US Foods Holding Corp. (NYSE:USFD) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Dave Flitman: No. I see a lot of low-hanging fruit and continuing to execute well and keeping the team focused on the things that matter in moving the needle. Like I said earlier, there might be an opportunity here to help with that focus and accelerate results, but outside of that I’ll have more to say through the course of time, if I see other opportunities.

Peter Saleh: Great. Thank you very much.

Dave Flitman: Thank you.

Operator: Your next question is from Andrew Wolf of CL King. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Andrew Wolf: Hi. Good morning and welcome, Dave.

Dave Flitman: Good morning.

Andrew Wolf: Question for you on strategic acquisitions. I think the company has kind of been in the timeout period both during the CEO transition phase and launching a plan into 2024. But historically, one of the highlights of this industry is creating value through acquisitions for shareholders. Just can you give us a sense sort of where you stand on that? Is that something either in your interview conversations with the Board or just how you feel about it where the company will could eventually — is likely to eventually get back to acquisitions, or is it just straight ahead with the plan for 2024?

Dave Flitman: Look I think we have the right capital allocation plan. And in order of priority, we’ll invest in the company. We’ll pay down debt. We’ll return capital to shareholders. And finally, we’ll be opportunistic on M&A. We’re not going to do M&A for M&A’s sake. There’s going to be value that we need to create either in geographies or portfolio reasons for that. But as you know I mean this is still a highly fragmented industry with Big three maybe having 35% of the market, still highly fragmented, still opportunities for growth through inorganic acquisitions and we’ll be opportunistic on that and do the things that make sense where we’ve got the right valuation.

Andrew Wolf: Okay. Thank you for that. Andrew, I wanted to ask you about the sales force acceleration. Would you — is there any way you can quantify like either the rate of additions or anything like that? And also where you would be sourcing them from? Are they from other food service distribution competitors and they’re kind of bringing a book of business, or is it folks outside the industry who are either good at sales or chefs who want to do this type of work little color on that would be great.

Andrew Iacobucci: Yeah. Thanks for the question. Yeah, Andrew. I think the way we’re thinking about this is we will be targeting to be at or slightly above 2019 levels by the end of the year. And we will be as I say doubling down in markets with particular growth opportunities in doing so. So we are still very much in hiring mode and will continue to be so. And in terms of where talent is coming from, the mix hasn’t changed dramatically. We typically look for people with a culinary background as well as folks that have worked in our industry. And that mix if anything is probably tilted a little bit more toward sourcing from people with industry experience. Of late, we’ve been having we think quite good success attracting really high-quality sales reps from our competition, and we think that’s something that is really standing us in good stead, particularly in those markets with big growth opportunities.

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