High Tide Inc. (NASDAQ:HITI) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Sergio Patino: Thank you, Andrew, for the question. I do appreciate your comment that, if we excluded these significant changes in working capital one-time items there, they catch up with the AP. We will have been cash flow positive this quarter. Definitely you could see the big increase in working capital requirement between Q2 and Q1. But I think it was close to the – the incremental was $4 million. So now the question also will be more about the free cash flow guidance and so a couple of things that I want to highlight. The reason why we want to keep it, we want to calculate the free cash flow only using the sustaining CapEx is to be able to provide to the investors. The CapEx required to keep the lights on the current operations.

You could see there now that is not significant and that will – just from the current operations and removing the growth will allow us to really clearly see what is the free cash flow available for growth opportunities. We continue to be – the outlook to be a free cash flow positive towards the end of the year – at the end of the calendar year. And that will be driven by, again, margins, EBITDA margin, focus on the retail brick-and-mortar gross margins, and the expenses side, the SG&A side of things and professional fees expenses. And also obviously working capital optimization and that’s looking at all the different levers that we have there with the AR, AP and inventory management. So that’s our guidance for the free cash flow.

Andrew Semple: Great. That’s helpful. And thanks for taking my questions. I’ll get back into queue.

Operator: Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our next question goes to Frederico Gomes of ATB Capital Markets. Frederico, please go ahead. Your line is open.

Frederico Gomes: Good morning. Congrats on the great quarter. Thank you for taking my questions. First, just on your e-commerce side, as you mentioned, Raj, you’re facing some challenging conditions on CBD and accessories. I know that you don’t disclose adjusted EBITDA per segment. But at this point, can you maybe shed some color on the adjusted EBITDA that you’re seeing from your e-commerce platforms? Are they becoming dilutive from an adjusted EBITDA margin standpoint? And given those challenging conditions, what are your plans for those segments?

Raj Grover: Good morning, Fred. Thank you for the question. So as I mentioned, e-commerce sales have definitely slowed down a little bit, but it’s not slowed down to the point where they’re not generating adjusted EBITDA. We still have EBITDA generation happening from our e-commerce business and spread it for you to think about. I think the spread that you can think about is roughly 80-20, 80% is coming from brick-and-mortar, don’t quote me on this. But roughly 80-20, 80% is coming from brick-and-mortar, 20% is still coming from our e-commerce businesses. And to further clarify, Fred, we are not feeling a very big impact on our accessories business because we are the clear leader in consumption accessories. We have some of the top performing e-commerce consumption accessory platforms in the world, some of the highest ranked and the most searchable e-commerce platforms in the world in GrassCity and Smoke Cartel, which we feel will be very meaningful platforms once federal legalization takes place in the United States.

We have some really good ideas on what we can do with these accessory platforms as well as our very large international customer base, which is now exceeding 4.5 million customers, including our Cabana Club members. So we are still in a good spot with our e-commerce platforms. I would like EBITDA generation to be a lot higher out of our e-commerce platforms. But as Sergio mentioned, we are offsetting the sales decline with SG&A decline. We are very, very focused to continue to monitor our expenses very carefully and why we are dealing with these turbulent times and these high inflationary times. Once the tide turns, we will be on the receiving end of it outperforming the sector even on the e-commerce front because we have very, very good platforms.