Billy Cyr
Analyst · Credit Suisse. Please proceed with your question
Thank you, Katie, and good afternoon, everyone. To begin, I will provide an overview of our financial highlights and recent business performance. And then Dick will provide greater detail on our financial results and our updated guidance for 2018. Finally, Dick, Scott and I will be available to answer your questions. We're very pleased with our Q2 results. Recall, our Feed the Growth Plan is designed to accelerate Freshpet's rate of growth, enabling us to fulfill our mission of providing more pets with fresh all natural foods that enrich their lives and their relationships with their pet parents. And we're committed to doing so in ways that are good for our pets, for people and for our planet. In the pursuit of that mission, we expect to deliver significant value to shareholders. We will accomplish this by creating a virtuous cycle, where increased investment in advertising drives increasing scale that we can use to drive greater distribution, increased manufacturing utilization and efficiency, and better leverage our organizational capacity. This will produce increased financial returns that we can use to drive further growth and long-term profitability, enabling us to serve more pets. Our financial goal is to deliver $300 million in revenue as soon as 2020 with a 20%-plus adjusted EBITDA margin. One key to delivering those goals is to deliver an accelerating rate of growth in 2018. Our second quarter results confirm that we are on track to deliver this accelerated growth rate in 2018 and we are progressing towards our longer-term target. Our increased investment in advertising, in conjunction with consistent distribution improvements and focused product innovation, have enabled us to cycle last year's strong growth and deliver an acceleration in Freshpet's consumption growth rate. Fresh consumption in the quarter was up 27.8% an acceleration from Q1's 25% in fiscal year 2017 21%. The consumption growth was broad-based with all classes of trade up more than 25% versus the category, including our pet specialty business which was up more than 23% versus year-ago in the quarter. Grocery was up more than 32%, mass consumption was up 25%. All of our key product forms Rolls, Roasted Meals and Fresh From the Kitchen, grew at greater than double-digit rates were particularly strong growth on our Roasted meals driven by successful new products. Our core fresh dog food business grew at the fastest rate more than 30% as we prioritize shelf space for dog items ahead of cat items. Further, velocity gains accounted for over 70% of our revenue growth. Core dog household penetration also grew at the fastest rate in more than three years. And even in the face of significant store closures, we grew distribution across the Nielsen Mega Channel by 3.1 points of ACV or about 7.5%, with a total of 385 net new stores. We now have 18,662 stores. We also upgraded 215 stores to larger fridges in the quarter. Net sales were up 23% versus a very strong quarter a year ago. The gap between the consumption growth rate of 27.8% and a net sales growth rate of 23% is due to the discontinuation of the baked business about one point, the timing of customer shipments around holidays about three points, and a small difference in unmeasured channels. Last year, some customers chose to accelerate orders into the last week of June to avoid the July 4 holiday. With the holiday move back to a Wednesday this year, fewer customers did that. We foreshadowed this possibility when we provided our initial guidance for the year. We are also off to a very strong good start on Q3 and expect to see our strong growth rates continue. Dick will provide an update on our guidance for the balance of the year. We clearly have momentum on the topline. While advertising is the primary driver of that growth, we are also benefiting from continued improvements in retail availability, smart and focused product innovation and outstanding customer and consumer service. We believe those are strong and sustainable capabilities that will enable us to deliver our near and long-term growth goals. Adjusted EBITDA in the quarter was $2.5 million. Well that result is below the year ago, it is entirely due to the planned increase in marketing investment in the quarter and we will get a return for that later in the year. We invested $3.8 million more in Q2 advertising and we did in the prior year period, and adjusted EBITDA was only down $700,000 versus that same period. Further, delivering $2.5 million in Q2 is consistent with our financial plan for the year. We also improved our structural profitability that is adjusted gross margin and G&A absorption in the quarter. Our long-term plan calls for improving the structural profitability by more than 900 basis points versus where we ended 2016. With 700 basis points coming from the increased absorption in G&A and the balance coming from scale benefits in manufacturing that help improve adjusted gross margin. In Q2, we improved G&A by 200 basis points versus year ago as we continue to grow into our organization structure and adjusted gross margin bounced back from Q1. It was up 50 basis points versus year ago and 110 basis points versus Q1 to 51.2%. The adjusted gross margin in the quarter reflects some healthy improvements in throughput and yield that are representative of the continual progress we expect to make. Those gains are partially offset by some one-time issues and by some industry-wide issues, such as commodity and freight inflation. The most significant temporary item is the increased staffing associated with the seven-day operation. We've now absorbed the peak amount of new staffing behind our plan to convert to a seven-day operation. We are encouraged by the progress we've made on adjusted gross margin, but the results going forward will continue to be a bit lumpy as we grow into the added staffing. In closing, I believe our second quarter results validate that our Feed the Growth plan is working in its second year and can cycle the strong growth we generated last year. Our founders built an incredibly robust business model that is unique in both its strategic merit and the consumer benefit it delivers. The results we are seeing increase our confidence that Freshpet has the ability to become a very sizable brand in the attractive pet food industry, and fulfill its mission of delivering fresh all-natural foods to pets that enrich their lives and strengthen their relationship with their pet parents, and doing that in ways that are good for pets, people and the planet. Before I turn this over to Dick, I would like to let you know that we will be announcing the details of our capacity expansion plans later this week. The rapid growth of the Freshpet brand will require that we bring new capacity online in mid-to-late 2020. On Wednesday, we will outline how we plan to accomplish that by further extending our manufacturing expertise advantage with a Freshpet Kitchens 2.0. At that time, we will share the timing, costs and benefits associated with that project. I'll now turn it over to Dick to discuss our results in more detail.