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Good day, and welcome to the MAV Beauty Brands Third Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference Call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Craig Armitage. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you, and good morning, everyone. Just a quick note before we get started, that our remarks today may provide certain information regarding our expectations, future plans and intentions that may constitute forward-looking statements. I would refer you to the most recently filed MD&A or the AIF, both of which are available on our website and our SEDAR. These include a summary of the significant assumptions underlying these forward-looking statements and certain risks that could affect the company's performance and the ability to deliver on these forward-looking statements. You'll find the Q3 earnings release, the financial statements and the MD&A on the IR section of the website. I'd also highlight that in the financial discussion today, the comparisons are Q3 2021 versus Q3 2020, unless otherwise stated. With that, I'll turn the call over to Serge Jureidini. Go ahead, Serge.
Thank you, Craig. Good morning, and welcome to MAV's Third Quarter Conference Call. I'm joined by Laurel Mackay-Lee, our Chief Financial Officer. Today, I will comment on the Q3 results and our operational and strategic priorities before Laurel goes a bit deeper on the financial results. We will then take your questions. Laurel and I have been able to speak with a number of you since we joined the company in August and look forward to continuing the dialogue. I've been in the Beauty business for the past 30 years and over the last 3 months, I have frequently been asked what appealed me to the MAV opportunity. The simple answer is the attractive fundamentals: the category; an engaged and passionate team; and the portfolio of desirable, differentiated and complementary brands. Each of our brands has a unique voice and expertise and also benefits from the shared operating platforms got from the last precision operations and the ability to scale profitably. The strategy is sound in a market with underlying growth and resilience. Having said that, we also recognize that our strategy is as good as the execution. And clearly, there's work to be done to improve our day-to-day execution across many areas of the business. In time, this will translate into better reported results for sales, margins, EBITDA and free cash flow. As for the Q3 results, quite simply, they're disappointing across these measures. We'll also elaborate on the noncash goodwill impairment recognized this quarter. Net sales were down 22% in the third quarter to $24.7 million and by 11% year-to-date to $82.5 million. As with Q2, the sales decrease reflects net distribution losses from retail planogram resets. In this quarter, we're also seeing the impact of the subsequent inventory adjustments by these same retailers. The solid performance year-to-date of 2 of our brands was more than offset by the year-on-year decreases of our other 2 brands. Marc Anthony, the largest brand in the portfolio, continues to perform well, building on a 25-year heritage of professional expertise due to the mass and drug channels. The new packaging initiative has been well received and is contributing to this performance. Year-to-date U.S. growth is ahead of the overall category as measured by Nielsen for the U.S. mass channel. We also continue to experience rapid growth in e-commerce. Cake, our naturally-luxe beauty brand, continued its double-digit growth with strong performance from U.S. expansion in U.S. drug and rapid growth on Amazon. Our other 2 brands are not performing as well. Venture distribution was significantly reduced this year, mainly from discontinuation in the haircare range. Distribution was rightsized into higher-performing doors, which is gradually helping improve velocities. Going forward, we'll focus on [indiscernible] productivity and marketing initiatives that will emphasize the efficacious key beauty positioning of the brand. The Mane Choice has also continued to face the challenge of reduced distribution in the U.S. and mass and drug channels. Our e-commerce has also been disrupted. Having said that, we're excited by the relaunch of our website this quarter, the progress made to engage directly with our largest e-commerce partner as well as the engagement momentum we're seeing within our social media community. We're confident that these efforts will reenergize our digital presence and help restore overall momentum. Other notable positives for The Mane Choice are the year-to-date performance of the specialty channel as well as the operational benefits of the integration that are gradually materializing. In the quarter, we closed our company-operated warehouse in Alabama and consolidated our inventory with an existing logistics partner. As a result, processes, procedures and modus operandi are now consistent across all our brands that also operate under a single ERP. We continue to believe each of our brands has a unique voice and a distinct brand equity that we can strengthen over time. As mentioned last quarter, we plan to prudently and gradually increase our marketing investments, bringing us closer to our peer set. We're also committed to working closely with our retail partners on accretive go-to-market initiatives, as well as product innovation as we move the combined portfolio back to above category growth, which is our stated medium and long-term objective. We are harder toward building the awareness and desirability for our brands while supporting the business through enhanced execution. From an operations perspective, there are multiple initiatives underway. We have recently adopted an integrated business plan framework, which should, over time, significantly reduce customer noncompliance charges and inventory carrying costs among other benefits. We have also initiated a strategic review with our third-party manufacturers and logistic partners to identify productivity, efficiency and improvement opportunities notably to address the impact of inflation. Over the last 2 years, we have made investments in the IT platform, namely the ERP, and we believe we can still get productivity gains from improved usage. This is a snapshot of our work streams and plans, which we expect will help us improve customer service and achieve material efficiencies and cost savings. From a financing perspective, we took an important step for the organization with the recent amendments to our credit facilities which provide for additional flexibility while we manage through these near-term headwinds. Laurel will expand on the amendments in her comments. In a market that continues to show signs of recovery, the team is engaged, and we remain confident in the fundamental strength of our business as we strive to achieve improved and consistent results for our stakeholders. Laurel will now take us through some additional financials.
Thank you, Serge. Good morning, and thank you for joining us today. Our full filings are available online, so my comments will concentrate on the key issues and metrics, including margins, the goodwill impairment and debt. Total net sales results were lower than last year, partly due to net distribution changes in the North American region. For this region, revenue decreased 24% to $22.9 million in Q3 2021 compared to $30 million in Q3 2020. For the international region, revenue increased 6% from $1.7 million last year to $1.8 million in Q3 2021 based on the continuing recovery from COVID-19. Gross profit decreased 34% to $10.3 million in Q3 2021 compared to $15.7 million in Q3 2020. Gross profit margin was 41.8% in Q3 2021, down from 49.6% in Q3 2020 with a modest increase from 40.1% in Q2 2021. The year-over-year declines are mainly the result of 3 factors. Close to half of the difference is related to increased trade spend in the quarter. This includes sales discounts, markdowns and promotional activity. The next major factor is cost inflation. As we touched on last quarter, we have seen an increase in supply chain input costs such as commodity and transportation costs along with unfavorable foreign exchange over the comparative period. Cost inflation has increased input costs by mid- to high single digits. The impact of this increase is partially affecting cost of goods sold in Q3, and the full impact will be reflected in future quarters as these factors work through the full inventory cycle. The third driver of lower margins is sales of noncore products at lower gross margins as we rationalize and improve the quality of our inventory. To offset these impacts, we are working on better managing trade spend in order to get back to historical levels over time. We are also assessing price increase opportunities for 2022 in concert with procurement cost savings initiatives. In addition, we anticipate benefits from the newly implemented integrated business planning Serge mentioned. This new approach will help us to improve our service levels and optimize working capital. Lastly, we will continue to rationalize and sell noncore products with a controlled approach. Excluding share-based compensation charges, adjusted selling and administration expenses were $7.3 million, up from $6.9 million in last year's Q3. I'd also like to highlight that this line item decreased by $0.5 million from $7.8 million in Q2. The decreases in revenue and gross profit as well as the variance in adjusted selling and admin expense in Q3 all resulted in adjusted EBITDA of $3.1 million, down from $8.7 million in the prior period. In the quarter, the review of several factors led to a material noncash charge of $129 million for impairment of goodwill. As you may know, each quarter, we assess whether there is an indication that goodwill and indefinite life intangible assets may be impaired. The Q3 impairment analysis considered multiple factors in the inputs. Our share price declined from $4.75 to $2.18 between June 30 and September 30, 2021. Management revised the internal revenue outlook, taking into account the revenue decline in Q3 2021 compared to Q3 2020, the latest in-store retail consumption data and initial retailer platform indications for 2022.In addition, we recognized that supply chain input costs were increasing faster than previously forecasted, which is impacting gross profit margins. As a result, we reported a significant net loss of $103.1 million in Q3 2021 versus net income of $3.6 million last year. Adjusted net income was positive $0.3 million compared with $4.2 million in Q3 2020. Adjusted earnings per share on a diluted basis was $0.01 per share in Q3 2021 compared with $0.10 per diluted share in Q3 2020. Adjusted free cash flow for Q3 came in at $1.8 million versus $4.4 million, reflecting the reduction in operating cash flow over the prior year. In the quarter, we reduced our debt by $7.5 million, and at quarter end, our net debt stood at $121.6 million, net of cash of $11.9 million. As Serge touched on, and you will see in today's press release, we recently worked with our lending syndicate to amend our credit facilities. Among the changes, the most significant one was an adjustment to the primary financial covenant, total net leverage ratio. The revised agreement provides us additional headroom to further implement the changes we have discussed today, all of which are ultimately aimed at generating better and more consistent operating earnings and free cash flow. The amended agreement also provides for the repayment of the term facility at a rate of 5% per annum in quarterly installments, commencing on March 31, 2022, and increased the anticipated interest rate to LIBOR plus 3.5% per annum. This updated facility is a major step for the organization, and we appreciate the support of our banking partners. I will now turn the call back to Serge for closing comments. Serge?
Thank you, Laurel. We understand we have given you a lot to digest with today's results. As we stated, there is much work ahead to strengthen the business performance as we strive to achieve improved and consistent results for our stakeholders. In a market that continues to show signs of recovery, we remain confident in the fundamental strength of our business, the unique and complementary brand portfolio, the efficiency of a common operating platform, the team's expertise and our entrepreneurial spirit. Thank you for your support. Now operator, please open the call up to questions.
[Operator Instructions] We'll take your first question from Sabahat Khan with RBC Capital.
Just wanted to get some perspective on as you look to the kind of the tail end of this year and into next year, some of these trends that you saw to Q3, do you see them continuing into Q4? When do you think you start to lap some of those challenging comps from the delistings of the product from earlier this year?
So good morning, Sabahat, and thank you for joining us. We'll see the -- we're anticipating a gradual anniversary of, I think, this change of distribution footprint. We've gradually lost distribution earlier in the year, and therefore, I think, as we come to the end of Q1 and Q2 next year, this should be behind us.
Okay. And then I guess, just in terms of some of the input cost issue that you highlighted, can you just maybe -- I know you mentioned a little bit about working with our supply chain partners, but can you maybe provide some color on price implementation or reformulation or any of those things that you're considering as you address some of those inflationary headwinds?
Everything is on the table. We have a long-standing relationship with our third-party manufacturers and logistic partners, and we're looking at opportunities to find ways to cut costs in order to mitigate the impact of inflation that we've seen so far. Simultaneously, we're assessing the opportunity for select price increases with -- by brand and with our retail partners, and we will gradually give you updates on our progress there.
That sounds good. And then, I guess, on kind of the 2022 outlook, do you have some of those price implementations in place? Or how should we think about maybe the margins as we look into '22?
We're really looking at, as we said, we are trying to implement some select price increases starting 2022, and that's work in progress.
[Operator Instructions] It appears there are no further questions at this time.
Thank you for joining us today on today's call, and have a good day. Thank you.
This concludes today's call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.