J&J Snack Foods Corp. (NASDAQ:JJSF) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Dan Fachner: Thank you.

Ken Plunk: Thanks Rob.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question or comment is a follow-up from Mr. Andrew Wolf from CL King. Mr. Wolf, your line is now open.

Andrew Wolf: Hello. My first is on your outlook for commodity cost inflation slowing, which I think you said in the release. You might have talked about this, but I didn’t hear it well if you did. But could you be a little more specific on kind of what you’re thinking the cadence is going to be, maybe what percent of your costs are locked in through forged contracts and things like that. I think a lot of folks in the supply chain manufacturers and others are looking to the June quarter to really — when the relief really comes in on the year-over-year comparisons where pricing is unambiguously a lot better than COGS inflation, plus your sense of that for the business? And then the other — the second follow-up is very straightforward. It’s just like there’s been five full weeks and a couple more days since quarter ended. Have you seen any changes either way in the volume trends pretty much in January? Thank you..

Dan Fachner: Can you handle the commodity costs?

Ken Plunk: Yes. On the commodities, I look at so much data on that, Andrew. And I think we’ve said this, trends are getting better. Sometimes they seem too gradual, but they are getting better. Just to give you a couple of examples. We were 16% higher than was a year ago. Quarter-over-quarter, it went up just 40 basis points. So it did go up, but it all went up 40 basis points. And the outlook on the wheat is that we do expect that continue to decline. I think as we look at the second quarter and this — I think on wheat as it’s our biggest commodity, we think it may go down 3% to 4% is kind of our best guess right now as we look at Q2. But if you kind of go across the eggs, obviously we use a lot of eggs. Egg is up triple digits year-over-year.

Even, 43% quarter-versus-quarter. So eggs continue to go up. So it’s kind of spending on what commodity you’re talking about. It’s a different answer. Collectively, we do expect them to continue to go down. I don’t have a crystal ball. I think our best guess next quarter is maybe somewhere in that 3% to 5% range and, then as we look further out, hopefully better than that. I mean, wheat, diesel are two big ones that are supposed to continue to go down quite a bit. Sugar, it’s not as high as it was, but it’s still not showing signs of heavy decline at this point.

Dan Fachner: And then Andrew on the weeks ahead, we’re watching that cautiously being careful about kind of what’s happening out in the industry. We do have some really bright spots. So one of those bright spots would be where the theater business was really off in the December month. They’ve come back pretty strong in the January month. And so we’re encouraged by what we’re seeing so far.

Andrew Wolf: Great. Thank you, guys.

Dan Fachner: Thank you, Andrew.

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