Kelly Kennedy
Analyst · Dana Telsey with Telsey Group. Your line is open
Thank you, Carla and welcome everyone. We were pleased with revenue in the quarter, which came in slightly ahead of expectations, but faced continuing cost pressures, which impacted margins. Starting with the top line, fourth quarter revenue was up 2% versus a year ago driven by strong performance in retail, reflecting healthy consumption and distribution increases as well as pricing actions taken in 2022 partially offset by continuing softness in the digital channel. Honest consumption in the fourth quarter was up 15%. Based on these results, it is clear The Honest brand continues to resonate with consumers. Honest is gaining market share in tracked channels as our growth continues to outpace the categories where we compete. Our unit velocities remain healthy, following 2022 price increases as both volume and pricing are supporting our top line growth. Turning to key drivers by product category, first, Diapers and Wipes. Our Diapers and Wipes business represented approximately 60% of revenue this quarter and was up 1%. Wipes consumption was up 24% and diapers consumption was up 23%, outpacing category growth by over 15 percentage points. Growth reflected the benefit of price increases, retail distribution expansion and increased assortment. Wipes also benefited from expanded usage around the home beyond diapering. We continue to innovate in this category and now can announce that 94% of our baby wipes portfolio are home compostable. Strong consumption gains in Diapers and Wipes were offset by declining traffic and subscriptions in our digital channel. Shipments with a key digital customer also lagged consumption as they reduced fourth quarter purchases. Skin and Personal Care, which represented nearly 30% of total revenue this quarter, declined 13% year-over-year. Revenue was impacted by the reduced shipments we mentioned by our key digital customer. We continue to innovate our Beauty and Skin Care portfolio with the Q1 launch of our new daily green juice antioxidant super serum. This serum was developed with Gen Z and the Latino consumer in mind. With easy-to-understand ingredients, such as kale, lemon, carrot, Goji, green tea and apple, it is inspired by the feeling of a fresh moisturized space and it speaks to the minimalist trend in skin care. Our household and wellness business represented just over 10% of revenue this quarter and doubled year-over-year driven by Honest Baby Clothing. We continue to anticipate solid growth on this business in 2023 as our bedding, towels, blankets and seasonal pajamas nicely complement our current Baby Care offering. In Q4, Honest family pajamas was on Oprah’s favorite things list in 2022 for a second year in a row. Now turning to results by channel. Revenue in Q4 was split, 57% retail and 43% digital, reflecting recent retail distribution wins as well as softness in the digital channel. Digital channel revenue declined 14% as shipments lag consumption at our largest digital customer. And in light of increased cost of digital marketing, we shifted marketing spend to higher return opportunities to support retail expansion. Despite these near-term headwinds, we are continuing to improve our digital platform, including faster checkout and site speed as well as expanding the build-your-own bundle program to include a broad cross-section of products, which drives larger basket sizes. Now turning to retail, where revenue increased 18%, reflecting strong traffic and consumption at our largest customer, distribution expansion, assortment gains and strong in-store execution. In 2022, we increased placements from 43,000 retail locations to over 50,000. As a result, ACV increased from 49% to 72%. Key distribution wins during the year included the launch into over 2,500 Walmart stores and the addition of Publix, Ulta and additional assortment at Kroger. At Target, our largest customer, we achieved 20 consecutive quarters of year-over-year consumption growth. We are very pleased that Honest has become the number one baby personal care brand at Target. Now turning to gross margin. Gross margin was 27.5% in the fourth quarter of 2022 compared to 30% in the fourth quarter of 2021. This reflects approximately 800 basis points of higher supply chain costs offset by 550 basis points of positive impact from pricing, cost savings and favorable mix. We have continued to experience a post-COVID slowdown in our standardization business, which resulted in an approximate $2 million non-cash inventory reserve in the quarter in line with Q4 2021. Turning to operating costs and profitability. Operating expenses increased $3 million this quarter, but were lower than year ago if we exclude a $6 million CEO transition expense and $1 million in security litigation expense. Marketing spend was 12% of sales, in line with plan. We shifted our marketing investment from lower funnel digital tactics, the higher-return retail marketing levers, where we believe we can cost effectively reach our consumers and support new distribution. Adjusted EBITDA for the fourth quarter of 2022 was negative $1.6 million, a nearly $4 million improvement from Q3 and $2 million favorable to Q4 of 2021. We fell short of our goal of being positive for the quarter due to the margin pressure we experienced related to the standardization product inventory reserve as well an escalated transportation and warehousing costs. Turning to the balance sheet. We ended the fourth quarter with $150 million in cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments with no debt. This reflected $50 million in inventory purchases in advance of increased supplier prices in early 2023. Over 2023, we expect to sell down inventory to more normalized levels, generating approximately $20 million in cash. In January, we entered into a new $35 million asset-based credit facility that provides us with more financial flexibility. We have the ability to request up to $70 million to support future growth investments. Now turning to 2023. As Carla highlighted, we stand on the foundation of a strong brand, but we have significant work to do. And we’ve already gotten started. For example, we recently communicated new pricing actions in 2023 to reflect our premium positioning, and we’ve initiated robust cost savings programs as well. Prior to introducing our improved margin improvement roadmap, our full year 2023 revenue and adjusted EBITDA would be in line with our fiscal year 2022 results. With that, let me turn it back to Carla before we open it up for questions.