Westrock Coffee Company, LLC (NASDAQ:WEST) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Jim Salera: Hey, guys. It’s Jim Salera on for Ben. I wanted to ask on the competitive landscape and how that looks today. Is the launch of the Conway facility and as you guys ramp up kind of making waves or is it not going noticed by your competitors?

Scott Ford: No. Everybody in the industry knows about it. It’s a fairly small industry. People smaller than us are trying to figure out how they can actually do handoffs up to the scale impact that we bring to their product line. People that compete with us are ratcheting down and fighting harder. And people that are bigger than us are absolutely — they seem to be absolutely involved about what we have done and how that fits in their view of the world long-term, all of that’s going on.

Jim Salera: Okay. Great. And maybe a follow-up on the last question. Overall kind of macro factors, I mean, you guys have seen really strong demand thus far. Is there any risk that if the economy worsens or the consumer ends up in a tougher position if some of that demand rolls off?

Scott Ford: Yeah. Sure. There is, obviously, a lot of our products are not particularly that sensitive to macroeconomics, but a lot of like hot black coffee at these stations, these stores, it is. And so when you go back to Chris’ point about where are we in the 10% to 25% growth in EBITDA, where are — where do we land, a lot of it depends on kind of the assumption you make around that, because we are assuming that is what is today is all through the year. And that’s a little bit of a break from where we were last year when we were trying to guess when people were coming back to the office, when COVID was going to abate and people are going to start traveling again, we actually built some guesses like that into our numbers.

This year, we said, we know we don’t know, just build it if they are here today and buying that volume, carry it forward, add the new win and just build it that way and don’t guess. So that’s how we did it. But, Jim, you come all the way back around. So if we are halfway on this. We are not coming back to the equity market to get any more money from this market anytime in the foreseeable future, because if we can get to these kinds of EBITDA numbers, our ability to carry the financing through the expanded credit facilities that Chris and his team have brought in, all of those, say, hey, now you have done an offering, you got to come back and do another offering and put out a bunch of start. It is not likely to happen if we get anywhere close to these numbers.

And so that’s kind of the other side of the loop, which our Board is a shareholder owning Board and they have zero interest in selling equity anywhere near these prices and so we went out and structured the whole de-SPAC and credit arrangement where if we can hit numbers like what Chris laid out in our guidance, we never have to go back to the equity market. And so that’s — you can pretty well assure us the largest single shareholder. I am really hard advance on that one and I have got everybody’s attention around here on a daily basis to deliver against that.

Jim Salera: Great. And then maybe one last question I can sneak in for Chris, just kind of segueing of that answer. Can you maybe just talk a little bit about your capital position today and kind of where the balance sheet positions you to make all — kick off all the boxes in your growth plans?