Jeffrey Sanfilippo
Analyst · Sidoti and Company. Your line is now open
Thank you, Franc. Good morning, everyone. Coming up the strong momentum from our first quarter of fiscal ‘17 net income and diluted earnings per share reached record levels for any second fiscal quarter for the company. This is the fifth consecutive year the company has reported record second quarter operating results for net income and diluted earnings per share. In addition to this as Franc just mentioned, we're pleased to announce our dividend policy. We believe to acknowledge the time to begin the practice of paying an annual dividend to our stockholders. This dividend policy advances our goals of creating long-term stockholder value and expanding our stockholder base and is supported by our strong financial performance. The Board will also continue to consider the declaration of special dividends around the time of each annual meeting of stockholders just as we did this past year. In November Q2 at the annual stockholders meeting the Board of Directors declared a special cash dividend of $2.50 per share on all issued and outstanding shares of Common Stock and Class A Common Stock of the company. A special dividend was paid on December 13, 2016, to stockholders of record at the close of business on November 30, 2016. This would not be possible without the hard work and dedication of our management team and every one of our employees. I thank them for their hard work, leadership and supports. We continue to execute our strategic plans to grow JBSS brands, expand consumer reach and provide best-in-class integrated nut solutions for key partners. We also remained focused on operational efficiencies to reduce costs and add production capabilities throughout our manufacturing and supply chain. I will talk about changes in the core strategy to expand consumer reach and pursue alternative customer channels. We are making progress as we begin to execute our plans. We were successful in expanding JBSS’ snack brand into a major home-improvement retailer. In addition, our food service chain is having initial success in expanding our distribution with non-commercial customers. We defined in the non-commercial customer as a location that sells food where food is not their primary business. This will include organizations such as colleges or universities cafeterias, healthcare institutions and corporate industry. As we continue to make progress I will highlight our activities on future calls. Turning to our sales review by JBSS channel. Net sales in the consumer distribution channel decreased by 5.3% in dollars and increased 2.2% in sales volume in the second quarter of fiscal 2017. The sales volume increase was driven by increased sales of our branded products. The increase in sales volume for our produce brands resulted from a 43.4% increase in sales volume for our Orchard Valley Harvest brand due to new item introductions which was partially offset by a decline in sales volume for Sunshine Country produce products due to lost distribution. Net sales in the commercial ingredients distribution channel decreased by 36.2% in dollars and 29.1% in sales volume in the second quarter of fiscal 2017. Sales volume decreased for the quarter, Franc mentioned, was primarily due to lower sales of peanuts to other peanut shellers, a loss of an almond butter customer and decreased sales of bulk inshell walnuts to international customers. We’ve talked about optimizing our sales focus and here is a great example of how we shifted some of our volume to other channels where we are able to enhance our margins and improved inventory positions. We successfully replaced the lost sales volume in the industrial segment of our commercial ingredient channel with strong volume growth for our branded and contract packaging products. In the contract packaging channel we saw -- again saw meaningful sales volume growth due to the efforts we made in assisting customers as they launched new peanut and trail mix products and gain new distribution. Net sales in the contract packaging distribution channel increased by 7.3% in dollars and 13.7% in sales volume in the second quarter of fiscal 2017. The sales volume increase for the quarter was primarily due to increased sales, as I mentioned, on a lot of trail mixes and peanuts to existing customers. Turning now to category updates for our second quarter of fiscal 2017. As always the market information I'll be referring to is IRI reported data and today it is for the period ending December 25, 2016. When I refer to Q2 I'm referring to the 13 weeks ending December 25th. References to changes in volume or price are versus the corresponding period one-year ago. We look at the category and IRI's total U.S. definition, which includes food, drug, mass, Wal-Mart, military and other outlets. When we discuss pricing we’ll refer to average price per pound. Breakup of the recipe, snack and produce nut categories are based on our custom definitions developed in conjunction with IRI. The term velocity refers to the sales per point of distribution. First let me review some category dynamics. The total nut category increased in pound volume by 2% and declined in dollar sales by 1% in Q2. Overall, prices at the macro level declined 3% versus year ago. Now I will talk about each category in a little more depth, starting with recipe nuts. In Q2 the recipe nut category struggled declining 9% in dollars sales and 4% in pound sales. Walnut pound sales were up 9% driven by 22% decline in weighted average walnut prices versus the prior year. But the walnut pound sales increase was offset by pecans and almonds. Pecan pound sales decline 10% driven by a 9% increase in average prices versus the prior year and almond pound sales declined 13% despite a 6% decrease in average prices. Consumers appear to have migrated to the snack or produce section of the store for almonds as almond pound consumption in both these sections increased versus last year. Our Fisher brand had a very strong quarter and continues to gain momentum behind our integrated marketing efforts. Fisher recipe nuts increased 16% in dollars sales and 21% in pound sales in the quarter versus last year. As a result, Fisher pound share in the category increased 6.2 points versus last year. Fisher recipe continues as a leading branded recipe nut with an overall share of 29.9%, which is 12.4% -- 12.4 share points ahead of our nearest branded competitor. The growth was driven by an increase in distribution of 8 percentage points of ACV, as our sales team continues to translate our retail success into greater retail penetration. Distribution for Fisher recipe nuts is now at 57% ACV. In addition to the distribution gains, pound velocity increased 18%. The velocity growth was driven by strong merchandising performance at new and existing customers and the effectiveness of our brand, no preservatives and non-GMO messaging. Our continued brand equity efforts on Fisher coupled with our distribution gains helped the brand overcome category weakness and deliver growth in Q2. Now let me turn to the snack category. In Q2 the snack category decreased 2% in dollar sales and was flat in pound sales versus last year, and weighted average prices decreased 2% driven by declines in almonds of 8% and in peanuts of 3%. Fisher snack increased by 10% in sales dollars and 35% in pound sales as measured by IRI in Q2. The increase was driven by new distribution and an increase in pound velocity of 18% as measured by IRI. Fisher sales volume, however, declined 12.3% overall due to declines at non-IRI customers. Orchard Valley Harvest business had a strong Q2 quarter increasing 73% in dollar sales and 79% in pound sales. Orchard Valley Harvest grew faster than the category, which was up roughly 10% in pound, resulting in three-tenths of a point increase in pound share. Our ACV distribution has increased to 34% nationally and our velocity increased 50% by strong merchandising efforts. We have continued to build on this success by launching new products such as our omega-3 mix and a dark -- and dark chocolate covered fruits both in multipacks. Sunshine Country, our other brand in the produce section of the store did not perform as well as Orchard Valley Harvest. The brand declined 15% in dollars and 11% in pound sales. The brand declined in sales as we were overlapping aggressive merchandising last year at the key customer. Our total produce business Orchard Valley Harvest and Sunshine Country grew 25% in pounds in the second quarter compared to a year ago. In closing, we have seen record increase as an acquisition cost recently for pecans in the 2016 crop year, which falls into our current fiscal 2017 year, and we also have seen significant increases in cashew acquisition costs. The almond and walnut market prices have start getting stronger with higher demand for walnuts globally and almonds internationally. So we will be taking price increases in Q3. While we face competitive challenges every year that impact our company we have proven our ability to manage through volatile markets and we have volume challenges and headwinds going into the remaining back half of fiscal ’17, but the management team remains focused on consistent execution of our corporate goals to create customer and shareholder value. Our resources are devoted to three specific areas, expansion of national distribution of our Fisher and Orchard Valley Harvest branded products, expansion of our customer reach by entering new distribution channels, launching differentiated products and investing in new businesses, and continue value-added growth of non-branded business with our key customers. We appreciate your participate in the call and thank you for your interest in our company. I will now turn the call back over to Franc. And since Mike is out of the office today, if you have questions after the call, please contact Franc at area code 847-214-4138. Thank you.