TreeHouse Foods, Inc. (NYSE:THS) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Steve Oakland: Yeah. We will just have one or two, we think that will linger into the back half because we’ve got to do some physical investment in the structures, right.

Bill Chappell: Got it. Thanks so much.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Chris Growe from Stifel. Your line is open.

Chris Growe: Hi. Good morning.

Steve Oakland: Good morning, Chris.

Chris Growe: Hi. Just a quick question for you on the volume. I guess just to understand, as we look ahead, should private label — like, retail volumes be growing, would you expect in 2023 away-from-home and co-man (ph) to still be down for the year? You’ve got some lapping issues? And I just want to get a sense of how that composition might break out?

Pat O’Donnell: Yeah, Chris. I think we’ve talked a little bit about the Pickle business in particular. We will lap that for a couple more quarters. So I do think you’ll see that at least through the first half. And then, I do think we saw just some general food-away-from-home softness in a few categories, as folks have changed some of their consumption from that perspective. So that was maybe less significant than the business that we exited, but we did see a little bit of that. And so we are anticipating that to continue for a little bit.

Steve Oakland: Yeah. And Chris, our co-man (ph) volume like most is branded in some cases super premium brands, right, which are getting hit pretty hard. I would say though, if we guided our units to flat, if you go back to slide, well, I think it’s what’s Slide 5 in our deck, it suggests that our core retail business has to grow nicely, right, low-single digits in order for that to happen. So we expect our core retail business to grow this year nicely in units. And that will be leverageable. That’s why we can guide the kind of margin performance that we’re guiding.

Chris Growe: Okay. And then just a final question, if I could. And with the balance sheet now in a much better place, you’re holding that notes that could make the balance sheet look even better. You’re quickly in a better position. So when you talk about investing in the business, Steve, or improving capabilities, how much of that is an internal comment? How much of that is an ability to acquire now if that’s an opportunity to help kind of fast-forward some of that action?

Steve Oakland: Chris, thank you. Yeah. We feel really good about the opportunities in our business, right? So I think, first of all, we’ve looked internally, and we think there’s an opportunity to invest in capability internally. And I think Rob asked the question on capacity for the future to fund all this growth — to fund the growth we’re missing right now. So I think it will focus internally. If we have the chance to buy that capacity, and I would say assets, capabilities, we would do that if that can accelerate the path, right? I think acquisition for us would be capability driven, not necessarily new businesses, not adjacencies, those things that we’ve done in the past. It would all be about — we think we’re in a great group of categories. We just need to be able to sell more, the demand is there. So if the assets are there, we’ll use M&A to do it. And there’s a couple of places I think you may see us do that.

Chris Growe: Okay. Thank you for that color, then.

Steve Oakland: Thanks.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Connor Rattigan from Consumer Edge Research. Your line is open.

Connor Rattigan: Hey, guys. Good morning. Thanks for the question.

Steve Oakland: Good morning, Connor.

Connor Rattigan: So in this slide, I think it was Slide 15, where you showed the price gaps versus national brands. It looks like the price gap expanded somewhat in November, but then contracted again in December. And it sits roughly where it was at last year. Just kind of curious how that looks in January. So in the IRR data that we see, it seems that this private label pricing is running somewhat ahead of branded on a year-over-year basis and look to your categories. And so that was somewhat seem to imply a narrowing price gap? And I guess just is there any concern that a narrowing price gap may lead to moderating private label share gains?