Premium Brands Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Provided by Quartr
November 13, 2023

Key Takeaways

  • Positive Sentiment: EBITDA margins in the Specialty Food Group improved by 300 basis points year-over-year, reaching a near-record 9.7% as recent capital investments are leveraged.
  • Positive Sentiment: New production facilities were commissioned in Edmonton, San Leandro and Ferndale, with the Kings Command expansion in Ohio set to start in December, boosting capacity in high-demand areas.
  • Negative Sentiment: Premium Food Distribution volumes fell 4.6% this quarter, driven by a poor Maine lobster catch and softer consumer demand for premium proteins, though management views these factors as transitory.
  • Negative Sentiment: Annual guidance was revised down to US$6.3–6.4 billion in sales and US$575–590 million in adjusted EBITDA, reflecting third-quarter headwinds in distribution and startup delays.
  • Positive Sentiment: Balance sheet metrics improved, with senior debt/EBITDA falling to 3.1x and unused credit capacity rising to US$730 million, supporting financial flexibility.
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Earnings Conference Call
Premium Brands Q3 2023
00:00 / 00:00

There are 3 speakers on the call.

Operator

Hello, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Premium Brands Holding Corporation Third Quarter twenty twenty three Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all lines are in listen only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question and answer session. This call is being recorded on Tuesday, 11/14/2023. I would now like to turn over the conference to George Paliologou, CEO and President.

Operator

Please go ahead.

Speaker 1

Welcome, everyone, to our twenty twenty three third quarter conference call. Thank you for joining us today. With me here is our CFO, Will Kalutych. Our presentation will follow the deck that was posted on our website this morning. Later this morning, we will hold a separate live Q and A session at 10:30AM Vancouver time.

Speaker 1

Details to the call can be found on our press release posted on our website. We're now on Slide four, which outlines certain highlights for the quarter. We're making great progress towards our five year goals and are confident that we're well on our way to meet or exceed our long term targets. What is controllable within our business is on plan and in certain cases even ahead of plan. The 300 basis point improvement in our year over year EBITDA margins in our Specialty Food Group demonstrates this and is indicative of better things to come as we scale the significant investments we have made in incremental state of the art capacity.

Speaker 1

Several challenges in the quarter masked the strong progress we're making. However, these are transitory and we expect them to dissipate quickly. Furthermore, as our new capacity projects come online, you will see the rate of improvement in our sales growth rate and margins will accelerate. We're delighted to be bringing new capacity on stream in key areas of our business where demand has traditionally exceeded supply. During the second quarter, we commissioned our new sandwich facility in Edmonton, Alberta, while subsequent to the third quarter, we commissioned our new laminated bakery plant in San Leandro, California and our new stick and bacon facility in Frondale, Washington.

Speaker 1

We will also be bringing on more capacity at our Kings Command facility in Ohio. You can see here on Slide five that our acquisition pipeline continues to remain very robust. With the various pandemic related risks and disruptions behind us, we're beginning to once again make significant progress on our various acquisition related discussions. We promise you that any acquisitions we make will not stretch the balance sheet and we will not deviate from the financial discipline that we have demonstrated in the past. In Slides six to eight, we feature some recently launched products from our specialty bakery business, Shaw Bakers.

Speaker 1

We first invested in Shaw Bakers as a startup back in 2017. The company leased an idle bakery facility in San Francisco, California and began operations as a regional artisan bakery. Its best in class artisan loaves, baguettes and buns began gaining traction and within five years the business grew to $50,000,000 Its authentic 25% butter laminated USDA products got listings with several retailers in The U. S. And the company quickly found itself outselling its capacity.

Speaker 1

In response to this, we're pleased to report the commissioning of a brand new laminated USDA bakery facility in San Leandro, California. Having visited recently, I'm happy to report the facility is best in class, combining both process automation and production efficiency with the artisanship and craftsmanship needed to produce top quality products. These best in class products will be sold locally and globally under the La Boulangerie brand. Shaw Baker's is now expecting to more than double its sales in 2024 to more than US100 million dollars and has good visibility to again double its sales over the next two to three years. Shaw Bakers was a challenged startup when PB invested in it five years ago, but it's now well on its way to becoming one of the leading laminated USDA bakery companies in North America and globally.

Speaker 1

Please look for some of these amazing products at a store near you. I will now pass it on to Will.

Speaker 2

Thanks, George. Before I begin, I would like to remind you that some of the statements made on today's call may constitute forward looking information. Future results may differ materially from what we discuss. Please refer to our MD and A for the fourteen and fifty two weeks ended 12/31/2022, as well as other information on our website for a broader description of the risk factors that could affect our performance. Turning to Slide 10.

Speaker 2

Our sales for the quarter were $1,640,000,000 representing an increase of $21,000,000 or 1.3 from 2022. The major drivers of this increase were organic volume growth in our Specialty Foods segment of $34,500,000 and a favorable translation of our U. S.-based businesses sales of $17,600,000 due to a weaker Canadian dollar. These factors were partially offset by a $28,000,000 sales contraction in our premium food distribution segment and net selling price deflation of $3,100,000 On Slide 11, we show our organic volume growth rate for the last nineteen quarters. For the quarter, it was 1.3% with our Specialty Foods segment generating organic volume growth of 3.4% and our Premium Food Food Distribution Distribution segment experiencing volume contraction of 4.6%.

Speaker 2

Specialty Foods growth was driven by its cooked protein, artisan sandwich, fresh skewer, meat snack and Italian charcuterie initiatives in The U. S. Its rate of 3.4% was however below our expectations for the quarter due to two factors. The first and most significant was temporarily lower growth in our artisan sandwich sales, while one of our major customers implements a variety of initiatives to optimize freight costs, reduce food waste and lower internal inventory levels. While some of this impact will continue into the next couple of quarters, the significant majority of it was specific to the third quarter.

Speaker 2

The second temporary factor impacting Specialty Foods growth was a delay in the startup of its new cooked protein production capacity at its Kings Command plant in Ohio. Our U. S. Cooked protein facilities have been operating at capacity for several quarters and we were expecting the Ohio plant expansion to come online in the third quarter to help fulfill our customers' needs. However, several last minute equipment issues combined with the associated manufacturers being short technical support staff resulted in the startup being pushed to the fourth quarter.

Speaker 2

The good news, as George mentioned earlier, is that this capacity is now set to start up in December. In terms of the premium food distribution sales contraction, this is primarily the result of a very poor Maine lobster catch caused by unusually poor weather conditions that prevented vessels from harvesting. Softening consumer demand for premium beef and seafood products as consumers increasingly look for lower cost meal alternatives and shift to shopping at discount grocery banners also contributed to the segment's lower sales, but to a much lesser extent. Overall, we view both factors as transitory and remain confident in Premium Food Distribution's ability to generate organic volume growth of 4% to 6% over the long term. Slide 12 shows an estimate of the Maine lobster catch for the quarter.

Speaker 2

You can see the consistent year over year decline in the catch throughout the quarter. As I mentioned earlier, this was due entirely to unusually poor weather conditions that prevented vessels from harvesting and not to the condition of the local biomass, which remains very healthy. Turning to Slide 13. This shows our historic annual sales for the last thirteen years, which have grown at a compounded annual growth rate of 22.4% as well as our projected 2023 sales using the midpoint of our revised annual guidance of $6,300,000,000 to $6,400,000,000 Based on the challenges of the third quarter and some continuation of premium foods distributions challenges into the fourth quarter, we reduced our guidance from the previous range of $6,400,000,000 to $6,600,000,000 Using the midpoint of our revised guidance, we are now expecting year over year sales growth of approximately $320,000,000 representing an increase of 5.3% or 6.7% after normalizing for an extra week of sales in 2022. Turning to Slide 14, our adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $158,800,000 representing an increase of $17,600,000 or 12.5% from 2022.

Speaker 2

The major drivers of this increase were the recovery of our margins as past selling price increases catch up with cost inflation, improved plant efficiencies, reduced outside storage costs associated with lower inventory levels and sales mix changes as our organic volume growth continues to be driven by our higher margin specialty food businesses. These factors were partially offset by a variety of cost increases, including higher promotion costs, plant overheads and bonus accruals. Slide 15 shows our adjusted EBITDA margin for the last nineteen quarters. For the third quarter, we reached a recent history record of 9.7%, driven by the continued recovery in our specialty foods margins as its costs stabilize and it continues to leverage recent capital investments through its organic growth. As we have mentioned before, the contribution margins on Specialty Foods incremental sales range from 20% up to as high as 45% on certain highly differentiated items.

Speaker 2

Normalizing for the estimated impact of the challenges faced by our lobster businesses, our adjusted EBITDA margin for the quarter is approximately 9.9%, which is closing in on our midterm targeted annual margin of 10%. Slide 16 shows our Specialty Food

Operator

EBITDA margin for the last nineteen months. You can see the significant progress we have made over the last four quarters reaching 11% in the quarter. As we look forward, we still see significant room for improvement

Speaker 2

Specialty Food margins as it leverages both recent capital expenditures as well as the new capacities coming online over the next couple of quarters. Slide 17 shows our historic annual adjusted EBITDA for the last thirteen years, which has grown at a compounded annual growth rate of 22.2% on a pre IFRS 16 basis, as well as our projected 2023 adjusted EBITDA using the midpoint of our revised annual guidance of $575,000,000 to $590,000,000 We reduced our adjusted EBITDA guidance range from the previous $590,000,000 to $610,000,000 based on the same factors used for revising our sales guidance. Using the midpoint of our revised guidance, we are now expecting year over year adjusted EBITDA growth $78,000,000 representing an increase of 15.5%. Turning to Slide 18, our earnings for the quarter were $56,400,000 representing a decrease of 4,900,000 or 8% from 2022. The main reasons for the decrease were higher interest rates, which impacted our interest costs by approximately $11,000,000 and increased interest depreciation and amortization associated with recent investments made to drive both the current as well as future quarters growth.

Speaker 2

Turning to Slide 19. For the quarter, we had $92,900,000 in capital expenditures, consisting of $84,100,000 in project CapEx and $8,800,000 in maintenance CapEx. On a year to date basis, we have spent 233,700,000 on project CapEx, dollars $220,000,000 or 94% of which relates to supporting the growth of our high margin specialty foods businesses. Looking forward, based on our approved capital budget pipeline, we expect to spend another $276,000,000 on project CapEx over the next seven to eight quarters. I should note that we expect to generate an unlevered after tax return of 15% or greater on all of our project CapEx initiatives.

Speaker 2

Slide 20 shows some of the key metrics we use to measure our financial position. We made solid progress in the quarter in improving our debt leverage levels with our senior debt to EBITDA ratio decreasing to 3.1 to one from 3.3:one last quarter and our total debt to EBITDA ratio, which includes our subordinate debentures decreasing to 4.1:one from 4.3:one last quarter. We also finished the quarter with very strong liquidity with our unused credit capacity increasing to $730,000,000 from $650,000,000 last quarter. Looking forward, we expect to see continued improvement in our leverage levels in the fourth quarter. That concludes our presentation.

Speaker 2

As George mentioned earlier, please join us on our Q and A conference call later today Vancouver time, 01:30 p. M. Toronto time. Thank you.

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