data. Going to Texas, the legislative environment for cannabis is also moving in a favorable direction. I was recently appointed to the CUP work group at DPS, which will hopefully allow constructive contribution into the development of the rules and regulation for medical cannabis in that state. It's important to note that any comments I make about Texas here or in the post questions really reflect my views and not those of Texas DPS. We've hired a new president and sales team in Texas and increased our operational staffing. We're now implementing advertising campaigns to build generalists, making contacts with physician groups in Houston, and we're under contract for the construction of a new delivery center in Houston. We hope to use this space as both retail space, delivery space, and also to conduct educational presentations. We are also working on our physician network so more patients have access to the physician offices as alternative delivery sites. Our first THC sale was just last week, and it's a testament to the progress we've made over the last couple months. Historically, we've only been able to sell CBD in the state of Texas. We remain one of three license holders in Texas and are poised to capitalize on the long-term growth opportunity in this market as a first mover. In Pennsylvania, we began... to see very solid improvements across our three stores during the quarter Q4. It was also our first full quarter of operations at our newest store in Anvil. We have worked diligently to better understand and reorganize our inventory control and inventory purchasing in Pennsylvania, and the benefit of this optimization has improved gross margins and adjusted EBITDA in the state. We're excited about the news that this state will also soon allow adult use and hope to pick up additional store locations at this time. We are not sure exactly the number of locations, but it appears to be somewhere between five and nine if you listen to the legislative rumor mill. We are currently working to expand our Hanover dispensary as we're previously only utilizing one small portion of the existing building space. This store remains the only cannabis store in Hanover, Pennsylvania. Given our improved productivity as well as patient demand from new sales in this area, we believe the store is capable of generating greater economics with the addition of more floor space and point-of-sale systems. As we exit this year and look into 2023, we expect to continue opening new stores in Florida and improving our cultivation to increase both capacity and flower quality. We're very excited about our growth prospects in Texas, as I believe this opportunity in Texas is similar to being a first operator in Florida seven or eight years ago. The first mover advantage could be significant with an outsized risk-reward, Beyond our core markets, we still have aspirations of entering new states, either by applying for new licenses or combining with existing operators as we see medical and recreational cannabis legislation gain traction. It's an exciting and opportunistic time to be operating in the cannabis industry, and we continue to put the pieces in place for our shareholders to benefit from high-growth markets. Before I pass the call over to Jeff to go over the financial results, I'd like to welcome him to the consortium team. Jeff joined us in March and brings more than 25 years of financial operations and planning experience, including public company CFO experience at another vertically immigrated MSO. On behalf of the team, we're all excited to have Jeff on board, and I hope that the market in general and all of our investors will welcome him when they have the opportunity. Over to you, Jeff.

Thank you, Robert, and good afternoon, everyone. I'm excited about the opportunities that lie ahead for consortium, and I look forward to spending more time with the broader investment community over the coming weeks and months. Turning to our fourth quarter results, please note all figures are in U.S. dollars and all variance commentary is on a year-over-year basis, unless otherwise specified. Revenue increased 28% in Q4 to $23.5 million, compared to $18.3 million in Q4 of 2021. The increase was largely driven by growth in Florida as we ended 2022 with 29 stores open compared to 27 at the end of 2021. This was partially offset by impacts from Hurricane Ian, and in Pennsylvania, revenue growth was also driven by a new store and improved same-store productivity. Adjusted gross profit for the quarter was $0.7 million compared to $11.8 million in the prior year. with the decrease driven by the IAS 41 addendum, which caused us to catch up and recognize income tax on biologicals that was not accounted for in the first three quarters of 2022. Excluding this one-time impact, adjusted gross profit in Q4 2022 was $11.7 million. Operating expenses in the fourth quarter were $7.8 million compared to $8.1 million in the prior year. with the decrease primarily driven by lower legal and professional fees, partially offset by increased sales and marketing spend, along with increased salaries expense. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter increased 54%, 7.9 million, compared to 5.1 million, with the increase primarily driven by improved productivity across our cultivation, more stores, and better operational efficiencies. Quickly reviewing our full year 2022 financial results, revenue increased 34% to $87.7 million compared to $65.4 million in the prior year, with Florida revenue up 31% to $73.2 million compared to $55.7 million. In Florida, we achieved same-store year-over-year growth of 24% and the remaining 7% of the growth came from the addition of the new stores. In Pennsylvania, revenue grew 52% to $14.7 million compared to $9.7 million, with 26% same-store year-over-year growth. Adjusted gross profit increased 5% to $44.0 million compared to $41.9 million, with the adjusted gross margin of 50.1% compared to 64.1% in the prior year. The decrease in the gross margin was primarily attributable to the adoption of IAS 41, which moved expenses previously shown in operating expense or taxes into cost of goods sold. Operating expenses decreased 10% to $33.1 million compared to $36.4 million in 2021, with the decrease coming from many areas, both operational and administrative. One item of note was that we had significant decrease in stock-based compensation. Adjusted EBITDA for 2022 increased 28% to $25.1 million compared to $19.6 million in the prior year, with the increase primarily driven by improved productivity across our cultivation, more stores, and better operational efficiencies. Cash from operations improved significantly to $19.1 million in 2022 compared to cash used of $5 million in 2021. This improvement speaks to the focus of this management team over the past year to scrutinize spend to improve operational efficiencies. At December 31st, 2022, the company had approximately $8.4 million of cash and cash equivalents and $5.7 million of total debt, with approximately $314 million fully diluted shares outstanding. That concludes our financial highlights. Operator, we'll now open the call for Q&A.