J. M. Smucker Q1 2022 Prepared Remarks Earnings Call Transcript

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August 25, 2021

There are 3 speakers on the call.

Operator

Good morning. This is Aaron Burgholm, Vice President, Investor Relations for The J. M. Smucker Company. Thank you for listening to our prepared remarks on our fiscal 2022 Q1 earnings.

Operator

After this brief introduction, Mark Smucker, President and Chief Executive Officer, We'll give an overview of the quarter's results and an update on strategic initiatives. Tucker Marshall, Chief Financial Officer, We'll then provide a detailed analysis of the financial results and our updated fiscal 2022 outlook. Later this morning, we will hold a separate live question and answer webcast. During today's discussion, We will make forward looking statements that reflect our current expectations about future plans and performance. These statements rely on assumptions and estimates, and actual results may differ materially due to risks and uncertainties.

Operator

Additionally, please note we will refer to non GAAP financial measures management uses to evaluate performance internally. I encourage you to read the full disclosure concerning forward looking statements and details on our non GAAP measures in this morning's press release. Today's press release, a supplementary slide deck summarizing the quarterly results, management's prepared remarks, and the Q and A webcast can all be accessed on our Investor Relations website atjmsmucker.com. Please contact me if you have additional questions after today's question and answer session. I will now turn the discussion over to Mark.

Speaker 1

Thank you, Aaron, and good morning, everyone. Our business continued to perform in the new fiscal year as our operational excellence drove continued strong demand for our products, resulting in overall market share gains for our portfolio of brands. Our Q1 financial results were in line with our expectations, as we continue to benefit from strong at home consumption and recovering sales for our away from home business. It is clear consumer behavior has shifted even as the economy has continued to reopen and consumer mobility increased through the spring early summer. We will continue to benefit from strong at home consumption trends as consumers remain loyal to our iconic brands.

Speaker 1

While the environment is evolving, We are confident we will maintain momentum for our brands as people return to schools and workplaces. In the Q1, net sales declined 6% versus the prior year. Excluding non comparable net Sales from divestitures and foreign exchange, net sales increased 1%, building upon double digit growth last year. Net sales adjusted for divestitures grew 6% on a 2 year CAGR basis, demonstrating growth across all three of our U. S.

Speaker 1

Retail segments. Adjusted earnings per share was 1.90 reflecting the anticipated cost increases and the timing of offsetting pricing actions, which mostly became effective at the end of the quarter. In the quarter, we successfully implemented net pricing actions to fully recover the cost increases heading into the fiscal year on a go forward basis. However, Macroeconomic factors have continued to evolve, creating incremental supply chain uncertainty around the availability of labor and transportation, and multiple extreme weather events have impacted key commodities important to our business. As a result, we now anticipate ongoing cost inflation and supply disruption to persist beyond our previous expectations and through the remainder of the fiscal year.

Speaker 1

In response, Our teams are implementing additional net pricing actions and cost savings initiatives. However, Due to the timing of the cost increases and recovery through higher net pricing, as well as some supply chain disruption, We have revised our expectations and are lowering our full year adjusted earnings per share outlook by approximately 5%. We remain optimistic about our ability to overcome these transitory challenges, and are confident in our strategy, and the continued strength of our brands and the ability to invest and sustain market share improvements. Our talented people and their ability to operate with excellence, while actively managing our supply chain and customer engagements over the last 18 months has been instrumental to our success and will continue to to support the delivery of our business through these dynamic times. Turning to our segment results.

Speaker 1

In Pet Foods, Net sales, excluding the Natural Balance divestiture, increased 2% versus the prior year. Growth was driven by our cat food and dog snacks businesses, which grew net sales by 4% and 3%, respectively. Comparable net sales grew at 3% CAGR on a 2 year basis. Within dog food, our efforts to evolve the Nutrish brand and accelerate growth are lagging our expectations. As a result, The return to growth for this brand will be delayed beyond the current fiscal year.

Speaker 1

We are currently evaluating additional actions to ensure that we position the business appropriately for sustained long term growth. Turning to our coffee business. Net sales were slightly behind expectations, decreasing 5% versus the prior year, primarily due to lapping retailer inventory restocking. Our portfolio of brands outperformed the category, gaining 1.1 points of dollar share in the quarter. On a 2 year CAGR basis, net sales grew 8% as consumers have sustained at home coffee habits formed during the pandemic.

Speaker 1

At home coffee Currently represents around 75% of all coffee drinking occasions compared to 2 thirds pre pandemic. Cafe Bustelo and Dunkin' were the 2 fastest growing brands in the category, with retail sales growing 12% and 9% respectively in the quarter versus the prior year. Our branded K Cup portfolio continues to outperform the 1 Cup coffee segment. In the quarter, retail sales of our brands grew 10%, and we gained over one point of share. Versus 2 years ago, our K Cup portfolio grew at a CAGR of 15%, which is approximately 2 times the category average.

Speaker 1

The Folgers brand gained share in both the canister and 1 cup formats. Across all formats, the Folgers brand gained 24,000 incremental points of distribution in retailer shelf resets that began in May. We will continue to fuel this momentum with a bold new Folgers marketing campaign launching in calendar year 2022, with additional plans to reinvigorate and transform the brand toward the end of the fiscal year. In our consumer foods business, we continue to deliver exceptional results across all categories. Excluding non comparable net sales for the divested Crisco business, net sales increased 4% versus the prior year, and grew at an 11% CAGR on a 2 year basis.

Speaker 1

We grew share across all of our key brands: Jif, Smucker's and Smucker's Uncrustables. Smucker's Uncrustables frozen sandwiches continued to deliver powerful growth, with net sales increasing 28% in the quarter, the 9th consecutive quarter of double digit growth. Total company sales of Uncrustables, including the away from home business, exceeded $120,000,000 this quarter, the 29th consecutive quarter of growth for the brand. The expansion of our facility in Longmont, Colorado is advancing and we'll provide capacity to exceed our $500,000,000 annual sales target in fiscal 2023. In peanut butter, we continue to maximize production to meet elevated demand.

Speaker 1

The Jif brand net sales grew 9% and gained over 5 share points in the quarter. Points of distribution for Jif have increased 6% compared to a year ago, reflecting the lapping of out of stocks in the prior year and incremental distribution in recent shelf resets. In addition to core offerings, Jif Squeeze and Jif No Added Sugar Innovation that has been in market for the past year are both contributing to growth and were the number 1 and number 2 innovation items launched in the category. We delivered this strong top line performance across our retail businesses, along with a robust recovery for our Away From Home business, which grew 27% excluding divestitures and foreign exchange. Growth for Smucker's Uncrustables and market share gains have been significant contributors to the recovery, as we have achieved all time high shares in the liquid coffee, portion control fruit spreads, and breakfast syrup categories.

Speaker 1

Across all our businesses, our Q1 results underscore our increased focus and significant progress we've made against our executional priorities, which include driving commercial excellence, Streamlining our cost infrastructure, reshaping our portfolio, and unleashing our organization to win. Advancing our priority to drive commercial excellence, we continued our trend of improving market share across our portfolio. As we grew dollar share in core consumer and coffee segments and our dry cat food business. In aggregate, we grew share for brands representing 66% of our sales, up from 55% in the prior quarter and 26% just under 2 years ago. This marks 7 consecutive quarters of improvement in this key metric, serving as a testament to the success of our improved commercial model and operational excellence.

Speaker 1

Progress on reshaping our portfolio continues as we are actively evaluating opportunities to further optimize our on shelf assortment and increase our focus and resources towards sustainable growth opportunities. We will continue sharing news about our efforts as we proceed through this fiscal year. We continue to make progress on our priority of streamlining our cost infrastructure, which has been a component of our efforts to manage the current cost inflationary environment. We continue to work to optimize our supply chain, maximize network production efficiencies, and minimize discretionary expenses across the organization. Full implementation of these initiatives will deliver $50,000,000 of incremental cost savings this year and in each of the next 2 fiscal years.

Speaker 1

Our strategic priority Unleash and empower our employees and organization to win includes prioritization of activities focused on delivering with excellence and winning in the marketplace. We are also continuing progress on our journey to advance inclusion, diversity and equity at every level of the organization. We updated our executive compensation awards for fiscal year 2022 to include a metric tied to achievement of inclusion, diversity and equity objectives. We are looking to the future with strong conviction in our at agy, with this quarter demonstrating our continued momentum and execution on our priorities in a dynamic operating and demand environment. Many consumers were introduced to or rediscovered our brands throughout the pandemic.

Speaker 1

The investments in our brands and successful product innovations, along with our operational excellence, are supporting continued strength in our top line performance, giving us confidence in our ability to sustain our momentum. While the current supply chain and cost environment is volatile, we remain confident in successfully managing these near term challenges, while taking actions to strengthen our company and support long term sales and profit growth, leading to increased shareholder value. I'll now turn the discussion over to Tucker.

Speaker 2

Thank you, Mark. Good morning, everyone. Let me begin by giving an overview of Q1 results, which finished in line with our expectations. Then I'll provide details on our and updated financial outlook for fiscal 2022. Net sales decreased 6%.

Speaker 2

Excluding the impact of divestitures and foreign exchange, Net sales increased 1%. The increase in comparable net sales was primarily due to favorable volume mix for Away From Home and the Pet Food segment, partially offset by reduced volume mix for International and the Coffee segment. Net pricing was a slight benefit, primarily reflecting higher net pricing in consumer foods, mostly offset by lower net pricing in the coffee segment. Adjusted gross profit decreased $113,000,000 or 15% from the prior year. This was driven by higher cost for commodities and transportation, most notably in the Pet Foods segment, the non comparable impact of the divested businesses and on favorable volume mix.

Speaker 2

Adjusted operating income decreased $81,000,000 or 20%, reflecting the decreased gross profit, partially offset by a decrease in SD and A expense, mostly driven by reduced marketing. As a reminder, some marketing investments were pulled into the prior year Q4, contributing to part of the reduction. Below operating income, interest expense decreased $3,000,000 primarily as a result of reduced debt outstanding. Net other expense increased $10,000,000 primarily reflecting a $7,000,000 net loss related to the prepayment of debt and a $4,000,000 pension settlement. The adjusted effective income tax rate was 23.6% compared to 24.4 percent in the prior year.

Speaker 2

Factoring all this in, Q1 adjusted earnings per share was $1.90 compared to $2.37 in the prior year, a decrease of 20%. I'll now turn to Q1 segment results, beginning with Pet Foods. Net sales decreased 6% versus the prior year. Excluding the non comparable divestiture impact, net sales increased 2% versus the prior year, primarily driven by favorable volume mix for dog snacks, cat food and private label offerings, partially offset by declines for dog food. Comparable net sales grew at a 3% CAGR on a 2 year basis.

Speaker 2

Cat food and dog snacks continued to perform well, growing 4% and 3%, respectively, led by the Meow Mix, Pepperoni and Milk Bone brands. Dog food net sales decreased 4%, reflecting decreases for Nutrish Dry Dog Food and the Kibbles and Bits brand. Pet Food segment profit declined 36%, primarily reflecting higher commodity and transportation costs. Turning to the coffee segment, net sales decreased 5% versus the prior year and increased 8% on a 2 year CAGR basis. Suspended promotions in the prior year and the lapping of retailer inventory restocking contributed to the year over year decline.

Speaker 2

The Folgers and Dunkin' Brands declined in the quarter, while Cafe Bustelo was flat. Coffee segment profit decreased 17%, reflecting lower pricing, higher grain coffee costs, and the reduced contribution from volume mix, partially offset by decreased marketing expense. In Consumer Foods, net sales decreased 11%. Excluding the non comparable net sales for the divested Crisco business, net sales increased 4% versus the prior year and grew 11% on a 2 year CAGR basis. The 1st quarter comparable net sales increase relative to the prior year was driven by higher net Pricing of 4%, primarily driven by peanut butter and Smucker's Uncrustables.

Speaker 2

Growth was led by Smucker's Uncrustables frozen sandwiches and Jif peanut butter, which grew 28% and 9%, respectively, partially offset by a 16% decline for fruit spreads. Consumer Food segment profit decreased 10%, primarily due to the lapping of non comparable profit from the divested Crisco Business, partially offset by decreased marketing expense. Lastly, in International Away From Home, Net sales increased 6%. Excluding the prior year non comparable net sales for the divested Crisco Business and Foreign Exchange, Net sales increased 4%. The away from home business increased 27% on a comparable basis, driven by double digit growth for most categories in the portfolio.

Speaker 2

The international business declined 12% on a comparable basis, primarily driven by the lapping of significant at home consumption for the Canadian baking business. Overall, International Away From Home segment profit increased 6%, primarily reflecting favorable foreign currency exchange, decreased marketing expense and a net benefit of price and costs. This was partially offset by the non comparable profit for the divested Crisco Business and Lower Volume Mix. 1st quarter free cash flow was $70,000,000 compared to $332,000,000 in the prior year, reflecting a decrease in cash provided by operating activities, partially offset by a $9,000,000 decrease and capital expenditures. The decrease in cash provided by the operating activities was mostly due to greater working capital requirements driven by the increased trade receivables and inventory as compared to the prior year and the reduced earnings.

Speaker 2

Capital expenditures for the quarter were $68,000,000 representing 3.7 percent of net sales. We paid down $123,000,000 of net debt in the quarter, including prepaying $400,000,000 of senior notes due in March of this fiscal year using a combination of excess cash and commercial paper. Based on a total debt balance of $4,600,000,000 and a trailing 12 month EBITDA of approximately $1,700,000,000 Our leverage ratio stands at 2.7 times. We continue to prioritize the use of cash toward dividends and debt repayments while evaluating other strategic uses of cash to support future growth and shareholder value. Let me now provide additional color on our revised outlook for fiscal 2022.

Speaker 2

The pandemic and related implications, along with cost inflation and volatility in supply chains, continues to cause uncertainty for the fiscal year 2022 outlook. Any manufacturing or supply chain disruption, as well as changes in consumer mobility and purchasing behavior, retailer inventory levels and macroeconomic conditions could materially impact actual results. We continue to focus on managing elements we can control, including taking the necessary steps to minimize the impact of cost inflation and any labor or business disruption. As always, we will continue to plan for unforeseen volatility while ensuring we have contingency plans in place. This guidance reflects performance expectations based on the company's current understanding of the overall environment.

Speaker 2

Our updated expectation for full year net sales to decline approximately 2% at the midpoint of our guidance range. On a comparable basis, net sales are anticipated to increase Approximately 2.5 percent demonstrating the continued underlying momentum for our business and brands. This reflects benefits from higher pricing actions across multiple categories, primarily to recover increased commodity, ingredient packaging and transportation costs, along with double digit sales growth for the Smucker's Uncrustables brand and a recovery in the away from home channel, partially offset by a deceleration in at home consumption trends. Further, we are now implementing additional pricing actions to recover incremental inflationary costs versus our previous expectation, which we anticipate will be partially offset by reduced volume mix, including price elasticity consideration and Supply chain disruption primarily impacting our wet pet food business. We now anticipate gross profit margin of approximately 36%.

Speaker 2

This reflects our expectations for higher net pricing, along with cost and productivity savings and a mix benefit associated with the divestitures being more than offset by higher cost inflation. We have updated our assumptions to reflect this ongoing cost inflation, most notably for commodities ingredients, transportation and packaging. Cost inflation is now anticipated to have a high single digit impact on total cost of goods sold. Management and organizational restructuring programs, reduced incentive compensation and reductions in discretionary expenses. Total marketing spend is anticipated to be at the midpoint of our original guidance of 6% to 6.5% of net sales.

Speaker 2

We anticipate net interest expense of approximately $165,000,000 net other expense of $20,000,000 and adjusted effective income tax rate of 24% and full year weighted average shares outstanding of $108,300,000 Taking all these factors into consideration, we anticipate full year adjusted earnings per share to be in the range of of $8.25 to $8.65 Given the timing of cost increases and recovery through both Initial higher net pricing actions effective at the end of the Q1 and additional net pricing actions later in the fiscal year, Earnings are expected to decline in the second and third quarters. The decline in the second quarter is anticipated to 15%. The 4th quarter is now expected to grow more than 20%, reflecting higher net pricing catching up to higher costs and the lapping of around $40,000,000 of incremental marketing spend in the prior year. Free cash flow is now anticipated to be $800,000,000 which reflects adjustments to earnings guidance, working capital considerations and capital expenditures of $380,000,000 In closing, we remain confident and our strategy and are encouraged by the continued momentum for our business and brands. We are taking the appropriate actions to demonstrate operational excellence while managing through this volatile environment, and we remain in a strong financial position to deliver sustainable and consistent long term growth for our shareholders.

Speaker 2

Thank you for your time today. I'll now turn it back to Mark for a few closing comments.

Speaker 1

Thanks, Tucker. Before we close, I want to highlight the progress we continue to make on our commitment to have a positive impact on our communities, our supply chain, and the planet. I am pleased to share we exceeded all our 2020 environmental impact goals. Our commitment to ensuring a positive impact in this area is at the forefront of our thriving together philosophy. We plan to release our 2021 Corporate Impact Report in the coming weeks, which will communicate our commitment to transparency and accountability for progress on our ESG priorities, including updated environmental impact goals.

Speaker 1

Finally, I want to recognize Nancy Lopez Russell, who retired from our Board of Directors last week. I sincerely thank Nancy for her commitment and contributions to our company. I also want to thank all our incredible employees for their outstanding work amid unprecedented circumstances, and who continue providing products consumers and their pets love. Thank you for your time this morning. I invite you to join us at 9 am Eastern for our live question and answer webcast, which will be available on our corporate website atjmsmucker.com.

Speaker 1

Thank you.

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