Primo Water Corporation (NYSE:PRMW) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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We’re able to drive the pricing through. It does offset inflation, and we’ve been able to add to our margins as a result of those actions over the course of 15, a dozen quarters, right? That we’ve been doing it.

John Zamparo: Okay, fair enough. Thank you very much.

Tom Harrington : Thanks, John.

Operator: Thank you. Your next question comes from Pavel Molchanov, Raymond James. Pavel, please go ahead.

Pavel Molchanov: Yeah, thanks for taking the question. Kind of back on the M&A topic, the fact that you have not been particularly active with roll off activity over the past 12 months, is that because you’ve been kind of reluctant to take on more debt while you are above the leverage targets?

Tom Harrington : No, we funded out of free cash flow. And that is not been the driver. It was more strategically, obviously, debt is strategic and our long term target where we said we wanted to get under 3 times in 2023. We did it a quarter earlier with 2.91 times at the end of Q3, clear line of sight to 2.5 times is normal course. So, I don’t want to diminish how important that is, but it was really more about market conditions, largely driven by inflation, largely driven within the fuel cost and how that we believed would wear on the small target or the direct operators. And I believe that’s now become true based on our pipeline.

David Hass : Yeah, and I think, Pavel, we’ve been able to buy the right targets at the right price this year. And then obviously within the quarter alone, still reduce the revolving loan by $76 million. So it’s not been an either or today. It’s been about the right target, the right geography, the right ability to synergize it down for value. But again, we’re, of course, excited about the cash generative opportunity of the new business that seems to match well, heading into ’24 with the pipeline that built across for us to execute against next year. So, I think it’s maybe reversing your question a little bit, we’re pretty excited about where we can go with tuck-ins next year.

Pavel Molchanov: And now that you will be a North American pure play, are there any particular states or Canadian provinces where you have not historically, perhaps accessed, but are now going to try to penetrate?

Tom Harrington : Yeah, our first course is, I’ll call it overlapping, because they’re the most synergistic to us. So, Greenfield has historically not been an area we’ve invested energy on tuck-ins. What we will do, though, is begin to think about what are those water adjacencies that make sense for us. So, that would be, to the right of center, but it’s something that this company needs to think about longer term about what are the things we could do because we will be in a position to do that. That makes sense for the company and its shareholders.

Pavel Molchanov: All right, thanks very much.

Tom Harrington : Thanks, Pavel. I appreciate it.

Operator: Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I will now turn it back to Jon Kathol for closing remarks.

Jon Kathol : Thanks, Chris. This concludes Primo Water’s third quarter results call. Thank you all for attending.

Operator: Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes your conference call for today. We thank you for participating and I ask that you please disconnect your lines.

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