Harold Edwards: Yes. So the rain is actually really helpful for the avocados. So I think it gives us optimism that we should be in the high range of sort of the targeted volume numbers. The harvest really now at this point will be driven by the opportunities that we see in the marketplace. Great news was we saw an uptick in avocado pricing last week. 48s are now getting a little over $1.20 in the marketplace. And that’s kind of directionally where we were hoping to harvest. So we find the market seems to be improving and coming to us at this point. And we’re pretty confident that there’s on the upper end of the 4 million to 5 million pound range that we guided to. So I think our overall avocado number and guidance is intact.
Fingers crossed that it comes in a little better, but if it does, it’ll be driven by more favorable market pricing. And it’s just too difficult for us to pin that down. But we watch the market every day. And when the market moves, we will start harvesting. I think if I had to guess how the fruit flow would play out, I’d say 50% of 5 million pounds in Q2 and 50% in Q3.
Raj Sharma: Got it. And then just if I can move on to profitability, can you kind of philosophically talk about where you see EBITDA improvements and do you see EBITDA improvements, sort of profitability improvements in terms of margins this year? Is that coming from a greater sort of brokering and shipping?
Harold Edwards: Yes, so a great question and a bunch of niches to that.
Raj Sharma: How much of an EBITDA can we expect?
Harold Edwards: So as we’ve alluded to, this transition period is going to be about 12 to 18 months, which we’ll see accretiveness from the transaction side accretiveness, both from an EBITDA perspective and EPS. The areas that we will see benefit from are, as you said, the new recruiting, so 1 million new cartons, which comes into effect basically starting in the fall of this year and then circles all around through the seasons. And that’s the targeted $2.00 to $2.50 a carton operating profit. And then also the brokerage agency business, which this prior year was just over 1 million cartons trying to ramp that to about 1.5 million this year, and then about 3 million to 3.5 million over the next five years. So as we’ve tried to highlight, we’re subject to lemon pricing.
Our costs have been relatively under control. Our packing costs this quarter year-over-year was down versus prior year per unit. So all of the measures that we put in place from the cost efficiencies have really started to come to play. So we still see ourselves targeting plus $30 million of EBITDA in the next five years.
Raj Sharma: Got it. And just last question from me, the additional $50 million in sales that you just mentioned that would happen in the next year or two years. Can you give us generally the areas? Is that water rights sales, land, any color on that?
Harold Edwards: Yes. So the additional 50 million, if I got the question right, is the two specific assets, our southern hemisphere Chilean farming, which is two ranches, lemons primarily, and then our Windfall vineyard estates. And so those are placeholders at 50 million, pretty close to book value. So we felt that that was an appropriate number. But I think depending on the right opportunity and the right buyer and the water circumstances, there will be opportunity for upside in there.
Raj Sharma: Great. Well, thank you for answering my questions and good luck. I’ll take this offline. Thank you.
