Deverl Maserang
Analyst · B. Riley Securities. Your line is open
Thank you, Jeff. Good afternoon everyone and thanks for joining us today. We hope your families and loved ones are continuing to stay safe and healthy. I want to first express my gratitude to the entire Farmer Bros. organization. Because of them, I can proudly say that the supply chain and network optimization strategy, we've communicated over the past several quarters, has now largely materialized. While I'll let Scott discuss the financials in more detail, I want to provide a few updates first. The headwinds associated with COVID-19 continued to impact our business throughout the quarter, especially, within our DSD segment, which sells to restaurants, hotels, and casinos among other channels. Over the past several months, we have seen our business respond rather quickly in both directions as the pandemic has progressed, including renewed downturns tied to holiday time case surges and encouraging data following localized re-openings. Underneath all of this, our fiscal Q2 results show improving rates of decline in the worst periods. So, we remain cautiously optimistic that we're in a good position to recover as the country gets vaccinated and economic activity begins to normalize. In the meantime, we continue to apply rigorous cost discipline, as we have actively managed our SG&A expenses relative to volumes and continue to protect our liquidity. While we can't control COVID, we can control our execution. And as such, that's where I'll focus the balance of my prepared remarks today. In the past, I've recapped progress against our five E's turnaround strategy. But as we enter 2021, we've successfully executed the major essential items within those areas. So my goal today is to paint a clear picture of where we are regarding business optimization and where our next priorities lay. I'll then turn the call over to Scott to walk through the financials. Our supply chain and network optimization strategy aim to rebalance volumes, across our manufacturing facilities and our national distribution network. The process consisted of three main steps. One, rebalancing our Houston manufacturing facility which has now led to its closure; two significantly improving our Dallas-Fort Worth facility; and three opening a new West Coast distribution center. Let me recap each step briefly. We began rebalancing our Houston manufacturing facility a few months ago. As of mid-January of this year, production was ceased and the facility will permanently close at the end of May. The facility was our oldest and most outdated manufacturing plant. And given its proximity to our Dallas-Fort worth support center, it was underutilized, inefficient and expensive to operate. Simultaneously, as we wound out our Houston operations, we began making improvements to our Dallas-Fort Worth facility. We moved and reinstalled the best equipment from our Houston facility, added brand-new NEPTUNE roaster to enhance our roasting capabilities and operationalized new retail packing lines. Today our Dallas-Fort Worth operation is an efficiently run state-of-the-art manufacturing and distribution facility with an annual roasting potential and packaging capacity capabilities of over £100 million. While currently, this facility is not a full capacity, we've doubled our output over the last 12 months. The last step was establishing a distribution center on the West Coast where 40% of our customers are located. Earlier this week, we announced the opening of our brand-new distribution center in Rialto California, which includes a refurbishing center for our coffee brewing equipment or CBE servicing business. As of last week the facility opened on schedule and is fully operational. The facility will significantly improve delivery lead times for our customers and strengthen our West Coast CBE business. Further, it will reduce Texas to California freight costs for our existing suppliers and provide us with further network optimization optionality in the future. I want to pause here to provide a bit more color on our CBE business, which remains a core competitive advantage. We boast the largest independent technical service operation in the industry. With the new refurbishing capabilities, we now have at our Rialto facility, we moved closer to many of our customers in the West and gained attractive incremental CapEx efficiencies by refurbishing more equipment instead of buying it new. It's worth noting that due to the reduced near-term volumes associated with COVID-19, many of the financial benefits of these initiatives may not become visibly apparent until later in the calendar year. However, as volumes return, we expect these savings to scale. Not to mention, our customers will see benefits immediately. And as such we expect Rialto to strengthen our competitive advantage in our western markets. As we look forward to vaccinations, workers returning to work and volumes rebounding, we expect these synergistic efficiencies alongside the many other initiatives, we've implemented during this time to meaningfully reduce our cost structure and accelerate our profitability. Turning now to our ongoing initiatives, the pandemic's rippling effect have brought both challenges and opportunities, but haven't deterred us from focusing on optimizing our business from the ground up. First, we've continued integrating our distributed order management and e-commerce platform, within our sales channels, and expect these to produce incremental efficiencies and business opportunities once, both are fully deployed. We are also continuing to test and integrate new technologies throughout our entire ecosystem the most evident example being HighJump, which is now fully rolled out to our DSD representatives. HighJump is a handheld device with software featuring presale capabilities that perpetually analyzes our supply chain and optimizes time and cost. As these initiatives come to fruition, you will see us increasingly refocus on growth opportunities and new ways to leverage our proved fixed cost structure and optimize supply chain. As we move forward, our focus will shift primarily to the following three key strategic initiatives: one, becoming a premier specialty distribution company; two, leveraging our internal and external contract manufacturing capabilities; and three, building upon white glove service quality and innovation capabilities. So first let me address becoming a premier specialty distribution company. One way we are doing this is through partnerships that utilize capacity, leverage our current distribution network, and expose us to new industry innovation. We recently announced our distribution partnership with High Brew, an innovative leader in the ready-to-drink cold brew market a fast-growing niche, especially among younger demographics. We're excited about this partnership's future as High Brew has a terrific innovation pipeline and can ultimately expand our market opportunities. Before that, we announced our manufacturing partnership with NuZee, another innovative company with strong brand recognition throughout Asia that's now looking to establish a US. presence. Secondly, we will continue to leverage our network to become a contract manufacturer for both our institutional foodservice and retail channels. We are also making progress on longer-term initiatives that can leverage our new infrastructure such as omni sales channel integration, cross-channel sell, future innovation and strategic growth within our direct ship business. Historically, we've utilized a multichannel sales approach. But as we continue to optimize our business and integrate new technologies, we are increasingly finding attractive crossover opportunities and synergies. Some of the most apparent cross-channel opportunities lie within our broader e-commerce strategy. Two quarters ago, we adopted and began integrating some of our businesses with a full-service retail e-commerce platform. The first brand we launched was Boyds. Although, we faced unique challenges in the initial implementation phase, this site ultimately launched successfully and continues to receive strong retail traffic today. The process taught us a lot about e-commerce and legacy channel integration. We now believe, we have a replicable model, which we've since leveraged to launch another e-commerce site for our public domain brand and expect to launch another for China Mist later this year. We continue to look for other innovative revenue opportunities within our e-commerce channel, such as subscription-based service models, which both newly launched sites now offer. Further, as we make iterative improvements to our system, we look towards broader e-commerce integration opportunities in the future, including the launch on our very own Farmer Bros. e-commerce website and one for our CBE business. Other opportunities within our e-commerce channel are currently being tested such as our B2B e-commerce platform, which offers increased flexibility to our roastery direct customers. Turning now to our third strategic initiative, which is building upon white glove service quality and innovation capabilities. As we look forward, innovation remains a core commitment at Farmer Bros. With our foundational structure now in place, we're excited to get back to the lab. Similar to the agreements made in our recently announced partnerships, our ability to create innovative new products under our wholly-owned brand names and pilot launch them via our national DSD network provides cost-effective optionality with an attractive risk-reward profile. Many of these opportunities provide attractive upside with little downside, a strategy we intend to continue to utilize, as we create future growth opportunities for ourselves, with little upfront capital investment. So to wrap up, we are continuing to and have already made significant progress on our broader turnaround plan. While we have executed the main initiatives within our supply chain optimization strategy, culminating in the Rialto facility's opening, we still have work to do. Nonetheless, these initiatives, completion marks and an inflection point that escalates our focus on growth initiatives. We are cautiously optimistic that our timing is right, as recovery from the pandemic becomes a positive glimmer on horizon. I look forward to keeping you posted on our progress in the future. And will now turn the call over to Scott. Scott?