Chris Mottern
Analyst · ROTH Capital. Your line is now open
Thank you, Rachel. Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for joining us. On today's call, my intention is to update you on the Company's progress and addressing the fundamental issues in the business and the steps we've taken in the last 120 days to drive improvement in execution and financial results. In addition to providing a progress report, I will also share a view of what's ahead for the Company. To do this, I'll speak about events in fourth quarter of 2019 as well as the first quarter of fiscal 2020. David will review our financial results for the fourth quarter and full year of fiscal 2019 in detail. Before I discuss the recent work that has been accomplished by the team, as you may have seen, we announced the appointment of the new CEO, Deverl Maserang. This afternoon, in addition to reporting our financial results, we are very pleased that Deverl has agreed to lead the Farmer Brothers team. I'll speak more about his background and why we think he is an ideal fit, later on the call. As I stepped into the interim CEO role in May, it was clear to me that fundamental changes were required to get the Company back on track. In the last 120 days, I completed a thorough review of our business and saw silo thinking and fragmenting decision making across the organization, which at times was leading to resources both human and financial not being allocated appropriately. The good news is that many great employees stepped forward and assisted in a significant fashion to develop five key priorities. These were created with strategic intent. Success and execution of these priorities is forming a strong foundation on which the Company will be able to stabilize, move forward with momentum and be positioned for long-term success. These five priorities include effective cash management and debt reduction; customer retention and acquisition; efficiently managing coffee brewing equipment, installation and service; enhancing processes and systems; and reducing our SKU count, and achieving 100% product availability. Most of these priorities are connected and require teams to break out of their silos and work together and make decisions quickly to achieving the common goal of success. I am pleased and proud of those employees who have embraced change and are instrumental to the successes achieved to-date. I will comment on major improvements. But many, many great things are happening at Farmer Brothers. First, in terms of cash management and debt reduction. Our debt had reached a peak of $140 million on January 10, 2019. By August 31, 2019, we have reduced debt to $100 million, an improvement of $40 million. We also improved accounts receivable from a month-end peak of $79.5 million on December 31, 2018 to $56.7 million on July 31, 2019, a reduction of $22.8 million. We reduced inventory from a month-end peak of $123 million on November 30, 2018 to $90.4 million on July 31, 2019, a reduction of $32.6 million. Over the past 120 days, we completed the sale of certain assets that brought proceeds of $17.8 million, which were used to improve liquidity and pay down debt. These included the sale of parcel of Company-owned land in June for $1.3 million, the sale of our office coffee business in July to a large office coffee supplier, generating proceeds of $9.2 million. We expect to record an estimated gain of $7.3 million in the first quarter of fiscal 2020 with an additional potential earn-out of up to $2.2 million. Our office coffee business is not a core part of our overall business. And as part of this sale, we also entered into a significant three-year coffee supply contract with the purchaser. We sold our Seattle branch for $7.3 million. We expect to record an estimated gain of $6.9 million in the first quarter of fiscal 2020. We have recently signed an agreement to sell our Houston plant for $10 million with the leaseback term of up to 36 months. We expect this transaction to close in the second quarter of fiscal 2020 and are currently transferring volume to our other roasting facilities. Regarding customer retention and acquisition, the Company has been working for some time to improve DSD sales productivity, and taken steps earlier in fiscal 2019 to further refine the balance between our channel and street account based business. We have now taken an additional step by organizing the DSD business’s nine regions and integrating our channel and street businesses under the structure. As we evaluated our DSD accounts, it became clear that many of our channel accounts are regional in nature. Additionally, we connected the coffee brewing equipment control, installation and service with regional sales manager. The team's ability to be effective and control expenses has been aided enormously by our business intelligence tool. This tool allows sales team members the flexibility to use this key asset along with service to build our business at the local level. As we have begun the new fiscal year, this team is executing with a budget reduced by $14 million, compared to fiscal ‘19. For June, July and August, we are running favorable to the plan. In addition, this group is charged with developing revenue streams associated with equipment sales and service. We are already seeing results from this initiative. Long-term, we see this as a strategic opportunity. We have also reduced the span of each of our regions to focus on major metropolitan markets and their surroundings. In addition, we've added a developing market region for less dense markets that will require different forms of sales attention, roastery direct services being one. These sales efforts are being supported by trade marketing reporting to the Senior VP and GM of direct store delivery. Further, we have updated our DSD sales incentive program for regional sales representatives, providing significant upside for improved performance with added incentive when the branch team exceeds their goal as a unit. We believe we have established the right structure, the right team and have given our people the necessary tools to see greater success in retaining customers and winning new business. Our direct ship business performed in line with expectations in Q4 in terms of pounds sold to large national accounts. With that said, this business continues to be impacted by a highly competitive pricing environment. As we look to the future, we see growth opportunities mid-tier and smaller customers that are more of a hybrid between direct ship and DSD. These are customers who don't require significant investment of capital and people. They're coming to us for product development, equipment expertise and additional services, allowing us to achieve fair margins. While we are working to improve and grow our DSD business, we are making changes with indirect ship to increase our focus on these mid-tier and smaller hybrid accounts. We're also looking beyond this to additional growth opportunities. As I mentioned earlier, we're seeing good traction with our roastery direct services and see opportunity to continue building our ecommerce business where the services we provide are a differentiator with customers. Our systems and processes objective is to develop critical reports needed to better manage and control our business. First, for DSD, the new business intelligence tool that I briefly mentioned earlier is proving to be transformational. It provides key details about our customers including profitability, service events, sales, drop size, and equipment installed. The tool allows the user to drill down from total, to branch, to route, to customer by product sold or information on any element of our business proposition. We've already put this tool to use and it's providing the basis for setting our sales objectives and how we are working toward achievement of those objectives. Second, we're continuing to move ahead with the upgrade of our legacy JDE Enterprise system. This is a fundamental tool which hasn't been updated for a number of years. The significant improvement of this system will allow us to manage our business more effectively and efficiently. Third, we have piloted a 24/7 customer call center, which provides customers with immediate assistance. The initial results of the pilot have been excellent and a plan for the national rollout is currently underway. And finally, we have made progress as it relates to the technology our employees are using in the field. While we have made necessary improvements to our handheld technology, we are also adding an all-hours field employee call center for employees with product supply issues to directly reach an employee with the authority to fix the issue immediately. For SKU rationalization and our 100% product availability commitment, we are seeing progress in reducing our SKU count, but we still need to work through existing raw materials inventory for eliminated SKUs. This process for coffee entails rationalization from coffee blending to grind consolidations to standardization of films, to case packs, along with reduction of SKUs for allied products. We anticipate the result will be longer runs and fewer changes, while providing for more focused selling, and ultimately reducing scrap. Product availability at 100% involves better forecasting at the SKU level, and visibility of inventories of coffee and allied products all the way through our branches. The IT team is nearing completion of a branch tool that will improve ordering capabilities and provide better visibility into the inventory. Within this priority is a reduction of scrap. In 2019, our scrap was unacceptable. It was caused by overproduction, Houston's inability to produce without creating production scrap, and other field issues associated with obsolete product. More efficient manufacturing operations and improved product availability, coupled with the vibrant supply chain is important to our success now, as well as in the long term. As our team has focused on these five priorities since May and as we have entered fiscal 2020, we've also made a number of other leadership changes and adjustments to the organizational structure that we believe will foster improved execution and enable more nimble decision-making. In concert with the leadership changes, we right sized the organization and eliminated approximately 60 positions, mostly at our corporate headquarters in July to help us operate more efficiently. This will generate estimated savings of $7.6 million in fiscal 2020. We recorded a severance charge of $1.9 million in the first quarter of fiscal 2020. Having provided this update on progress made to improve execution and put the Company on the right path to improve financial performance, I'd like to turn next to our outlook for fiscal 2020. With the new permanent CEO coming on board and the business in the midst of a turnaround, we are not providing an expected range for adjusted EBITDA for fiscal 2020. With that said, I'd like to give some qualitative guidance for the fiscal year. We currently anticipate and adjusted EBITDA will be down somewhat compared to fiscal ‘19, factoring in the following assumptions. First, we expect direct ship to remain steady; second, our outlook also factors a turnaround we expect to see in DSD in the third quarter, with its new regional structure in place and more refined balance between our channel and street account-based business. Additionally, this assumes we pay our incentive plan this year, whereas we did not in fiscal 2019. David will provide some additional metrics in a moment that may also be helpful for your financial models. Before I turn the call over to him, I'd like to speak a few moments about the Company's incoming CEO. We are thrilled to have Deverl Maserang joining Farmer Brothers and are confident he is the ideal executive to lead Farmer Brothers into its next stage of growth. Deverl brings over three decades of innovative leadership in turnarounds, supply chain, management expertise, as well as deep experience in the food and beverage industry. He most recently served as President and CEO of Earthbound Farm Organic, where he led the company to deliver record operational execution metrics. Prior to that Deverl held multiple senior positions at food and beverage companies, including Starbucks, Chiquita Brands, and Pepsi Bottling Group. He will officially begin in the role on September 13th, and we look forward to benefiting from his experience insights and strong leadership capabilities. My time as Interim CEO has been short but productive. I am confident Deverl will hit the ground running and continue the great execution already demonstrated by this talented team. Deverl and I have already had in-depth discussions about Farmer Brothers business. The actions we have taken in the past quarter and our five priorities are designed to better position the Company for the future. With this foundation, and Deverl’s stepping in as CEO, we believe the Company is well-positioned to execute on our strategy on a standalone basis and also pursue M&A opportunities in parallel to drive maximum value for our shareholders. As it relates to our broader strategy going forward, we recognize that we operate in a consolidating industry and we want to be part of that consolidation. We believe that there will be potential opportunities on a regular basis and we plan to evaluate them as they come. It's been an honor serving as Farmer Brothers’ interim CEO. And I look forward to working with Deverl as the Company continues to improve and evolve. With that, I'll now turn the call over to David for a more detailed review of our financial results.