Performance Food Group Company (NYSE:PFGC) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Fred Wightman: Perfect. And then just lastly, you touched on the private label penetration and independent specifically but what is the outlook for that penetration, just given easing inflation and then also some of the higher fill rates that you’re seeing from your vendors? Do you think that will hold steady? Can it continue to grow? Or maybe you guys are not penetrating that because of costs? Like what is driving that, I guess?

George Holm: Yes. That’s the good question but a hard question. We have a handful of OpCos, who are in the 60% or over 60%, low 60s. So I guess I could say that that’s a possibility but I will admit that I didn’t see us being at 51.9% now. One of the things that has definitely helped us — we keep track of our inbound fill rate for our brands and our total inbound fill rate and our inbound fill rate was significantly better, all the way through COVID on our brands, our suppliers really stepped up. So as the other suppliers have better fill rates, will that affect it. And I got to tell you, I really don’t know. I think what I would say to you is that I’m really pleased with the percentage of our business that’s our brand. We certainly like selling product that isn’t our brand as well and that can be quite profitable for us.

You kind of develop a better sense of loyalty but it’s a customer that matters. But when they provide you much better inbound service than, I guess, the other guy, I think it’s going to continue to grow for us. I don’t know that we’ll have kind of the outsized growth that we’ve had the last few years.

Operator: And we’ll take our last question from Lauren Silberman with Credit Suisse.

Lauren Silberman: Just a follow-up on the Foodservice inflation as a different way. Is your total cost basis staying relatively steady, while year-over-year is moderating? Or are you seeing that total cost basis declining as well?

George Holm: It’s moderating. It’s not — it’s still elevated but it’s really moderating.

Lauren Silberman: Okay, got it. And then just a follow-up on the independent customers. So under the new customer acquisition is really the focus area. I mean how much — how important is new restaurant openings for your customer acquisition goals? Is there really enough opportunity and large enough addressable market in relationships that you don’t have currently that year-over-year positive unit growth in the restaurant space isn’t as important.

George Holm: Yes. We don’t track that, unfortunately, probably should. I think it’s probably been new customers has probably been more important in the last year, certainly as you think about these buildings there, for the most part, single-purpose buildings. And if somebody went out of business, it would be rare to see somebody other than another restaurant come into that building. So I would say, it’s probably been more important in the last year. But the rate at which you really need to grow your new customers to put the growth out that you need, you have to get existing restaurants on board. I think that’s really important. I wish, I had better numbers for you but we just don’t track it separately.

Operator: It appears that we have no further questions at this time. I will now turn the program back over to Bill Marshall for any additional or closing remarks.

Bill Marshall: Thank you for joining our call today. If you have any follow-up questions, please contact us at Investor Relations.

Operator: That concludes today’s teleconference. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.

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