Scott Morris
Analyst · Oppenheimer. Your line is now open
Thank you, Katie and good afternoon everyone. I am pleased to speak with you today about our progress. On today’s call, I will start with a brief overview of our financial highlights and recent business performance, then Dick will review our second quarter 2016 financial results in more detail, and finally, Dick and I will be available for questions. Our team continued to execute very well against our 2016 plan and we are pleased with our progress to-date. We strive every day to provide pet parents healthy natural foods that their dogs love and that have a positive impact on their pets’ lives. In the second quarter, we continue to improve on key metrics both on sequential quarter-over-quarter basis and compared to Q2 last year. These include net sales, velocity, store growth in both new and existing accounts, quality, production throughput and logistics. We are also beginning to see growth rates improve versus year ago on both IRI and POS. Focusing on our results in a little bit more detail now, net sales increased 16.4% to $33 million driven by increased velocity per fridge and increased store count. Freshpet Fridge store count increased 10% to 15,795 as of June 30, 2016 up from 14,354 in the second quarter of the prior year. We also have several significant milestones, which we would like to make note of. First, our Freshpet Kitchens expansion remains on plan and beginning in June, we have started to manufacture initial run for products which are just coming to market. Secondarily, we will surpass 16,000 stores with Freshpet Fridges in the next month. These are two significant achievements that the Freshpet team has facilitated through an outstanding level of dedication and determination and we appreciate everyone’s contributions. The first milestone provides us the ability to further expand sales at a rapid pace and capitalize on future opportunities and the second provides us the greater incremental scale and efficiencies across multiple fronts. We also remain optimistic about the attractive white space opportunity of over 15,000 stores across North America. As our business continues to make good steady progress both operationally and financially, the Freshpet team has done outstanding work to position the company for ongoing growth and success. Let me review a few of our key initiatives. As we execute our mission to bring the power of fresh natural and healthy foods to pets, we have begun to see the positive impact of our work and it has been witnessed by many pet parents. We knew the foods that we develop were excellent, but we had no idea the positive impact they would have on the pets’ lives. Each day, we hear about the amazing results consumers are seeing in their pets, like having more energy, healthier skin and coat and eliminating digestive issues. We are extremely proud of the products, but are truly humbled by the results that pet parents continue to experience. What is important about this is it first facilitates great consumer loyalty and secondarily, we are beginning to share these results and amazing stories across all of our communication touch points, including TV and digital. We believe this will have a transformative effect on our business over time. You can see thousands of these amazing stories posted on our website on Pet Parents. Next, coupled with our improved communication platform, product innovation continued in the quarter with several new products and product capabilities that are currently building distribution across our retail landscape. Many of these new products begin shipping in Q2 and will continue to build out in Q3. These include a new dog shredded product, expanding one of our top selling forms, dog cups [ph] and several cat items to build out our cat portfolio. We remain highly focused on our fresh food platform and the broad opportunities it provides us for growth, through the development of an improved dog portfolio and a start of a more robust cat portfolio. We continue to closely monitor our baked product sales, which are starting to level off with distribution gains along with some losses as expected. Next on the distribution front, we are making steady progress and expansion across all classes of trade in North America and currently have a small test with one major retailer in UK. In the second half of 2016 in UK, we anticipate measured door expansion with one retailer and the addition of a second retailer that will begin testing. Our Freshpet Kitchens continued to make outstanding, quality products as measured by our consumer experience monitor. We are pleased to report that our plant expansion remains on schedule and on budget. We have completed the installation of our new bed line and have been making sellable products for the last six weeks. Next, our role line is on schedule and will be completed this month. It is important to keep in mind that it will take several quarters for us to ramp up capacity, line utilization and train the new personnel on these lines. Overall, the team has done an extraordinary job to bring this vision to life and more than doubled the capacity as the only fresh pet food facility in North America. Now that our expansion is nearly complete, our annualized capital gains will be reduced significantly over the next several years. Going forward, we will be focused primarily on the support of fridge growth and maintenance CapEx. The execution of our strategic initiatives has enabled us to generate increased adjusted EBITDA and positive operating cash flow during the past seven quarters, while growing net sales and store count at a double-digit rate. We expect the team’s efforts to drive greater leverage across our business model and our improved profitability as we progress through 2016. Before I turn the call over to Dick, I would like to take a moment to welcome Billy Cyr, to the Freshpet team as CEO. He will officially start with us on September 6, 2016. I personally had the opportunity to spend time with Billy, both before he was hired and since. I know he is a leader whose entrepreneurial spirit fits well with our strong culture of growth. He joins us as an accomplished consumer packaged goods executive, with strong experience and a passion around our mission. I welcome his future leadership, expertise and partnership as we continue to realize the potential of Freshpet. With that overview, I would like to turn the call over to our CFO, Dick Kassar, to review our financial results in more detail.