Premium Brands Holdings Corp
TSX:PBH
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Premium Brands Holdings Corp
Earnings Call Analysis
Q3-2023 Analysis
Premium Brands Holdings Corp
Shaw Bakers, initially a regional artisan bakery, has witnessed remarkable growth, expanding from $50 million to an anticipated $100 million in sales for 2024. Their unique 25% butter laminated USDA products have found success with U.S. retailers, leading to production outpacing capacity. In response, a new top-tier San Leandro facility has commenced operations, aiming to preserve artisanal quality while enhancing efficiency. The projection is not only to double the current sales but to replicate this growth over the subsequent 2 to 3 years, positioning Shaw Bakers as a significant player in the North American and global bakery markets.
Sales increased modestly by 1.3% in the quarter to $1.64 billion, fueled mainly by organic growth in the Specialty Foods segment and favorable currency exchange impacts. However, higher growth expectations in the Specialty Foods segment were not met due to a combination of client-driven initiatives and start-up delays at the King's Command plant. Premium Food Distribution saw a decline, primarily due to an underperforming Maine lobster harvest and a shift in consumer preference towards cheaper alternatives. Long-term, the company maintains its confidence in achieving a 4-6% growth rate for that segment. Despite facing these challenges, the revised annual guidance for 2023 suggests steady growth with sales potentially reaching between $6.3 and $6.4 billion, showing a diligent focus on strategic growth areas.
Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was impressive, climbing by 12.5% to $158.8 million, and was primarily driven by a recovery in margins as past price increases caught up with inflation, alongside improvements in efficiency and a high margin on specialty food sales. Adjusted EBITDA margin hit a record 9.7% for the quarter, hinting at the company's success in cost management and efficiency improvements. This incremental progress suggests a nearing to the mid-term target margin of 10%. Anticipating future capital expenditures, particularly to bolster the Specialty Foods businesses, the company expects returns of 15% or greater, showcasing prudent financial planning.
Net earnings decreased by 8% from the previous year, down to $56.4 million, due to higher interest costs associated with new investments aimed at future growth. The quarter also saw significant investments of $92.9 million in capital expenditures, predominantly to support the high-margin Specialty Foods businesses. Looking forward, a capital budget pipeline of $276 million is planned for the next 7 to 8 quarters, emphasizing the company's commitment to long-term growth and profitability.
The company's financial position improved, with lower debt-to-EBITDA ratios and increased credit capacity, reflecting a solid financial foundation. Management's outlook remains positive as they anticipate ongoing improvements in leverage ratios and sustained returns on investments. This perspective is crucial for investors understanding the company's commitment to maintaining sound financial health whilst aggressively pursuing expansion.
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Hello, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Premium Brands Holdings Corporation Third Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] This call is being recorded on Tuesday, November 14, 2023.
I would now like to turn over the conference to George Paleologou, CEO and President. Please go ahead.
Welcome, everyone, to our 2023 third quarter conference call. Thank you for joining us today. With me here is our CFO, Will Kalutycz.
Our presentation will follow the deck that was posted on our website this morning. Later this morning, we will hold a separate live Q&A session at 10:30 a.m. Vancouver Time. Details of the call can be found in our press release posted on our website.
We're now on Slide 4, which outlines certain highlights for the quarter. We're making great progress towards our 5-year goals and are confident that we're well on our way to meet or exceed our long-term targets. What is controllable within our business is on plan and, in certain cases, even ahead of plan.
The 300 basis point improvement in our year-over-year EBITDA margins in our Specialty Foods Group demonstrates this and is indicative of better things to come as we scale the significant investments we have made in incremental state-of-the-art capacity.
Several challenges in the quarter masked the strong progress we're making. However, these are transitory, and we expect them to dissipate quickly. Furthermore, as our new capacity projects come online, you will see the rate of improvement in our sales growth rate, and margins will accelerate.
We're delighted to be bringing new capacity onstream in key areas of our business where demand has traditionally exceeded supply. During the second quarter, we commissioned our new sandwich facility in Edmonton, Alberta. While subsequent to the third quarter, we commissioned our new laminated bakery plant in San Leandro, California and our new stick and bacon facility in Ferndale, Washington. We will also be bringing on more capacity at our King's Command facility in Ohio.
You can see here on Slide 5 that our acquisition pipeline continues to remain very robust. With the various pandemic-related risks and disruptions behind us, we're beginning to once again make significant progress on our various acquisition-related discussions. We promise you that any acquisitions we make will not stretch the balance sheet, and we will not deviate from the financial discipline that we have demonstrated in the past.
In Slides 6 to 8, we featured some recently launched products from our Specialty Bakery business, Shaw Bakers. We first invested in Shaw Bakers as a start-up back in 2017. The company leased an idle bakery facility in San Francisco, California and began operations as a regional artisan bakery. Its best-in-class artisan loafs, baguettes and buns began gaining traction. And within 5 years, the business grew to $50 million. It's authentic 25% butter, laminated USDA products, got listings with several retailers in the U.S. and the company quickly found itself outselling its capacity.
In response to this, we're pleased to report the commissioning of a brand-new laminated USDA bakery facility in San Leandro, California. Having visited recently, I'm happy to report the facility is best-in-class, combining both process automation and production efficiency with the artisanship and craftsmanship needed to produce top-quality products. These best-in-class products will be sold locally and globally under the La Boulangerie brand.
Shaw Bakers is now expecting to more than double its sales in 2024 to more than USD 100 million and has good visibility to again double its sales over the next 2 to 3 years. Shaw Bakers was a challenged startup when PB invested in it 5 years ago, but it's now well on its way to becoming one of the leading laminated USDA bakery companies in North America and globally. Please look for some of these amazing products at a store near you.
I will now pass it on to Will.
Thanks, George. Before I begin, I would like to remind you that some of the statements made on today's call may constitute forward-looking information. Future results may differ materially from what we discuss. Please refer to our MD&A for the 14 and 52 weeks ended December 31, 2022, as well as other information on our website for a broader description of the risk factors that could affect our performance.
Turning to Slide 10. Our sales for the quarter were $1.64 billion, representing an increase of $21 million or 1.3% from 2022. The major drivers of this increase were organic volume growth in our Specialty Foods segment of $34.5 million and a favorable translation of our U.S.-based businesses' sales of $17.6 million due to a weaker Canadian dollar. These factors were partially offset by a $28 million sales contraction in our Premium Food Distribution segment and net selling price deflation of $3.1 million.
On Slide 11, we show our organic volume growth rate for the last 19 quarters. For the quarter, it was 1.3%, with our Specialty Foods segment generating organic volume growth of 3.4% and our Premium Food Distribution segment experiencing volume contraction of 4.6%. Specialty Foods growth was driven by its cooked protein, artisan sandwich, fresh skewer, meat snack and the Italian charcuterie initiatives in the U.S. Its rate of 3.4% was, however, below our expectations for the quarter due to 2 factors.
The first and most significant was temporarily lower growth in our artisan sandwich sales while one of our major customers implement a variety of initiatives to optimize freight costs, reduce food waste and lower internal inventory levels. While some of this impact will continue into the next couple of quarters, the significant majority of it was specific to the third quarter.
The second temporary factor impacting Specialty Foods growth was a delay in the start-up of its new cooked protein production capacity at its King's Command plant in Ohio. Our U.S. cooked protein facilities have been operating at capacity for several quarters, and we were expecting the Ohio plant expansion to come online in the third quarter to help fulfill our customers' needs. However, several last minute equipment issues, combined with the associated manufacturers being short in technical support staff, resulted in the start-up being pushed to the fourth quarter. The good news, as George mentioned earlier, is that this capacity is now set to start up in December.
In terms of the Premium Food Distribution sales contraction, this is primarily the result of a very poor Maine lobster catch caused by unusually poor weather conditions that prevented vessels from harvesting. Softening consumer demand for premium beef and seafood products, as consumers increasingly look for lower-cost meal alternatives and shift to shopping at discount grocery banners, also contributed to the segment's lower sales but to a much lesser extent.
Overall, we view both factors as transitory and remain confident in Premium Food Distribution's ability to generate organic volume growth of 4% to 6% over the long term.
Slide 12 shows an estimate of the Maine lobster catch for the quarter. You can see the consistent year-over-year decline in the catch throughout the quarter. As I mentioned earlier, this was due entirely to unusually poor weather conditions that prevented vessels from harvesting and not to the condition of the local biomass, which remains very healthy.
Turning to Slide 13. This shows our historic annual sales for the last 13 years, which have grown at a compounded annual growth rate of 22.4%, as well as our projected 2023 sales, using the midpoint of our revised annual guidance of $6.3 billion to $6.4 billion. Based on the challenges of the third quarter and some continuation of Premium Food Distribution's challenges into the fourth quarter, we reduced our guidance from the previous range of $6.4 billion to $6.6 billion. Using the midpoint of our revised guidance, we are now expecting year-over-year sales growth of approximately $320 million, representing an increase of 5.3% and or 6.7% after normalizing for an extra week of sales in 2022.
Turning to Slide 14. Our adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $158.8 million, representing an increase of $17.6 million or 12.5% from 2022. The major drivers of this increase were the recovery of our margins as past selling price increases catch up with cost inflation, improved plant efficiencies, reduced outside storage costs associated with lower inventory levels and sales mix changes as our organic volume growth continues to be driven by our higher-margin specialty food businesses. These factors were partially offset by a variety of cost increases, including higher promotion costs, plant overheads and bonus accruals.
Slide 15 shows our adjusted EBITDA margin for the last 19 quarters. For the third quarter, we reached our recent history record of 9.7% driven by the continued recovery in our Specialty Foods margins as its costs stabilize and it continues to leverage recent capital investments through its organic growth.
As we have mentioned before, the contribution margins on Specialty Foods incremental sales range from 20% up to as high as 45% on certain highly differentiated items. Normalizing for the estimated impact of the challenges faced by our lobster businesses, our adjusted EBITDA margin for the quarter is approximately 9.9%, which is closing in on our midterm targeted annual margin of 10%.
Slide 16 shows our Specialty Food Group's adjusted EBITDA margin for the last 19 months. You can see the significant progress we have made over the last 4 quarters, reaching 11% in the quarter. As we look forward, we still see significant room for improvement in Specialty Foods margins as it leverages both recent capital expenditures as well as the new capacities coming online over the next couple of quarters.
Slide 17 shows our historic annual adjusted EBITDA for the last 13 years, which has grown at a compounded annual growth rate of 22.2% on a pre-IFRS 16 basis as well as our projected 2023 adjusted EBITDA, using the midpoint of our revised annual guidance of $575 million to $590 million. We reduced our adjusted EBITDA guidance range from the previous $590 million to $610 million based on the same factors used for revising our sales guidance. Using the midpoint of our revised guidance, we are now expecting year-over-year adjusted EBITDA growth of approximately $78 million, representing an increase of 15.5%.
Turning to Slide 18. Our earnings for the quarter were $56.4 million, representing a decrease of $4.9 million or 8% from 2022. The main reasons for the decrease were higher interest rates, which impacted our interest cost by approximately $1 million; and increased interest, depreciation and amortization associated with recent investments made to drive both the current as well as future quarters' growth.
Turning to Slide 19. For the quarter, we had $92.9 million in capital expenditures, consisting of $84.1 million in project CapEx and $8.8 million in maintenance CapEx. On a year-to-date basis, we have spent $233.7 million on project CapEx, $220 million or 94% of which relates to supporting the growth of our high-margin Specialty Foods businesses.
Looking forward, based on our approved capital budget pipeline, we expect to spend another $276 million on project CapEx over the next 7 to 8 quarters. I should note that we expect to generate an unlevered after-tax return of 15% or greater on all of our project CapEx initiatives.
Slide 20 shows some of the key metrics we use to measure our financial position. We made solid progress in the quarter in improving our debt leverage levels, with our senior debt-to-EBITDA ratio decreasing to 3.1:1 from 3.3:1 last quarter and our total debt-to-EBITDA ratio, which includes our subordinate debentures, decreasing to 4.1:1 from 4.3:1 last quarter. We also finished the quarter with very strong liquidity, with our unused credit capacity increasing to $730 million from $650 million last quarter. Looking forward, we expect to see continued improvement in our leverage levels in the fourth quarter.
That concludes our presentation. As George mentioned earlier, please join us on our Q&A conference call later today at 10:30 a.m. Vancouver Time, 1:30 p.m. Toronto Time. Thank you.