Dole plc (NYSE:DOLE) Q3 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Rory Byrne: Yeah. We are pretty happy with the other three divisions. Obviously, if we look at our European business and the biggest impact is really the FX ratio. You look at things like our currencies like the euro year-on-year 11% depreciation, the Swedish kroner, which is important to us, a 17% year-on-year movement against the dollar. So when you are retranslating and reporting in dollars, that has quite a material impact on your numbers. And I guess, even on a day-to-day trading basis when you are importing as we do into euro markets and CK markets with the currency that’s significantly weaker and adding in inflationary pressures, it does put a little bit of pressure on those business, but nothing material. So we are pretty happy with our Diversified businesses.

Our Fresh Fruit business, we have got a really, really strong position in the banana and pineapple business, number one guy in North America. We have got a list customer base. We are really appreciative of the support we get from our customers. We work hard to make sure we meet all the service levels and requirements. And we have done that right through COVID times, right through supply complication times and our customers, I think, appreciate that and we work hard with them then to make sure that the cost chain items are appropriately reflected in the price. So with the exception of the Vegetable business and foreign exchange and we are feeling pretty good.

Christopher Barnes: Okay. Great. Thanks. I will pass it on.

Operator: Our next question comes from Ken Zaslow from Bank of Montreal. Your line is open.

Ken Zaslow: Hey, guy. How are you?

Rory Byrne: Good, Ken.

Ken Zaslow: Just two questions. My first one is, when you are talking about the Chilean grape crop and then you talked about the extreme heat and the iceberg, you said that contained to this quarter, does it not impact next year? On the remote — remain — on the weather side, you said, it — your outlook for 2023 would not change on that. Is there a reason why a 30% to 40% change, is it seasonal, is there something to think about? I mean it sounds like Chilean crop is seasonal? And then I have a second question.

Rory Byrne: Okay. On the Chilean one, it was actually nothing to do particularly with the crop, but the logistical issues that we had, which meant that ships and large volumes of products couldn’t get discharged in the right time, and obviously, you are dealing with a perishable product. And then it gets delayed and then the subsequent season product starts to arrive into the market at the same time. So we are working on it. It was just exceptionally unusual this year. So we are working on the basis that those supply chain disruptions going into 2023 will not reoccur and we don’t expect them to reoccur and we are going to — we are looking at how we manage that to avoid the same magnitude of problem problems that we had at the end of the season.

And then, I mean, the iceberg situation and the weather situation, I mean, it is a very unusual situation in terms of the crop failure that Johan has described. We haven’t seen such a dramatic one in quite a while. But I think it’s an unusual set of weather circumstances has been partly responsible for it. But we see some other areas of production that can compensate for that and that it don’t repeat that crop later going into 2023. I don’t understand further you want to add on that one, Johan, that might help can understand a little better?

Johan Linden: Yeah. No. The crop failure was at the tail end of the California season and we are now moving into the Arizona or we are in Arizona. It will have a little bit of an impact in the Arizona season just because we were starting them a little bit earlier than expected, but we should have cycled out of that coming into January 2023?