Dole plc (NYSE:DOLE) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Bryan Spillane: Yeah. But the divestiture is in free cash like that’s a non-operating.

Jacinta Devine: No, no, sorry. No, no, absolutely. It’s net debt obviously. It’s net debt.

Bryan Spillane: Yeah. I just. But — so I guess — I guess two follow-ups there, if I’m understanding it correctly, what you’re working hard on in terms of working capital is really inventory is that where the biggest sort of lever is, if you will, in terms of converting EBITDA to free cash flow is — of the working capital items, is it inventory that we should be watching?

Jacinta Devine: Inventory is important. Trade receivables are important. At different times of the year, our funding of our growers and suppliers can move around a bit. So that’s important and the timing of seasons makes that difficult. The end of the year can be impacted by the timing of seasons in that regard. So that moves around quite a bit. Yeah, but it is, it’s focus on working capital to manage that as tightly as we can, all the levers that we have in that regard.

Bryan Spillane: Okay. And then again I’m going to ask again, I’m just trying to get a sense of as we’re modeling out years. I’m not asking for a — just a pinpoint estimate, but just what’s the range of just converting EBITDA to free cash flow?

Jacinta Devine: Yeah.

Bryan Spillane: Is it 50% of EBITDA? 20% of EBITDA?

Jacinta Devine: It’s, yeah, so we hope to have somewhere around 50-ish — $50 million for the year. So yeah.

Bryan Spillane: $50 million of free cash flow?

Jacinta Devine: Yeah.

Bryan Spillane: Okay. And is that a normal? Like again just kind of think about that as a ratio of net income with that kind of a normalized free cash flow conversion?

Jacinta Devine: Yeah. That’s sort of a normalized number.

Bryan Spillane: All right. Perfect. Thank you very much.

Jacinta Devine: Based on where we are today, yeah.

Operator: We have our next question from Gary Martin from Davy. Your line is now open.

Gary Martin: Hi, Rory, Johan, and Jacinta. Congratulations on a very strong set of results today. Just a few questions from my side. Just, first just starting with, I know you’ve mentioned continuation of strong supply and demand dynamics for Fresh Fruit, but just a double click into that a little bit more. Are you expecting positive volumes into the second half? And also just, I suppose, in congruence for that, you’d mentioned, strong pricing in Fresh Fruit as well particularly bananas, are you also expecting that to persist into the second half?

Rory Byrne: I think, Johan, I’d like to take that one. I think I mean volumes we’re expecting to be pretty stable and we’ve said that there is a healthy supply demand there and pricing will be pretty similar driven from that stability in volumes to the first half of the year. Maybe a slight weakening, but it’s too hard to call, too early to call there.

Gary Martin: Thanks for that. And then just second, just on the small bolt-on acquisitions made in Diversified EMEA during the quarter, it was interesting to see. I mean, should we see this as a bit of a starting pistol to kind of kick back into kind of more acquisitions in the Diversified space? I mean what’s the best way to think about this?

Rory Byrne: Yeah. I mean it’s pretty small. We’re constantly looking at whether it’s neighboring businesses with our existing businesses that can add something and get efficiencies and that’s an ongoing process. So over time, we may add in a few more bits and pieces like that, but we’re not going to move is down materially, those kind of acquisitions, but they’re interesting, help solidify our position, helps build our categories, build our positions with customers and historically, in the total produce model, it’s what we did and we will continue to do that going forward.