Molly Hemmeter
Analyst · Mike Petusky of Barrington. Your line is open
Thanks, Greg. Our top priorities over the next one to two years are; first, to implement cost savings initiatives in our Curation Foods business. Second, to integrate the Yucatan Foods team in operations into our Curation Foods business. And third, to invest in innovation and growth at both Lifecore and Curation Foods. At Lifecore, we continue to invest in accelerating growth and profitability by expanding the Lifecore business beyond historical capabilities as a premium supplier of hyaluronic acid or HA. We have achieved this by investing in business development capabilities to expand into new markets. Landec has also invested in infrastructure and equipment to enable Lifecore’s transition to a fully integrated CDMO that provides differentiated fermentation, formulation, aseptic filling and final packaging services for difficult-to-handle, FDA approved pharmaceutical products. Most recently, we invested in the installation of Lifecore’s new $16 million multi-purpose filling line. The new line will further enhance Lifecore’s growth strategy as a CDMO, which is specifically designed to align Lifecore’s capabilities with the growing needs and market expectations of its partners and provides Lifecore with a capacity to fill commercial quantities of drug products in vials, in addition to its existing capacity to fill syringes. Lifecore has also initiated a capacity expansion of its HA fermentation process to increase overall capacity by 25%. This expansion is expected to be complete in fiscal 2020 in preparation for future HA demand driven by products currently in product development. The new multi-purpose filling line and the new HA capacity have the potential to drive $40 million to $60 million of incremental revenues annually once full capacity is achieved. We plan to continue to invest in Lifecore to meet its future demand requirements as product currently in development receive FDA approval and transition to commercial product. The mission of Curation Foods is to increase access of plant-based foods with 100% clean ingredients to as many people as possible while preserving and protecting our planet for future generations. We accomplished this by reimagining how fresh and refrigerated products are grown, prepared and delivered. Curation Foods has a unique combination of capabilities that makes it truly differentiated in the market with proven internal innovation capabilities, a refrigerated supply chain and a direct sales force to partner strategically with customers throughout the fresh perimeter of the store. Over the last several years, we have rapidly entered into several high-growth categories with innovative food products and are well positioned to deliver long-term and sustainable top line growth. With the strategic transformation of the Curation Foods product portfolio complete, we turn to the next stage and critical stage of our growth. During this next phase, we will focus on delivering operational and service excellence by driving efficiencies through automation, systems integration and supply chain synergies. These efficiencies are critical to reducing costs in our Curation Foods business to offset ever-increasing costs due to weather volatility as well as increasing labor, freight and packaging costs that are being experienced by the entire industry. As such, we have engaged The Hackett Group, a third-party consulting firm with considerable experience in the produce industry, to identify cost reductions in our food operations above and beyond the cost savings that have already been identified by the Curation Foods team. We are currently forecasting that the cost savings in fiscal 2020 will offset known cost increases and mitigate costs associated with weather volatility, with the primary objective of improving the predictability of earnings in our food business. Simultaneously with reducing cost in our food business, we are focused on integrating Yucatan Foods into Curation Foods. We believe immediate synergies exist between the two organizations. Yucatan Foods will leverage the experience of the Curation Foods sales team within club stores and produce department of retail stores, while Curation Foods will leverage the Yucatan Foods' sales team experience in the deli department of retail stores. Over time, the newly combined sales organization will be able to expand distribution of all Curation Foods products throughout the fresh perimeter of the store as this real estate continues to evolve to attract the plant-forward consumer. In addition to increased sales and distribution, there are other synergistic opportunities to drive future growth and profitability. In the medium term, we will evaluate the potential of Yucatan Foods to leverage Curation Foods’ refrigerated logistics fleet to reach the customers at lower cost, while delivering equal or higher product quality and service levels. Longer term, numerous opportunities also exist for product innovations that leverage capabilities among Curation Foods portfolio of brands. And Curation Foods may also be able to leverage the Yucatan Foods' relationships and footprint in Mexico to secure lower-cost sourcing and manufacturing for its Eat Smart products. Along with cost savings initiatives and the integration of Yucatan Foods, we continue to invest in innovation to drive growth. At Curation Foods, we continue to invest in creating on-trend plant-based foods with 100% clean ingredients with proven success of launching new products and disrupting markets to partnership with our strategic customers. We have bolstered our internal innovation efforts with the select acquisitions of O Olive & Vinegar and Yucatan Foods. Each of these acquisitions contribute high quality plant-based products that will contribute to Curation Foods’ future growth and profitability and can benefit from Curation Foods’ innovation, selling and supply chain capabilities. Looking to fiscal 2020, we expect revenues and operating income to increase at both Lifecore and Curation Foods compared to fiscal 2019. The revenue growth at Lifecore will continue to be driven by the expansion of CDMO and HA product development pipeline. The revenue growth in Curation Foods will be primarily driven by a full year of avocado product sales and continued growth in the guacamole category. With the revenue growth in fiscal 2020 coming from our higher margin products, we are expecting overall gross margin and operating income to also increase. We will share our fiscal 2020 guidance with our fiscal 2019 year-end results release in late July and provide growth projections for both Lifecore and Curation Foods in that release. In summary, we are committed to growing our two businesses. Over the years, we have successfully grown Lifecore revenues to create a profitable CDMO business of scale. At Curation Foods, we have continued to innovate 100% clean plant-based products in high growth segments. With the acquisition of Yucatan Foods, Curation Foods has a double-digit growth platform, a lower cost infrastructure in Mexico and a higher margin product offering that exhibits less volatility, all of which contribute to and advance our progress in driving future, more predictable profitability in our food business. We are now open for questions.