Calavo Growers, Inc. (NASDAQ:CVGW) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Mitchell Pinheiro: Great. Just last question is on the Prepared side. So it sounds good, you have a couple of new customers coming on in the second half, that should help your fixed cost leverage a bit. So if — so in a lot of this, you should — all things being equal, we should see a gradually improving gross margin in Prepared throughout the year. Is that fair?

Shawn Munsell: Yes, that’s completely fair.

Operator: . Our next question is from Ben Klieve with Lake Street Capital Markets.

Benjamin Klieve: Just a couple for me. First, I want to ask about the decision to rid the business of the salsa line, particularly in the context of the new last quarter about the — securing the relationship with Old El Paso. Can you just talk about kind of the decision to get to this point that you thought this needed to get divested, particularly in light of the big one that came in late in ’22?

Shawn Munsell: Yes, sure. Yes. So that — essentially, that — the salsa business, it’s a fine product, it has some good potential, but essentially, it just didn’t have the critical mass in the portfolio. And given the economics of that business, it just made sense for us to divert those resources to our guac business, and that’s what we’re doing. So it’s going to be — it’s — frankly, we’re going to be better by about $400,000 a year by making that divestiture.

Brian Kocher: Ben, I think the other thing that’s important to know is that we’ve arranged a co-packing relationship. So remember, I think last year, we talked about — or last — sorry, last quarter, we talked about that relationship with General Mills, think of it as another arrow in our quiver, another tool, not the only tool, and we still have that tool available. So we’ve arranged capacity and co-packing capabilities so that as we continue to sell Old El Paso brand product, whether it’s guac, which obviously we do ourselves, or salsa, which we’ll have with now what will be a third party, we retain the capabilities to do that.

Benjamin Klieve: Got it. Okay. And then another question CapEx expectations that you have $13 million for this year, $5 million in the first quarter. And Brian, you noted that a lot of that was attributable to the new contracts coming online. $8 million over the next 3 quarters, that’s not an awful lot of CapEx. Can you talk about how much of that CapEx is related to just kind of the basic maintenance CapEx that you have to do versus any investments in growth that are coming here over the next 3 quarters?

Shawn Munsell: Yes, sure. So I’d say that most of the deferral of the CapEx versus that original $18 million, Ben, that was — like Brian said, that was kind of the lower performing kind of growth and profit improvement projects, that we can reactivate at any time. So just felt like it was prudent given the Q1 performance and given the current outlook, just to — plan to defer that until we see conditions change. But as far as the kind of composition of maintenance CapEx, it’s going to be about $4 million or $5 million this year, about in line with what we guided last year.

Brian Kocher: Ben, I think the other thing that’s really important for you and the other listeners on the call to remember is we’re — we have a really good balance sheet. We added basically seasoned working capital debt that we funded through our credit facility. We’ve got plenty of liquidity and access to capital. So if we find a compelling growth opportunity, we’re certainly not going to let the guidance that we gave, hold back a really smart investment. We’re going to be — we don’t want to be penny-wise and pound-foolish here. We’re going to invest when it’s right, but I think it’s also a good signal to our entire organization that we want to be disciplined, and we want to be responsible and we want the returns to be really good for us to make an investment. But we’ve got capital. And if we find something that’s accretive and exciting, we won’t be held back.