Lifeway Foods Inc

NASDAQ:LWAY

Good morning. Welcome to Lifeway Foods Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2024 Conference Call. On the call with me today is Julie Smolyansky, President and Chief Executive Officer.

By now, everyone should have access to the press release that went out this morning. If you have not received the release, it is available on the Investor Relations portion of Lifeway's website at www.lifewayfoods.com. A recording of this call will be available on the company's website.

Before we begin, we would like to remind everyone that the prepared remarks contain forward-looking statements. The words believe, expect, anticipate, plan, will and other similar expressions generally identify forward-looking statements. These statements do not guarantee future performance, and therefore, undue reliance should not be placed on them. Actual results could differ materially from those projected in any forward-looking statements. Lifeway assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking projections that may be made during today's call, except as required by law. All of the forward-looking statements contained herein speak only as of the date of this call.

And with that, I would like to turn the call over to Lifeway's President and Chief Executive Officer, Julie Smolyansky.

Thank you, John, and good morning to everyone joining us. As always, we greatly appreciate your interest in Lifeway Foods. It's a pleasure to be speaking with you today, and I am thrilled to report yet another quarter of double-digit growth to cap off our record-breaking 2024.

We delivered exceptional results throughout the year. And before reviewing those numbers, I want to take a moment to sincerely thank the entire Lifeway team for their hard work and commitment. Your efforts do not go unnoticed, and your execution has been key to advancing our growth strategy and instrumental in constantly upholding the excellence our clients and customers rely on. Thank you for making great years like this possible.

The most important takeaway from today's call is that Lifeway's business is strong, growing and continuing to gain momentum. We are the category leader, managing our business effectively, efficiently with a sound growth strategy that is yielding results.

With that, I will now review our results for the full year 2024. Net sales were $186.8 million for the year ended December 31, 2024, a record high annual top line result for Lifeway and an increase of $26.7 million or 16.7% compared to the prior year. Our strong continued growth was primarily driven by higher volumes of our Lifeway branded drinkable kefir. This level of growth is particularly notable as it was accelerated despite lapping a monumental year in 2023, where we achieved sales growth of more than 13% and a previous record high top line result.

Throughout 2024, we saw strong double-digit volume-led growth performances in all 4 quarters, culminated by our second highest ever quarterly net sales of $46.9 million, which was also our 21st consecutive quarter of year-over-year net sales growth. Our sustained high level of growth speaks to both the stickiness and loyalty of our expanding customer base, the enduring strength of our brand and the effectiveness of our strategic sales and marketing investments at driving exposure and demand for our core products.

The record-breaking performance this year also speaks to the growing customer interest in protein-rich foods with probiotics and bioavailable nutrients like our Lifeway Kefir and Farmer Cheese. Lifeway's business is stronger than it's ever been in our history. We expect these factors to continue to drive volume-led growth moving forward. And while our year-over-year comps become more challenging, we look forward to carrying this strong momentum through 2025 and onwards.

We reported a gross profit margin of 26% for the year ended December 31, 2024. We maintained a solid margin throughout 2024, benefiting from higher volumes of our Lifeway branded products despite the unfavorable impact from inflationary pricing in milk, our largest raw material. We greatly prioritize our profit margins, and we will continue to pursue incremental productivity and profitability measures in an effort to expand upon our current levels. As we continue driving higher shipment volumes of our Lifeway branded products, we expect to drive further operating leverage within the business, creating the opportunity for incremental gross margin expansion ahead.

Now to our expenses. Selling, general and administrative expenses were $34.2 million for the year ended December 31, 2024. Our robust top line performance illustrates the increasing returns of our strategic sales and marketing initiatives as we achieved accelerated sales growth, while our sales expenses remained relatively in line as a percentage of sales year-over-year. We are constantly investing behind our key Lifeway branded products to grow our exposure and drive continued growth to meet the heightened consumer demand for healthy products like our Lifeway Kefir and Farmer Cheese.

Our net income during the year ended December 31, 2024, was $9 million, reflecting EPS of $0.61 per basic and $0.60 per diluted share. Capital spending increased $2.3 million to $6.7 million during the year ended December 31, 2024. The increase was in line with our planned increases for 2024 to grow our manufacturing capacity to support our strong demand and business growth.

Our investments this year have been focused on modernizing our manufacturing facilities and supporting productivity initiatives. Our capital spending is very efficient, and we generate great return when installing additional tanks as we have leveraged existing infrastructure to scale the business. We currently have the operations in place and ample capacity to support further sales growth.

Overall, 2024 was an exceptional record-breaking year for Lifeway. We delivered powerful volume-led growth in every single quarter, a differentiator for us compared to the broader industry, which was weighed on by macro pressures. These pressures include high prices, high interest rates and an uncertain macro outlook, all leading customers to be more cost conscious. That said, we have not experienced any disruption to our demand as our growing customer base has remained resilient.

While the consumer is broadly seeking value, we see that they're also focused on their health, and they keep coming back for more of our gut healthy, delicious and premium Lifeway products. Our branded offerings come loaded with high-quality bioavailable nutrients like protein, calcium, vitamin D and live and active probiotic cultures. The probiotics in kefir support a healthy microbiome and between 70% and 80% of immune cells come from the gut.

Probiotics such as kefir are the focus of intense research related to the microbiome's role in stress, depression and anxiety. We now know that most -- almost 90% of the body serotonin come from gut cells and the gut brain access, which links the emotional and cognitive centers of the brain with our intestinal functions. Our probiotic Lifeway offerings nourish the body and the mind. And if you want to be healthy and happy, your gut should always be a top priority.

Last quarter, we called out 2 exciting studies, one published by BMC Medicine, which suggests that probiotics and dairy kefir show potential promise in improving the gut health of ICU patients and another small protocol conducted in the U.K. that examined the effects and potential benefits of kefir consumption on kefir with -- on children with ADHD.

I'd like to applaud the recent study conducted by investigators from Mass General Brigham, which correlated long-term fermented dairy consumption to decreased incidences of certain types of colorectal cancer. The study was conducted for over 3 decades and concluded that those who consume 2 or more servings of fermented milk per week experienced a 20% reduction in the incidence of colorectal cancer positive for Bifidobacterium.

There is also a rise in colorectal cancer, including for young adults, and this breakthrough study highlights the critical role that live bacterial cultures and fermented milk products such as kefir play in supporting gut health and reducing cancer risk. The microbiome research is exciting and evolving space, and we are always thrilled to hear about new positive ways that probiotic products like ours could potentially benefit our consumers.

Diet and nutrition play a vital role in supporting our long-term health as human beings, and our mission at Lifeway is to help our customers live healthier lives by providing them with our high-quality offerings full of bioavailable nutrients and probiotics. Consumer health and wellness trends have bolstered our business for multiple years now, and we believe they will continue to be a tailwind to our entire premium product portfolio for years to come.

While the broad consumer focus on health and wellness complements our category, at Lifeway, we are routinely evaluating trends within our space and evolving consumer interest to advance the business. Innovation is a significant part of our strategy, and our consumer insights often lead to exciting new product developments, new flavors, improved package designs and numerous other opportunities. We are a brand on the move and are looking to extend the strength of the Lifeway brand broadly across categories and channels.

I'll focus now on the core driver of our business, our flagship drinkable Lifeway Kefir. We built the kefir market here in the United States and have long maintained a dominant market-leading position in the space. We are committed to maintaining that position and our investments, combined with the health and wellness tailwinds are consistently growing from the Lifeway brand and drinkable categories. Net sales of our drinkable kefir increased more than 20% in 2024 compared to the prior year, a remarkable number considering those same sales grew nearly 16% in 2023. We believe the addressable market for kefir is widening, and our consumer insights have led to numerous innovations within the category to ensure that we are satisfying consumers with differentiated assortments.

I'll go through some recent examples. We recognize the consumer demand for lactose-free dairy products has been rising and is expected to rapidly grow in the coming years. While most of our products were already up to 99% lactose-free, we decided to match this consumer interest with our own 100% lactose-free offerings. We launched our lactose-free organic home milk kefir flavor fusions in October, a lineup full of on-trend innovative flavors. And like most of our organic offerings, we anticipate that a devoted following will develop around these incredible items.

In November, we announced our probiotic smoothies and collagen made with kefir cultures. This product line comes in 4 delicious flavors, Matcha Latte, Berry Blast, Tropical Fruit and Plain. It contains 5 grams of collagen in each serving and is lactose-free. This product was inspired by research and supports the gut skin access, which plays a crucial role in maintaining overall health. The collagen in the smoothie may help support skin hydration, elasticity, smoothness and joint health and is packed with probiotic cultures to support a healthy microbiome as well.

Lastly, a couple of weeks ago at Expo West in Anaheim, we gave a sneak peek of probiotic salad dressing concepts. We also debuted our new conventional whole milk flavors, which will complement our popular Lifeway organic whole milk line. We are the anchor to the kefir category, and we'll continue to invest and align our offerings with evolving consumer interest to ensure we capture an even greater share of this growing market.

I'd also like to highlight our Farmer Cheese. As you know, this year, we strategically invested behind our Lifeway Farmer Cheese to match growing consumer demand for soft cheese products. Our Farmer Cheese is protein-rich and pack full of probiotics and bioavailable nutrients, along with a smooth texture, and we viewed it as a logical healthier alternative to blended cottage cheese and recipes that have grown popular across social channels. We have begun to see our strategic investments behind this product pay off as we saw nice growth in the second half of the year with a particularly strong performance in Q4.

We are believers in this product, and we'll continue to invest to expand our strong position in the space. As we've hinted in the last quarter, in February, we announced the distribution of Farmer Cheese into 1,400 stores of a key retail partner across the United States, a significant step forward in increasing the product footprint.

I'll now touch on some marketing and advertising updates. Two weeks ago, I joined Katie Couric on stage at South by Southwest in Austin to share the Lifeway story and to discuss innovations in the microbiome and research around it and the importance of gut healthy foods and habits. I was honored to raise awareness for our business and gut health with an influential icon like Katie, and the audience of the event was very attuned to current trends in science, culture, the arts, all of which made it an even better educational opportunity.

Before that, we were at Expo West in Anaheim. At the event, we showcased our broad range of innovative new products, including our lactose-free flavor fusions and our probiotic collagen smoothies. We also provided a sneak peek to our new conventional whole milk kefir flavors, as I mentioned before, as well as a sneak peek into our new probiotic salad dressing concepts. Expo West attendees got to try all of these new unique products we have to offer and also got to indulge in some creative recipes, including kefir parfait and sweet and savory farmer cheese appetizers. Expo West was a success, and the reviews from attendees were growing.

With regard to our overall marketing strategy, we are consistently evaluating the market and tracking our own initiatives to identify the greatest ROI opportunities for our marketing dollars. We connect with consumers at events throughout the year from music festivals to yoga classes and beyond. Our retail efforts are focused on placing Lifeway products at interruptive moments through demos and displays within the store to drive trial and elevate exposures to consumers who don't typically browse our section.

We also have been focusing on driving brand exposure and trial through our e-commerce sales strategies. We continue to partner with social media influencers, notably following an order to advertise to a vast network of consumers, educating them on our better-for-you offerings and the variety of ways they can be implemented into recipes. Our digital efforts are wide-ranging and build trust with kefir curious consumers who we help guide through the purchase process so they can enjoy the benefits of being Lifeway Kefir consumers. As evidenced by our exceptional top line performance throughout the year, we believe our strategic marketing efforts are paying off nicely.

I'll touch now on some distribution updates. First, as I mentioned earlier, we were very pleased to announce in February the incremental distribution of Lifeway Farmer Cheese into 1,400 additional Albertsons stores. In December, as we hinted last quarter, we also announced distribution of our ProBugs Organic Kefir for Kids into more than 250 Harris Teeter stores. We are pleased to grow the audience for this offering beyond its traditional natural grocery sets.

I'd also like to mention that our offerings in Dubai and UAE began shipping in the fourth quarter and were made available across market regions. While our numbers reflect that this is not a major revenue contributor currently, initial trends are promising, and we are interested in the region due to the large numbers of our core target consumers there. Our retail partnerships remain very strong, and our dialogue with our key partners is consistent as we seek for incremental distribution opportunities across a number of channels that make sense for our Lifeway Kefir, Farmer Cheese and other core products. Like in our marketing strategy, our distribution is focused on elevating and driving trial in our brand name products to maintain and expand upon our category leadership moving forward.

To wrap up, I want to express my deep appreciation once more to the entire Lifeway team. Thanks to your hard work, we have shattered multiple company sales records in 2024 and achieved robust growth. I believe we have an excellent foundation in place to deliver another incredible year in 2025. I am eager to carry this strong momentum through 2025 and continue on our mission to deliver the best-in-class bioavailable probiotic and healthy foods to our growing health-focused consumers.

Thanks, everyone, for listening to the call today and for your interest in Lifeway Foods. We look forward to updating you on our continued progress on our first quarter 2025 call. Have a wonderful day.