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Good day, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Premium Brands Holdings Corporation Third Quarter 2020 Earnings Conference Call. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. [Operator Instructions]It's now my pleasure to introduce today's hosts, George Paleologou, President and CEO of Premium Brands; and our CFO, Will Kalutycz. Please go ahead.
Thanks, Kerry, and good morning, everyone. I would like to welcome you to our 2020 third quarter conference call. I'm pleased to report that the momentum we saw in our business in the latter half of the second quarter continued through to the third quarter, resulting in record sales and earnings. This was despite several of our companies continuing to struggle with the impact of COVID-19-related factors on many of their customers. Our success during these volatile times strongly validates our model of risk diversification across sales channels, customers and product categories; highlights the strength and resilience of our business as a whole; and is a testament to the passion and entrepreneurial spirit of our people. We're especially pleased with cutlers being made by our U.S.-based sandwich, meat snacks and seafood platforms. All of these generated strong growth during the quarter, driven by the execution of long-term sustainable strategies. Correspondingly, our third quarter U.S. sales as compared to the third quarter of 2019 increased by 16% to a record $432 million. Furthermore, had it not been for significant labor shortages at almost all of our U.S. facilities, this number would have been even higher. Our core values of quality, transparency, innovation, social responsibility and community engagement, which have driven our success in Canada, are resonating equally as well with U.S. consumers, particularly during these challenging times. Looking forward, we remain as excited as ever about the future. With a strong balance sheet, a solid base of core businesses, a robust acquisition pipeline and a supportive shareholder base, we're ideally positioned to continue to create significant shareholder value, both through organic initiatives and acquisitions. I'm more confident than ever that we will emerge from this pandemic a stronger, larger and even more resilient company. As a final note, before passing the presentation over to our CFO, Will Kalutycz, for an overview of our financial results for the quarter, I would like to mention that we will not be providing any commentary or answering any questions about certain recent media reports on possible acquisition targets. I will now turn the presentation over to Will. Will?
Thanks, George, and good morning, everyone. Before discussing our results for the quarter, I would like to caution you that to the extent we make forward-looking statements during our presentation, our forecasts and assumptions are subject to change and actual results may vary. Please see our 2019 and third quarter of 2020 MD&A filings, both of which can be found on the SEDAR website, www.sedar.com, for details on some of the factors that could cause our actual results to differ from our current expectations. Turning to our results for the quarter. Our revenue grew by approximately $133 million or 13.7% to a record $1.1 billion. The biggest driver of this increase was approximately $88 million of organic volume growth, representing an inflation adjustment growth rate of 9.1%. As George mentioned earlier, our strong performance was despite several of our businesses continuing to be negatively impacted by COVID-19-related factors. The effects of which were partially offset by robust sales in our retail and convenience store channel sales. On a net basis, i.e. after taking into account unusual trends in our retail and convenience store sales, we estimate the third quarter sales impact of COVID-19-related factors to be approximately $34 million, which is down significantly from $132 million estimated for the second quarter. Normalizing for the $34 million impact of organic -- our organic growth rate for the third quarter is 12.5%. Our sales growth, both on an actual and on a normalized basis, was well above our long-term targeted volume growth rate range of 4% to 6% due to a variety of factors, such as recent capacity expansions, new customers and product innovation across a number of product categories, including fresh seafood, meat snacks, artisan sandwiches, dry cured meats and cooked proteins. The remaining drivers of our third quarter growth were business acquisitions, which accounted for $33 million of the increase; selling price inflation of $8 million; and currency exchange inflation of $4 million. Our adjusted EBITDA for the quarter increased to $93.5 million from $84.1 million in the third quarter of 2019 primarily due to the significant increase in our sales, partially offset by labor wage inflation, higher discretionary compensation accruals and net COVID-19-related costs of $3.6 million. Normalizing for the impacts of COVID-19-related factors, including lost sales, our third quarter adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA margin are $105 million and 9.3%, respectively. Our adjusted earnings per share for the quarter increased by 21% to a record $1.07 per share from $0.88 per share in the third quarter of 2019, driven mostly by the increase in our adjusted EBITDA. In terms of our outlook for the balance of 2020, assuming that the current situation with respect to the COVID-19 pandemic remains relatively stable, we expect to continue generating year-over-year improvement in our sales and adjusted EBITDA. However, due to the seasonality of many of our businesses, the degree of this improvement will likely not be to the same extent as achieved in the third quarter. Looking further out, we remain bullish on meeting or exceeding our 2023 sales and adjusted EBITDA targets of $6 billion and $600 million, respectively. As George mentioned earlier, the responses of our businesses to the challenges they have faced over the last 8 months have expanded, not contracted, our long-term organic growth expectations, while at the same time, the uncertainty associated with the current environment is further expanding our acquisitions pipeline. Turning to our financial position. During the quarter, we completed a combined common share and convertible debenture offering that resulted in net proceeds of $309 million. We also issued a notice of intention to redeem our convertible debentures maturing in April 2021, which resulted in $81 million of the debentures being converted to common shares and the balance being repaid. As a result of these transactions, we finished the quarter with a very strong balance sheet and a record level of liquidity. Our senior debt-to-adjusted EBITDA ratio at the end of the quarter fell to 1.4:1. Our total debt-to-adjusted EBITDA ratio, which incorporates our convertible debentures, fell to 3.0:1, and we had approximately $700 million of unutilized credit capacity. In terms of our investing activity during the quarter, we announced the acquisitions of culinary products manufacturer, Global Gourmet, and seafood distributor, Allseas Fisheries. Global Gourmet closed in the quarter, while Allseas Fisheries, which was subject to approval by the Canadian Competition Bureau, closed earlier this week. The combined capital allocated to these 2 transactions is $127 million. During the quarter, we also allocated $16 million in capital to project CapEx initiatives, which we define as investments within expected internal rate of return of 15% or greater. These included a 41,000 square foot expansion of our artisan bakery in Langley, B.C.; several meat snack capacity expansions in Canada and the U.S., adding incremental charcuterie tray pack capacity at our Reno sandwich plant, and the installation of automated production lines at our Phoenix sandwich plant. We also broke ground in the quarter on a 26,000 square foot expansion of our meat snacks and dry cured product facility in Brantford, Ontario. Looking forward, we are also assessing 2 additional capital projects with a combined estimated cost of $35 million. Subject to these projects meeting our minimum IRR threshold of 15%, we expect them to commence over the next 2 quarters and to be completed between the fourth quarter of 2021 and the fourth quarter of 2022. Turning to dividends. During the quarter, we declared a dividend of $23.4 million or $0.5775 per share, which on an annualized basis, works out to $2.31 per share. Our free cash flow for the trailing-12 months was $177 million as compared to dividends of $87 million, resulting in a payout ratio of approximately 49%. I will now turn the call over to Kerry for the Q&A segment. Kerry?
[Operator Instructions] Our first question will be from George Doumet from Scotiabank.
Congrats on a strong quarter. Well, if we eyeball the weekly sales chart in the presentation that you guys put out in mid-September versus today's results, it looks like you had a really strong exit in the quarter. So I'm just wondering why you guys are tapering the Q4 sales goal post from those levels. Is there anything specific that you're seeing? Or you're just being conservative there?
Well, that weekly sales chart, you have to be a little bit careful with it because the timing of orders can distort individual weeks and order bumping over 1 day. And shipment date can dramatically impact that, especially with our sandwich group, and they tend to have larger shipments going out to major distribution facilities across the U.S. and Canada. So you got to be a little bit careful there. And then also maybe some of that being pulled in from -- as a result being pulled in from Q4, so you've got that factor in there. And then you've also -- like you say, seasonality is a big factor. Q2 and Q3 are our big quarters. Meat snacks are a tremendous driver of our sales in these quarters, and that business is significantly diminished in the fourth quarter. And then there's also another factor, George, in that. A big driver of our growth over the last couple of -- last 3 quarters have been in our seafood group and some of our seafood initiatives, and we're starting to lap some of those initiatives in Q4 as well.
That's great. And Will, it looks like you're taking about $10 million more price increases in SF compared to last quarter. And input costs seem to be down sequentially. Can you talk a little bit about that dynamic? And will you take some prices moving forward maybe to offset some of the structural COVID costs that we're experiencing?
Yes. A lot of those increases, George, were just sort of finally coming up to the lapping. Again, that will be a fourth quarter issue. But a lot of those price increases were put through last year at the end of Q2, early Q3 and to address the SF issues. And so you're still seeing those flow through this quarter.
Okay. And any COVID costs that you guys found, taking [ into the account the ] consumer in Q4 and onwards?
No. No. No. Well, In the -- and just to give a little color on the COVID costs. So our net costs were about $3.6 million in the quarter. Most of that -- there's 2 factors in there. There were actual costs of about $4.6 million before we take into account government subsidies, net $1.1 million in cost cutting. Most of those costs are all transitory. So as they flow through, we'll normalize in coming quarters once we're through this pandemic.
Okay. And one last one, if I may, maybe to George, it's a 2-part question. George, I'm just wondering maybe has the pandemic at all had an impact on how you really think the types of acquisitions that you'd be interested in? And the second part, I know you guys don't comment on rumors at all, but how is the appetite in general for buying a business that generates well above 50% of sales outside of North America?
Again, George, overall, as we mentioned in our prepared comments, our pipeline is as robust as ever. I would say that the pandemic scare probably is motivating more people to talk to us rather than less. So right now, we have to pick and choose which acquisitions to prioritize. I think it's a good position to be in. With regards to your second question, George, as I mentioned, we have no comments. We did make an investment in Europe, of course, this past year, which has worked out very well. The company in Italy is giving us great support in terms of our Italian dry cure meat initiatives that are growing fabulously well in North America. But again, I have no comment on the second part of your question.
Your next question will be from John Zamparo from CIBC.
I'm trying to better -- trying to understand the comment around the Q4 outlook a bit better. You mentioned seasonality as the reason you expect more limited growth. Is that referring to on a dollar basis as when you expect more than the dollar growth because it's growing from a smaller baseline? Or are you seeing slower percentage growth year-over-year in Q4?
Both, John. Although the dollar is the more impactful thing, but also on a percentage basis. Again, a big part of what drove that strong normalized 12.5% was the meat snacks category, and that's just not going to be the same driver in the fourth quarter.
Okay. Got it. On the lower-than-ideal-customer fill rates, apologies if I missed it. Can you quantify that for either revenue or EBITDA for the quarter? And has that continued to this point? Do you see it alleviating over the next couple of months?
Well, it's a tough number to quantify, and that's why we didn't try normalizing for it just because it's sort of a compounding number. You short it and then the customer continues to order, it continues to be short. So it's a tough number to estimate, so we really don't comment on it. It was a factor in the quarter, but I would say it wasn't a really large factor. It was just one of several sort of COVID impacts.
From my perspective, I would say that all of our companies, they aspire to a 98%, 99% fill factor. And we've seen a lot of our companies come in at 92%, 93%, and that's just not acceptable. But in this environment, with some of the business continuity issues, of course, it's probably better than some of the other companies out there. So again, it's a difficult environment given the pandemic and given some of the business continuity issues with having to do with pandemic.
Okay. That's helpful. I wanted to ask about the retail part of the business, in particular, grocery. So now that we're seeing some dining rooms restricted across different parts of the country, are you seeing similar surges in the retail channels as what we saw maybe in March or April. Probably not to the same magnitude, but has that business been outperforming as you've seen additional shutdowns?
I think overall, retail and club has benefited immensely from the shutdown or the lockdowns and some of the issues in fine dining. And generally, consumers are not eating outside of their homes to the same extent as before COVID-19. And we're seeing those trends continuing, and they've been continuing throughout -- since the beginning of the pandemic.
Okay. And then one last one for me. How are you and the Board thinking about the dividend at this point? It does seem like the business is probably more resistant to the pandemic than maybe first feared. And, I mean, you've mentioned that you're excited about what's in the M&A pipeline and that there's more opportunity than ever. So just wondering if there's as much certainty on the magnitude of increases you've seen or you've done in the past, given how much you have in terms of M&A?
We're certainly very comfortable with our current dividend policy. And as I mentioned earlier, on a trailing-12 months basis, we're running below kind of our general guideline of a 50% payout ratio. So we have a tremendous amount of flexibility there, John. The only reason why we would possibly not grow our dividend at the same rate as we had in the past is we're getting more and more investor feedback that they want us to keep the capital. So that would be more the consideration relative to any consideration that we couldn't handle the same level of increases. So outside of that, though, those are discussions that we'll have towards the end of the year or early next year.
Our next question will be from David Newman from Desjardins.
Just kind of looking at -- you're gaining a lot of momentum here. And I think there's a couple of years where you really invested in sort of new accounts, channels, markets, et cetera. And you're gathering steam, and I clearly understand, meat snacks in the fourth quarter and things like that. But can you -- is there a certain -- can you call out some of the -- with some granularity, where you're really seeing solid traction, what new accounts, channels, markets? And I know we discussed some of these down in Phoenix. And obviously, on the meat snacks side, to your retail, seafood. But any color on where you really have seen remarkable wins?
Again, David, there's no sort of one answer to your question. We're really pleased with the progress that we're making across all of our platforms. I mentioned some of the traction that we're getting in the U.S. We had 16% growth in the U.S. during the quarter. That reflects our sandwich platform, meat snack platform and our seafood platform. Again, these are good growth numbers in a pandemic where some of our companies in the U.S. lost customers, like airlines and cruise lines and et cetera, right? So again, it's a -- the growth is broad-based. We're really pleased with the way some of our companies pivoted to other channels and found other customers. And again, nothing specific other than lots of good progress in all channels, club, retail, sea store and some direct-to-home as well, leveraging other delivery platforms. So again, lots of progress on many fronts. Our cooked protein platform is doing tremendously well. We're trying to figure out ways to add capacity, both in Canada and the U.S., and I think very consistent to a lot of the consumer trends that we're seeing out there. So broad-based progress, I would say, David.
Okay. And so that -- obviously, that portends the continued momentum overall.
Yes. As Will said, there is some seasonality to our numbers. And at times, we want to be conservative, again, given that we don't know how this pandemic is going to progress and how the second wave is going to progress. But yes, we're very pleased with the progress we're making across all of our platforms.
Okay. Great. And then on the guidance, more along the lines of -- you had challenges as well in the past of commodities and things like that. So the guidance seems to be more skewed towards the top line, whereas -- are you seeing margin momentum? So in other words, yes, you called out some things in the quarter like new supply relationships, the inventory positions where you had a bit of a gain there, and some hedging, I guess. But the commodity cost environment is now looking very benign. So if you look at gross margin and EBITDA margins as you head into 4Q, do you think you're going to sustainably, between gross margins and EBITDA scaling, or fixed costs, start to see that really heading north?
Yes. On the commodity side, David, we're a little bit on the conservative, a concerned side just given -- it's tough to see like -- because there aren't public numbers around it. But particularly in our protein division and the boneless material that they use, there is a tremendous shortage in North America labor. And as a result, there's not enough workers to process this raw material. So there is quite a shortage of it, and it is creating a bit of an inflation bubble in that segment. And our Q4 use -- hams and things like that, use a lot of this material. So we are a little bit concerned on the commodity front. But you're right, outside of that, a lot of the other areas, in beef and seafood and chicken, are relatively benign. So you've got -- kind of generally okay with this one little segment being a concern. So that's why we're sort of slightly bit conservative on our outlook on margins in the fourth quarter.
Got it. And last one for me, just on your own labor, you took measures, and I saw Thank You bonuses and things like that. But what other measures have you taken to sort of mitigate that? Because that's obviously an ongoing issue amid COVID?
Again, David, we focused a lot on investing in automation and investing in improved efficiencies. As we mentioned before, in some of our companies, we've rationalized a lot of the SKUs. And we're focusing on the plants and our capacity towards the top 10 SKUs, let's say. Again, a lot of our companies had to be very innovative in trying to manage their plans in the best way possible in a pandemic, where you've got issues with people not showing up to work, people testing positive at times, people having -- people at home that tested positive. It's an unsettled environment out there. And a lot of our companies have been extremely innovative in trying to deal with the scarcity of labor situation. It is a problem, as we mentioned, but it is a problem for everybody. Everybody in the industry is having the same issues. And again, we've changed the way we're managing our business overall to deal with this issue.
Our next question will be from Stephen MacLeod from BMO Capital Markets.
I just wanted to follow-up on just in terms of the new initiatives and customers and products that have been driving this accelerated organic growth, particularly as you go through the recovery. Can you just talk a little bit about -- when you look into 2021, could these incremental initiatives push your organic volume growth above that 4% to 6% target in a more sustainable way?
At this point, Steve, we're not giving any guidance on 2021. So I'd hate to be very specific. But in general terms, we are still in a lot of these initiatives, particularly in our sandwich group, on our meat snacks group in the U.S., in the early innings. So -- but outside of that, I don't really want to talk too much about 2021.
I would say, Stephen, from my perspective, that as we've mentioned previously, demand is not an issue in many ways. There's a lot of demand out there. What we're focusing right now is really ensuring business continuity and our ability to execute and deliver excellent service to our customers. That's the focus. As we've said earlier, the demand is not an issue today. As I mentioned in my prepared remarks, if we didn't want to overwork our labor force and didn't have some of the labor challenges that we did, our sales would have been a lot higher. So we're not too concerned about demand at this point. But again, the major focus today for us and for a lot of other companies in our space is to ensure business continuity.
Okay. That's helpful commentary. Can you give a little bit of incremental color on what the new projects are that you're looking for? Or are you looking into it like [ $35 million? ] Or is that something that -- you'll just sort of announce it as it becomes more imminent?
Yes. No, no. There's 2 projects. The bigger project, by far, is expanding our premium processed meats capacity in the U.S., our Ferndale facility. So that's a $20 million U.S. project. So that's by far the bigger. And the other one is a distribution-related project for Western Canada. So we're in the final steps of the analysis now. So I would expect that we -- next quarter, we'll be talking about those projects going forward.
Okay. And then you gave a little bit of gross margin color in terms of what you're seeing on the commodity cost side. How do you see SG&A evolving as you go into Q4 and then, I guess, maybe into next year as well? I know you're not giving guidance on 2021. But I'm just trying to think through what SG&A leverage could potentially look like or whether you have some costs coming back into the system or anything like that.
Yes. So SG&A has been sort of a damper on our margins for the last several quarters because we did invest a lot in infrastructure mid to late last year. So I would expect, Stephen, to see some deleveraging in 2021 around our SG&A, both in the Specialty Foods and the Premium Foods distribution groups.
Our next question will be from Derek Lessard from TD Securities.
Congratulations on a great quarter. Just a couple of questions for me. I saw a very good sequential improvement in Specialty Foods' EBITDA margin. I was wondering if you could maybe talk about how much of that improvement stemmed from, I guess, lower COVID expenses versus -- I think you mentioned leveraging some of the additional volumes.
No. Sorry, Derek, are you talking from Q2 to Q3?
Yes, sequential. Yes.
Yes. Yes, again, our Q2 COVID -- net COVID costs are quite high. I think they're around $10 million is my recollection versus $3.6 million. So certainly, that is a factor. But by far, what's driving the margins on a quarter over -- year-over-year basis for the quarter was the sales deleveraging.
But again, if you're talking about Q2 versus Q3, you have to remember that April for us this year was basically a month where we had virtually no sales with some companies, right? So that distorts the margins for the quarter.
That's a good point. And particularly, Derek, and I think we've talked about this in the past, our sandwich group, their operations were shutdown for weeks at that time, and there's a tremendous amount of overhead in those facilities. So that had a really negative impact on the margins in the second quarter.
Okay. Yes. So that's -- that was actually my follow-up. I just wanted -- so if you could talk about maybe the -- I mean there's been a quick turnaround in sandwich sales despite COVID and a lot of people working from home. Just wondering if you could maybe add some color to the strength that you're seeing in that business right now.
Yes. The sandwich platform is -- its big customer is doing much better now, and that's certainly helping. But the great part there is their new sales initiatives, too, are equally, if not more, driving their growth. They're just getting a tremendous amount of traction in the retail and convenience store channel, both new customers and new products. So yes, it's going very well.
And new customers in QSR as well, some customers that could become very large at some point as well. So there's a lot of traction in that platform. They've made some very good decisions in regards to not laying off anybody during April, even though the plants were virtually empty. But that helped as customers ramped up very quickly in May and June. And again, in addition to that, they were able to go out and get some more sustainable business to add to their sales portfolio.
Our next question will be from Sabahat Khan from RBC Capital Markets.
Maybe just continuing on some of the commentary. I know you want to not really get too deep into 2021 outlook. But just directionally speaking, if you look at the spikes in demand, you saw a little bit in the retail channel, I guess, as COVID took off. Is there a concern on the organic growth outlook into 2021? Or do you think some of this demand is probably related to some of your initiatives and products and maybe that continued? Just trying to think about just the comparators -- comparatives as we get into next year and as some of these quarters have pretty big top line growth.
We spent a lot of time with our businesses isolating -- trying to estimate, isolate the impact of COVID-19-related factors on the sales. And that was both on the positive and the negative side. The negative side was pretty easy, obviously, to identify. The positive was a little more challenging, given the -- we had a really good summer in Central Canada, and that drove a lot of business. So we have to sort of strip that impact out from -- necessarily the COVID. But we feel pretty good about that number, we came to the 12.5%, is normalizing for some of that unusual lift you're getting in retail right now from COVID.
Okay. And I guess, historically...
Sorry, I think the other point to remember as well is that, as Will mentioned in his prepared remarks, we are suffering in terms of certain channels. And if, let's say, you assume a reduction or less momentum in retail, you'll pick up momentum in QSR and Foodservice as well, right? So you may lose some traction on some channels, but you'll gain it in others.
Okay. And then just, I guess, related to that, how are you guys feeling about the sandwiches business? I know you indicated that, if I caught it correctly, that it grew during the quarter. So maybe you can shed some color on the trends you're seeing across some of the channels that you're involved with in the sandwiches space, whether it's QSR or the C-store channel? Just what are you seeing by channel within that category?
Very, very strong trends. If we didn't have some labor challenges, their numbers would be higher. Their business overall grew low double digits during the quarter, which was -- year-over-year, which we were very pleased with. And again, if we assume normal type of conditions with regards to labor, we expect to pick up some momentum based on the initiatives in the pipeline.
Okay. So based on that commentary, I guess, we should assume that if we think about your larger customers in that channel, they've seen demand return to pre-pandemic levels, I guess, for breakfast sandwiches?
I think that's a very good assumption. But as Will said earlier, we -- all those customers is growing with us, the percentage of our business that they make up is actually diminishing and -- because we are successful in picking up other customers in other channels.
Okay. Great. And then just last one for me on the margin side. I think you alluded to this earlier around some of the SG&A pressure this year, and it makes sense, its a backdrop. Directionally speaking, do you also expect maybe gross margins as we progress into the next year to trend positively, in addition to some of those SG&A improvements you're talking about?
Well, certainly, the second quarter of next year is going to be a no-brainer given the issues some of our production facilities experienced. But in general terms, yes, a big part of our story, a big part of where we expect our margin expansion to come from over the coming years is sales deleveraging. We've invested a lot, not only in the SG&A infrastructure, but in our production infrastructure. So while we do have more projects coming online, there were some pretty big ones that we've completed over the last couple of years that we're still deleveraging on.
I'm showing no further questions at this time. I'd like to turn the call back over to our speakers.
I'd like to thank everybody for attending today. And please all stay safe and healthy. Thank you.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's teleconference. You may now disconnect.