Post Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:POST) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Post Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:POST) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript November 17, 2023

Operator: Good day and thank you for standing by, welcome to the Post Holdings Fourth Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speakers’ presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today’s conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Daniel O’Rourke, Investor Relations for Post Holdings. Please go ahead.

Daniel O’Rourke: Good morning, and thank you for joining us today for Post’s fourth quarter fiscal 2023 earnings call. I’m joined this morning by Jeff Zadoks our Chief Operating Officer and Interim CEO; and Matt Mainer, our CFO and Treasurer. Jeff and Matt will make prepared remarks and afterwards we’ll answer your questions. The press release that supports these remarks is posted on both the investors and the SEC filings section of our website, and is also available on the SEC’s website. As a reminder, this call is being recorded, and an audio replay will be available on our website at postholdings.com. Before we continue, I would like to remind you that this call will contain forward-looking statements, which are subject to risks and uncertainties that should be carefully considered by investors as actual results could differ materially from these statements.

These forward-looking statements are current as of the date of this call, and management undertakes no obligation to update these statements. This call will discuss certain non-GAAP measures. For a reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to the nearest GAAP measure, see our press release issued yesterday and posted on our website. We are also joined this morning by Rob Vitale, our President and CEO. Rob, would like to give a few opening remarks. However, he will not be participating in the question-and-answer session. Rob, the floor is yours.

Robert Vitale: Good morning. This call, as Daniel indicated, is being hosted by Jeff and Matt. I’m only going to make a few comments and then I will head out. First, we had a great 2023 and we are well positioned to succeed in 2024. That’s for Jeff and Matt to describe. What I want to discuss is a bit more personal. Since I became CEO, I have attempted to be as candid with you as possible. I will not change that now. Recently doctors discovered and successfully removed a malignant tumor. I feel great and I have been participating in calls all along, however I will now require a regimen of radiation and chemotherapy. I am told this could wipe out my energy level for a period of time. While I am getting this treatment, Jeff will continue as Interim CEO.

I have total confidence in him. He has been my partner from day one and I mean that quite literally. We started on the same day in 2011. He has been instrumental in every decision we have made. Further, you’ve long heard me tout our holding company structure. Its value is now more apparent than ever. Our business operations have outstanding leaders and we won’t miss a beat. And I intend to participate as much as I am able, and honestly that’s more for my benefit than the company, I suspect I will just be a nuisance. So now I’m going to leave and turn the call over to Jeff and Matt, but one last thing before I do, I cannot express enough my gratitude for the outpouring well wishes I have received from you, from Post employees, from so many unexpected places, it has been quite overwhelming.

I thank you all. Jeff?

Jeff Zadoks: Thanks Rob. I know I speak for everyone at Post and everyone else on the call, when I say that we hope your treatment goes well. And we’re eager for your full-time return. Before I begin my comments on the performance of the business, I would like to share that out of respect for Rob’s privacy, we will not be responding to questions or providing additional information concerning his health and treatment. Now turning to our business. 2023 was a fantastic financial year as we achieved a step-change in adjusted EBITDA, increasing 28% over the prior year. This was driven by exceptional Foodservice results, which reflected volume growth and mix improvement, enhanced by a non-recurring avian influenza pricing benefit.

Additionally, we had a very strong start to our entry in the pet food category and recaptured some profit margin in our domestic retail businesses through pricing, significant improvement in labor availability and supply chain performance. We believe this level of consolidated adjusted EBITDA sustainable as we look to fiscal 2024. While the AI pricing benefit has fallen away, we will benefit from a full year of pet food and profit growth in all of our other retail businesses. Before I talk in more detail about each of our segments, I want to spend a few minutes on how we view the state-of-the consumer. The combination of inflation, higher interest rates reduced SNAP benefits, restart of student loan payments and lower savings has caused consumers to pull back on shopping trips.

In addition, consumers are being more selective with their spend, often trading down within a category, or shifting into more value categories. At the same time we are seeing consumers prioritize convenience and on the go especially in breakfast. When we think about these consumer trends in the context of our own business, we believe our diversification serves us well as we have meaningful exposure to value products in domestic and international cereal and US pet food, convenience through our side dish business and out-of-home through foodservice. For our premium branded retail products we plan targeted investment behind our category leading brands like Pebbles, Weetabix and Bob Evans to help us retain core consumers, drive trial and incremental volumes.

Moving to our segments and starting with Foodservice, we delivered another outsized quarter, fueled by the last of our temporary AI pricing premium. Through volume growth and mix improvement, we now estimate the sustainable quarterly level of adjusted EBITDA for this business to be approximately $95 million before any impact from the ready-to-drink shake manufacturing, which is expected to come online in December. We continue to focus on improving manufacturing and supply chain to support volume growth, serve the business better and lower costs. Shifting to PCB, and starting with our pet food business. Our first five months of ownership have far exceeded our expectations as strong manufacturing performance allowed us to meaningfully increase our order fill rates, reduce out-of-stocks, and replenish our customer inventories.

These variables along with lower cost of sales and SG&A drove profit well above our underwriting case. As a reminder, we will see a pullback in this run rate in fiscal 2024 as we make necessary investments in advertising and headcount and begin moving production off the co-manufacturing agreement with Smuckers. We expect to continue to operate meaningfully above our acquisition case, just not at the levels seen in these first five months. The acquisition of Perfection Pet, which we expect will close later in our first fiscal quarter will enhance our flexibility through its capabilities, geography and capacity and greater exposure to private label and co-manufacturing. The US Cereal category remained under pressure with volumes down 6% in the quarter.

Our expectation is that the category will return to its pre-pandemic volume trends as we lap the pull-back of SNAP benefits in March. From a share perspective, we were the only branded share gainer this quarter, ending the quarter at 19.6%. Consumers continue trading down to value in private label products and we are well-positioned to capture this move given our strong share in these subcategories. While still below premium branded cereal, our profit margins on value and private label products have meaningfully increased over the past several years. We continue to be pleased with the performance of our Peter Pan brand on a two-year basis which removes the effect of the Jif Recall last year. Peter Pan has grown its dollar market share by 90 basis points.

Turning to Weetabix. The macro-environment in the UK continues to be challenged. Similar to US cereal, we are capturing trade down into private label albeit at lower margins. UFIT continues to perform quite nicely and while still small is becoming a more meaningful component of the business. When we acquired the Refrigerated Retail business, it was characterized by strong demand growth with supply-side challenges. During 2023, we improved supply, but experienced the pullback in demand due to elasticities from our inflation-driven pricing. Despite the pullback in demand, we exceeded our adjusted EBITDA expectations for the year with strong manufacturing performance and cost control. Before I turn the call over to Matt, I’d like to make a couple of comments on capital allocation.

We continue to actively evaluate M&A opportunities. However, with the challenging capital market backdrop, there is a high bar to clear. Outside of M&A, we remain active in share repurchases and debt repayments, and we have a robust pipeline of value-enhancing capital projects. In closing, I know I speak for Rob in thanking, all of our employees for a very successful 2023. The strength of our operating model, our diverse product offerings and our exceptional management teams give me confidence in our 2024 plans. With that, I’ll turn the call over to Matt.

Matt Mainer: Thanks, Jeff, and good morning everyone. Fourth quarter consolidated net sales were $1.9 billion and adjusted EBITDA was $349 million. Net sales increased 23% driven by the newly acquired Pet Food business. Excluding pet, overall retail volumes declined as pricing elasticities persisted and shifted volume to our private label offerings although not enough to offset declines in our branded products. Foodservice volumes were down slightly as we lapped a very strong quarter and experienced volume headwinds due to the timing of some ag shipments. Our supply chain performance and customer order fill rates continue to improve across the business. However, we still have pockets of opportunity in both. Inflation moderated in the quarter, especially in freight costs.

And then finally, we saw increased SG&A across the business as we made targeted marketing investments at our retail businesses and had increased employee incentives given the strong consolidated performance. Turning to our segments, and starting with Post Consumer Brands. Excluding the benefit of the Pet Food acquisition, net sales increased 3% and volumes decreased 6%, average net pricing excluding pet food increased 10%, driven by pricing actions. We saw continued volume growth in private-label cereal, which was offset by declines in peanut butter and branded cereal. Segment adjusted EBITDA increased 27% versus prior year as we benefited from the contribution of the newly acquired Pet Food business and improved net pricing. Weetabix net sales increased 16% year-over-year, benefited by a lapping of a weaker British pound in the prior year, which led to a foreign currency translation tailwind of approximately 800 basis points.

On a currency-neutral basis, net sales increased 7%, which was attributable to list price increases. Volumes increased 2% driven by growth in UFIT and private label. Segment-adjusted EBITDA decreased 33% versus prior year driven by discretionary investments in the business afforded to us by the strength across our portfolio. We continue to expect a challenging macro environment in the UK to keep our margins compressed, although improving incrementally throughout the fiscal year. Foodservice net sales and volume declined 9% and 1% respectively. Revenue reflects the effect of lower grain costs in our commodity pass-through model and winding down the temporary AI price premium in the quarter. Adjusted EBITDA increased about 7%, driven by AI pricing premium and a lingering benefit of lower cost inventory accumulated in Q3, which enabled us to fill egg demand at a favorable cost.

Refrigerated Retail net sales and volumes decreased 6% and 8% respectively. The decline in net sales was driven by lower volumes and was partially offset by increased average net pricing in the portfolio. Side dish volumes decreased 9% reflecting price elasticities and a customer — excuse me consumer shift to private label. Segment-adjusted EBITDA decreased 14%, primarily due to lower volumes and increased discretionary investments. Improving commodity and freight markets and improved plant leverage were favorable offsets. Turning to cash flow. In the fourth quarter we generated $270 million from continuing operations, which is up significantly versus prior year and driven by improved profitability and a decrease in net working capital. One key tenet of our value algorithm is strong free cash flow and we saw a return to just that in the second half of the fiscal year, driving us to approximately $450 million for the full year.

This strong free cash flow combined with our step change in adjusted EBITDA drove our net leverage down a full turn from 4.6, I’m sorry, from 5.6 at the end of fiscal ’22 to 4.6 at the end of this fiscal year. This reduction in leverage was achieved in spite of essentially converting our $1.2 billion Pet Food acquisition to a cash deal as our share repurchases during the fiscal year diffused 4.4 million of the 5.4 million shares issued to Smuckers. Speaking of share repurchase in the quarter, we repurchased 1.6 million shares at an average price of $87.52 per share. In addition, we purchased approximately $150 million worth of our debt at an average discount of 13%. Capital expenditures in the quarter were approximately $100 million, driven by the expansion of our Norwalk, Iowa precooked egg facility and the new protein shake co-manufacturing facility.

Before we get to Q&A I have just a couple of comments on our fiscal 2024 guidance. On a consolidated basis, we expect in FY’24, our quarterly adjusted EBITDA cadence to be quite balanced across the year as variations between our segments offset each other. Specifically for Q1 and relative to Q4 FY’23, there will be a pullback in adjusted EBITDA in both Foodservice and Post Consumer Brands that will be partially offset by increases in Refrigerated Retail and Weetabix. As Jeff mentioned, we expect Foodservice to normalize in the mid-90s and we will begin making the necessary investments in our Pet Food business around marketing, SG&A and in-sourcing of production. Further, we expect lower total PCB volumes as cereal benefited in Q4 from back-to-school seasonality and pet volumes benefited from moving customers off allocation.

For Refrigerated Retail, we will have a seasonality benefit from the holidays. And then for Weetabix, we expect to realize some benefits from our Q4 investments. Finally, our CapEx guidance includes several profit-enhancing projects within Foodservice and Pet. For Foodservice we have the continuation of the precooked expansion, which started last year and the beginning of additional cage-free conversion need to meet customer requirements. For Pet, we began making capital investments anticipated in our acquisition underwriting case around improving plant quality and safety, expanding capacity and establishing independent R&D capabilities. Thanks for joining us today. And with that I will turn the call back over to the operator.

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Q&A Session

Operator: Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Andrew Lazar with Barclays. Your line is now open.

Andrew Lazar: Great. Good morning, everybody.

Jeff Zadoks: Good morning.

Andrew Lazar: Again also thanks to Rob for his update. My thoughts are with him and his family as he goes through the treatment and looking-forward to having him back, looking very soon. So I guess my question is really just trying to think through what the margin and run-rate of Pet looks like at this stage and sort of what that means for fiscal ’24. Just sort of some back of the envelope math, if we put a 25% EBITDA margin on PCB sales excluding Pet that would suggest me about $150 million of EBITDA for PCB excluding Pet in the quarter. So the $405 million of Pet sales, I guess then would contribute about $49 million of EBITDA or maybe 12% EBITDA margin. If that math is closed, obviously as you guys have mentioned that, that’s way ahead of the acquisition case model certainly of $100 million of EBITDA annually or a 7% margin.

So just that on its own I guess would suggest Post is tracking more towards maybe $180 million or $200 million in EBITDA annually from this business in ’24. Now I realize, I don’t think that even includes some cost synergies have started to come into play, but as you mentioned, you’re going to start to reinvest more heavily in the business. So I guess I’m just trying to get a sense of whether that math seems about right. And then what you can say about the magnitude or the sort of investment that you might be making that would sort of be an offset to that in ’24. Thanks so much.

Jeff Zadoks: Yeah, Andrew, so first off your numbers are certainly in the ballpark. As we said in our prepared remarks, the Pet Food business is performing extraordinarily well. The run rate in fourth quarter has a couple of things that we would call isolated to the fourth quarter. As Matt mentioned in his prepared remarks, because of the ability to improve output from the manufacturing facilities, we went from — when we inherited the business the fill rates were in the 70% range, we were able to get fill rates closer to the low 90s, because of that performance. So inherent in that is, there is a pipeline fill to replenish inventories at our customers get product on-shelves. And that won’t repeat itself, so there is margin in revenue that, that won’t repeat.

On top of that, we’ve mentioned that we need to invest in advertising. I don’t know that we’ve talked about the order of magnitude, but it’s more than a few million dollars, it’s $15 million, $20 million on an annualized basis is probably the ballpark for that. And then the expectation is that our SG&A is unsustainable, the support costs as we’re trying to fill positions as we transition off of the TSA services from Smucker. We’re not in a position in the fourth quarter where we could sustain a business on a long-term basis. So we need to add more resources in that area, and it’s going to be a comparable impact to those other variables I described. So when you add those three things up or four things up, it’s meaningful reduction from our current run rate, but still an expectation that we’re going to be well above the underwriting case when we get to the other side.

Andrew Lazar: All right. It’s really helpful color. Thanks so much. I’ll pass it on.

Jeff Zadoks: Thanks, Andrew.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Ken Goldman with JPMorgan. Your line is now open.

Kenneth Goldman: Thank you and I will echo Andrew’s sentiment. Rob, it’s good to hear your voice and best wishes for a full recovery as soon as possible. I wanted to ask, just a follow-up on the question on Pet Food, and in terms of some of the margin puts and takes. When you do add back some of the SG&A spending when you consider some of the one-time nature of the fourth quarter margin benefits, you know, it does obviously leave a pretty low still run rate EBITDA margin for now. And I guess one of the questions I’ve received is why is Post spending more on advertising? I guess now the number is out there $15 million to $20 million, at this time rather than maybe wait a little bit until the returns on those advertising spending, or that advertising spend is a little better after some of the margins have been improved or maybe the answer is there’s just slack capacity they’re just filling the plant’s you know with more volume is helping us.

I just kind of wanted to get a sense of that strategic thinking there in terms of advertising and the timing of it.

Jeff Zadoks: Sure. It’s a function of the health of the two brands that are going to be the focus of that advertising. Our premium brands the Nutrish and Nature’s Recipe are typically the high margin contributors to the portfolio. And it’s those brands that need to be repositioned and we believes and frankly if you look at the — if you look at the Nielsen data, you can see that those brands are struggling the most with volume trends. So for the long-term health of the — of that business, we need to get those two brands stabilized first and then returning to some modicum of growth. And we believe that they are brands that will respond to the advertising. So the first thing we wanted to do is make sure that we would be able to meet demand through stability of the manufacturing footprint before we started investing back in the brands.