Central Garden & Pet Company (NASDAQ:CENT) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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So, overall, Pet, low-single digit. I think talking to your second question, yes, this is skewed more towards the back half. Niko said that in his prepared remarks. Certainly in the front half, we would expect a more sluggish start, Niko did provide a great deal of color on the first quarter, where we are guiding to a loss in the quarter, and that is on the back of a sluggish top line. And then the higher costs that Niko mentioned. So that starts with Q1. I think going into Q2, still last year, certainly early in Q2, had some good growth that you’re laughing. And then as we go into the back half, that’s where we really see the favorability year-over-year on both Garden and the Pet side. And then, I think your third and final question was around investment.

There will continue to be what I’d say very prudent and very modest investment in the consumer and growth agenda next year. We’re taking a far more deliberate approach on a number of our cost lines. Both Niko and I referenced a deliberate pause on hiring and filling open positions, a travel reduction, a more prudent, more gated, more phased commercial spend. So we’re taking all those approaches, as I think we should to control what we can control and make sure that the season develops in a way that we feel good about and retain that flexibility of our spend and that competitive agility that we need to ensure that we can deliver on the guidance we’ve provided.

Andrea Teixeira: In terms of the free cash flow, you did say you’re expecting that $250 million in excess inventory to be worked out. I’m assuming during the spring season. And on that end, do you have any need for refinancing or anything around that time or you think you can work with the cash that you have?

Nicholas Lahanas: I think we’re really well capitalized. So, we ended the year with almost $200 million in cash on the balance sheet, plus we have our entire ABL available to us. And then in addition to that, we have all that inventory. So if you just do the math, our working cap build will be a lot more modest than in previous years because we already have a lot of the inventory. So from a liquidity standpoint, we’re quite comfortable. Our leverage ratio, gross leverage ratio is 2.9 times, so actually an improvement over last year. So, we feel pretty good about our liquidity.

Operator: Our final question comes from the line of Hale Holden with Barclays.

Hale Holden: I just have one. On the inventory stocking which we’re seeing in Pet, is that just the mass channels? Or is that across specialty and ecom? And I was wondering if you could talk a little bit on how your pet sell out was doing in retail? Has there been any change there?

John Hanson: This is John. As we’ve talked about, we have seen inventory destocking. It’s across channels. It really is. Specialty, mass, ecom. across channels. The good news is our POS is quite a bit stronger than our shipments. And that really accentuated itself in Q4. We see it continuing through Q1. It could take through the first half to try to clear itself and converge. Right? But a little bit customer by customer, but we feel very good the POS is well above shipments.

Operator: And we have reached the end of our question-and-answer session. I’ll now turn the call back over to Tim Cofer for closing remarks.

Timothy Cofer: Thank you very much for joining our fiscal year-end earnings call. We appreciate your interest in Central and wish all of you a happy Thanksgiving week next week. Talk soon.

Operator: And this concludes today’s conference and you may disconnect your line at this time. Thank you for your participation.

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