Geoffrey Gwin
Analyst · Crater Lake. Please go ahead
Thank you, Heather. And let me welcome you to all to our second quarter conference call. You should have had an opportunity to review our earnings press release and Tiffany Milton will take you through the performance of the company in a few minutes. I'd like to update you on our performance as well and some of our progress to date and the transformation of our businesses as we implement a three year strategic plan. Our spirits business had a good quarter, we executed some key strategic wholesale agreements and realized some gains on the sale of excess brown spirits that are not currently in our operational plan. Spirits gross margins in the quarter was 53%, which I think is a record for the company and is up from the 21% in the prior-year. Now breaking that down, year-to-date, we've achieved 32% gross margins in our spirits wholesale branded retail businesses and 53% in bulk spirits sales. And this margin improvement underscores some comments I think I've made in prior calls that we sit on very valuable aged whiskey inventory. This inventory is in very short supply, and has increased in value over the course of the pandemic. Now it's been critical for us to capture these expanded gross margins in our traditional branded spirits business. As we've said in the past, we will no longer sell the spirits at a loss to retailers, some distributors can enjoy disproportionate profits. Now let's take a look at the second quarter branded spirits results in volume, price and mix. Volume was a headwind. But most of our decline there was a result of lower sales in Azuñia through channels where we were losing money. Now adjusting for one-time sales of about 175 cases of Burnside to Taster's Club last year, volumes in Burnside would have been down 6% year-over-year for the quarter versus the one we reported. We have begun to see improvements as we move price points up for the key skews. Our mix has been somewhat affected negatively by the fact that we're selling less Azuñia which has a much higher gross revenue rate than the rest of the portfolio. But that's been offset by some savings and lack of discount in our part. As we head into the third quarter, we need to make more progress on improving volumes. But you should expect to see us continue to last the discontinued Azuñia sales to the discount channels and that impact on year-over-year comparisons. Our sales team had a number of key wins in spirits in the quarter. For example, you're invited by ClubCorp, the largest owner operator of golf clubs and country clubs in the U.S. to test Azuñia tequila in the Texas market. We are authorized in 50 QFC stores that's a division of Kroger in Washington. Starting in Q3 and also one placement and another 17 Pinky stores in Texas, so the sales team has done a good job in laying the groundwork for profitable sales growth and we hope to have more wins here to report in the coming months. We've made progress in spirits. We believe with more investment dollars, we could probably accelerate this growth. Now for the balance of the year, we faced a number of opportunities and challenges. We need to continue to implement the shift where we're taking strategic price increases. But we were reducing input costs and investing in local marketing. This is not going to be easy in a market where distributors are destocking and inventory is running at very low levels. With consumers facing higher prices and less disposable dollars they are shifting to lower price points, this kind of environment favors large spirits distributors, but we have outstanding products and in some markets strong brand equity. So now let's turn for a minute and talk about Craft Canning and Printing. Craft had a very important quarter. At the end of April, we turned on our new digital Can printer and began the long awaited next phase of growth in that business. As many of you know digital can printing is transforming the Craft beverage space. We are taking share of can decoration from traditional Craft label and shrinks lead providers. And the business proposition here is very simple. Most traditional Craft labels found on aluminum cans are technologies where this actually make the cans unable to be recycled and they have to go into landfills. However digital can printing cans, they are 100% recyclable. Now in a key market like Portland will Craft beverages driven by environmentally conscious consumers, this is a powerful differentiator. But that's not all the benefits of digital can printing. We also provide unparalleled decorating capabilities, photorealistic graphics, and the ability to make label changes at the last minute. These capabilities are game changers in space. As a reminder, the space I'm referring to is not just beer, but all types of Craft beverage. It's a space, it's growing dramatically encompassing every imaginable beverage variety. It's important to keep in mind this new technology will take time to reach its full potential. So in the quarter, we began introducing our customers to our digital can printing capabilities. And through the end of July, over 60 customers had switched to digital can printed cans. And we had printed over 1.4 million cans. Our strategy has been to introduce can printing to key customers believing that once they see the benefit, they will never return to traditional labels. Given that focus and the methodical ramp-up and utilization we still have a ways to go to show you all the profitability of our new digital printing business. However, I believe we're on the way and seeing printing utilization improve weekly as we continue to build a printing backlog of customers. We have added a second printing shift and we will be in a position to improve printer utilization in the current quarter. Now, perhaps mobile canning business saw volume decline versus last year, as many of our craft customers shifted to on premise sales, we were also impacted by stiffer competition and fewer sales of consumables. As I've shared in prior calls, our investment in digital can printing will strengthen our performance in mobile canning and open the door to new opportunities. As an example, we made an announcement this quarter about a new relationship with approach beverage. This is a direct opportunity that came from digital can printing. We bring this key new customer digital can printing that capabilities and have acquired its production assets in Portland this is will be our first co-packing facility to attack the unreversed micro craft beverage space. So we're excited about all the changes at craft, and we believe we have made good progress positioning the company to grow. Now let's talk about some other important developments. So we continue to make progress working on our balance sheet in the quarter we terminated our relationship and paid back Live Oak and extended our bank line for a short period with first interstate. We are planning on replacing that line with an asset based facility in the current quarter. The balance of the year we faced two critical challenges. We have to drive earnings improvement despite an uncertain consumer environment, while pushing forward on our transformation plans with both craft and spirits. We do need to identify sources of capital to help us drive incremental investment in both businesses. And I believe we have the team strategy and the opportunity to do so. But before I hand it over Tiffany for some more numbers, I'd like to introduce you to a new member of the team, Bruce Wells who has joined craft as our Controller there, and he will be glad to help answer your questions on class performance. Now, Tiffany, can you take us through some of the details of the quarter?