Good afternoon and thank you for joining Landec's Fiscal 2020 Fourth Quarter Earnings Call. With me on the call today is Dr. Albert Bolles, Landec's Chief Executive Officer; and Brian McLaughlin, Landec's Chief Financial Officer; and Mr. Jim Hall, President of Lifecore, who is available to answer questions. During today's call we may make forward-looking statements that involve certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. These risks are outlined in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the company's 10-K for fiscal year 2019. Let me now turn the call over to Mr. Al Bolles.

Thank you and good afternoon everyone. As a leading innovator in diversified health and wellness solutions, Landec is comprised of two operating businesses; Lifecore Biomedical and Curation foods. Landec designs, develops, manufactures and sells products for the food and pharmaceutical industry. Lifecore Biomedical is a fully integrated contract development and manufacturing organization, or CDMO that offers highly differentiated capabilities in the development fill and finish of difficult to manufacture pharmaceutical products distributed in syringes and vials. As a leading manufacturer of premium injectable grade Hyaluronic acid or HA, Lifecore brings over 35 years expertise as a partner for global and emerging pharmaceutical and medical device company across multiple therapeutic categories to bring their innovations to market. Curation Foods, our natural foods business is focused on innovating plant-based foods with 100% clean ingredients to retail, club and foodservice channels throughout North America. Curation Foods is able to maximize product freshness to its geographically dispersed network of growers, refrigerated supply chain and patented greenway packaging technology, which naturally extends the shelf life of fruits and vegetables. Curation Foods brand includes Eat Smart fresh packaged vegetables and salads, O premium artisan oil and vinegar products and Yucatan and Cabo Fresh avocado products. We are focused on creating shareholder value by delivering against our financial targets, strengthening our balance sheet, investing in growth, implementing our strategic priorities to improve adjusted EBITDA margins in Curation Foods and driving top-line momentum at Lifecore. We have set clear priorities and defined return on investment metrics, support the future growth at both Lifecore and Curation Foods. We are committed to maximizing the value of our portfolio to be sound and thoughtful execution in each of our segments, while protecting the planet for future generations for sustainable business practices. Lifecore continues to deliver on its track record of high…

Thank you, Al. First, a quick review of our fourth quarter and year end results. As a reminder, we previously provided preliminary results for revenue, net income and adjusted EBITDA during our June 29 release. Consolidated revenues increased by 2.2% to $156.1 million, which was primarily due to 5.8% increase in Lifecore revenue and a 1.5% increase in our Curation Foods segment. Lifecore performance was primarily driven by a 13% increase in its CDMO business, partially offset by a 23% decrease in its fermentation business. Curation Foods performance was primarily driven by a 19% increase in its avocado products business and a 13% increase in its technology business. This was partially offset by planned 1% decrease in its fresh packaged salads and vegetables business. Gross profit decreased 8.1% year-over-year due to the combination of a 10.2% gross profit decrease at Curation Foods and a 5.4% decrease at Lifecore. As discussed previously, Curation Foods is negatively impacted by significant shifts in customer demand toward some of its lower margin product categories, as well as your regular customer order volatility brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. This resulted in a cascading effect of order cancellation, which caused supply chain efficiencies and other operational impacts on our business that temporarily eroded our see in gross margin. Lifecore was negatively impacted due to previously announced temporary manufacturing inefficiencies associated with the new safety protocols that were implemented as a result of global epidemic. These issues have since been resolved. Lifecore expects to sell through this higher cost inventory by the end of Q1 of fiscal '21. Thereafter, Lifecore is expected to return to its normal gross margin rate. Landec's net loss was $15.1 million in Q4 of fiscal '20 or a loss of $0.52 per share, which includes $6.8 million on restructuring and other…

Thank you, Brian. Let me go into more detail about the progress we're making in our Lifecore and Curation Foods businesses to maximize shareholder value across the portfolio. Lifecore continues to see momentum benefiting from the three industry trends. Number one, a growing number of products seeking FDA approval. Number two, increasing trends toward sterile injectable drugs. And number three, a growing trend among pharmaceutical and medical device companies to outsource the formulation and manufacture of products. As a highly differentiated and fully integrated CDMO, Lifecore is positioned to capitalize on these tailwind and continues to establish high barriers to competition. Lifecore speed and efficiencies benefits its partners by decreasing their time to market which has immense value in their ability to improve patient lives through commercialization of their innovative therapies. Looking forward, Lifecore will feel its long-term growth by executing against its three strategic priorities. Number one, managing and expanding its product development pipeline. Lifecore added one new business development project, increasing its development pipeline to 16 projects in various stages of the products lifecycle, from clinical development to commercialization, which aligns with the business's overall strategy. Number two, meeting customer demand by managing capacity and operational expansion to meet future commercial production needs. Demand stands at approximately 6.5 million units with fiscal 2020. The implementation of lean manufacturing principles and continuous improvement, Lifecore increased its manufacturing capacity from 17 million units to 22 million in annual production, providing immediate incremental opportunities to meet customer demand. And number three, continuing to deliver on a strong track record of commercialization from the product development pipeline. Lifecore currently is planning for one to two products in development to be approved by the FDA for commercialization annually, supporting their long-term double digit growth. On July 24 2020, Heron Therapeutics announced that it…

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our first question is from Brian Holland with DA Davidson. Please proceed.

A quick question to start. Do I have this right from your prepared remarks that the -- you would expect the bag and tray business down to 100 million to 110 million which would be down I think you said 50 million to 60 million. Do I have that right?

Yes. You do Brian.

Okay. So that would take us from kind of way your guidance is to flag like axing that out there's been a fair amount of optimization both with from the plants and the SKUs over the past 12 months. Can you just help quantify the other puts and takes there, that might be flowing through the revenue on Curation, are there any other meaningful flow through there?

No. We're expecting to have double-digit growth in our avocado products business. And we are expecting, growth in our sound business as well. As I said, we have a number of new innovations that are in the pipeline that will be coming out. And that growth you will see throughout the years as we head into Q2 and Q3. But just backing the decrease, one of the most important projects, Project SWIFT was for us to evaluating, we took two paths on the core veg and tray business. And at the end of the day, we looked at selling it for making a smaller, much more profitable business. And through the cross-sell program that we over delivered last year. And the changes I made in the sales force were able to form much stronger partnerships with fewer customers that have enabled us to improve our gross profit on that product line, the point where it just made sense for us to keep it as a much smaller business. And the benefits for us would be that we have a full plant-based food product line to our strategic customers. We gained logistics efficiencies, overhead absorption and the cost out as I mentioned from the core veg that we achieved last year and carried a fair amount in FY '21. So at the end of the day, it just made sense for us to keep a smaller but far more profitable core veg and tray business Brian.

And to be clear, interest in that asset?

There was. We had several people that were interested but with the changes that we made that I outlined it just didn't make sense for us on the shareholders standpoint to sell.

Understood that's helpful. When you last spoke about a month ago talked about the mix shift. I'm focused on Curation here understand the moving parts on Lifecore but sounded like that it stabilized through May when we last heard from you. Just curious and couple months later, as that helped as that trend helped through July. And then, when you refer to stabilizing, I just want to clarify, is that in comparison to pre-COVID or maybe a new normal for the backdrop?

Right. I think what you're talking about is, in Q4, we had a fall off with some customers. Mainly, our mass club that has come back and it's back now to a runway of where we were at pre-COVID issues. So we are feeling good about our weekly, monthly sales now that we're achieving and as the mix adjusted. Now, that being said, the bean business is still down because the food service and trays have not recovered to the point where they were pre-COVID. But sooner or later, higher margin businesses have indeed recovered.

And then, if we just roll that forward, thinking about your guidance, do we assume that things continue to get better from here or did you take kind of where we were at year end, and help that through in your outlook, how do we shape that?

Well, we have built in some conservatism, based on COVID-19 and the possibility of another impact in the fall. So we thought that inspired guidance along with the fact that, what's the improvement and profitability of the core veg business. We now feel like that we have in place, the ability to manage the volatility, quarter-to-quarter that we could see in that business based on weather. So, I would say that we feel very confident about the plan that we have in terms of our revenues and our adjusted EBITDA with the built in effects of any headwinds in May hit us last year, or this year.

Okay. You answered my other question with that. So I'll leave it there. Thanks a lot, Al.

Our next question is from Gerry Sweeney with ROTH Capital Partners. Please proceed.

Listen, Curation and the bag and the core business, how challenging of a decision was it at the end of the day to keep it versus other options. And that's sort of lays the point where there are other options in terms of buyers for the business?

Yes. And then, as you know Gerry, we talked about we're going to run two pathways on this, which we did. And we were excited about selling it, I was certainly. But in all honesty as we went through our process of improving our margins, simplifying the business, the cost out that was overachieved last year, it made it up pretty easy to skip the discussion with my Board, that it was best for the shareholders that we keep a smaller, more profitable business. And it would really help us in terms of, as I said before, logistic efficiencies, overhead absorptions, things of that nature. So, ran both processes. And at the end of the day, Gerry, it really wasn't that difficult of a decision.

Okay, that's fair. This year's take you to 60 million that's going to go into core business, couple questions on that. Are we going to see that right away in this fall season coming up and two, maybe [indiscernible] aside that 50 million to 60 million of revenue is that the core business that has traditionally been very powerful especially with weather, which is again, hard to gauge, but yes, I mean, how much of that is, how much visibility do you have or how much have you taken into account volatility on a going forward basis?

Yes. Brian, do you want to take that one?

Yes. So, one of the things that we've done this year in our guidance and it's embedded in the numbers is, we've actually gone back and looked historically and it's actually a pretty tried true pattern across the quarters in terms of what you can expect in the way of weather volatility hitting core and trays. And we keep talking about core but it's both the core and trays. And so we have pushed those numbers into our guidance and so what was previously a set of numbers that I don't think or historically has not been reflected in historical guidance is embedded in our guidance this year and so what in the past might have been viewed as volatility. I'm hoping that going forward will be due to seasonality because we see it, we understand it and we're building it into our numbers. But the improved margin numbers that Al referred to the benefit of cost out and as well as some of the price increases with our strategic customers who are working with us. Those benefits are actually net of pushing that risk reserve into our overall guide. So our open part is that, you won't see the volatility, but you will see the seasonality.

Got it. That's fair. That is helpful. Shifting gears maybe a little bit to Lifecore. You mentioned Heron specifically in the granting of -- I guess, the licenses to sell ZYNRELEF, I guess in Europe, any idea of how large a product that can be, could be and any type of substance around -- on that perspective.

Jim, do you want to tackle that one?

Yes, sure. Hi, Gerry. Unfortunately, I'm not going to be able to provide any guidance on demand projections for either the U.S. or rest of the world that's something that is going to have to come out of Heron. They do project that there's a significant market over there, just like in the U.S. That's why they're going after it. So it's positive news. Just wanted to recognize all the hard work that our team has done to do that and we're looking forward to continue to support them moving forward.

Our next question is from Mike Petusky with Barrington Research. Please proceed.

I may have missed this. But did you guys give cash flow from ops and CapEx for the quarter?

No, we didn't. I mean, what we generally -- the information that we've generally provided the folks has been sort of the EBITDA numbers for the quarter that was 14.1 million on an adjusted basis. In terms of CapEx for the year --

Yes. Can you provide cash flow from ops and CapEx?

Yes. Let me see. I just had the year end numbers right in front of me here. I can follow up on that. But it was positive, overall.

I will take year end cash flow from ops and CapEx?

So year end cash flow from operations was actually a negative 17 million. What I'm doing is, I'm just looking at the cash flow that's in the notes in the press release. Those negative 17 million, the overall CapEx number was 26 million or 27 million. And so when you add those up, you're looking at a number of about $43 million to $44 million. And that was, in essence funded over this past year with an increase in debt of just over $40 million between the term facility and the line of credit.

Can you guys speak to CapEx expectations for '21? And also, if you see a positive free cash quarter in fiscal '21? Thanks.

Yes. So the number that we're guiding right now for fiscal year '21 is about -- it's about 34 million, of that it's about 14 million or 15 million in Curation and about 20 million in Lifecore. And at this point with our -- with the asset sales -- it's close to being a positive cash flow for the year from asset sales, but with asset sales, we're looking at that number being breakeven or positive number. And as we move forward into the future years, we're looking at those numbers being fairly positive or even. So we're trying to get away from the past where we've been in a negative -- we've had huge CapEx funding, a lot of assets been in Curation Foods for assets that today -- in some regard regarding those non-strategic liquidating and them taking I think a pretty disciplined approach to what we are spending money on Curation and making sure that we're funding the proper growth initiatives in Lifecore going forward. So looking at managing that CapEx number to a tighter number that I think we've seen in the past.

Okay. I may have got slightly lost at the beginning of that, did you say positive cash flow from ops or positive or close to break even in that front or…?

No. It's actually not. It's actually negative from ops this year, but with our asset sales down below, we're actually -- it's actually going to be -- we will be generating positive. So sorry, if that was confusing.

No, no, that's perfect. Can I also ask, in terms of you said, you expect growth in salads and double-digit growth in guac for this year, the growth in south how much of that growth, it sounds like it's probably somewhat modest. How much of that growth is sort of tied to new product launches? I mean, that's the majority of the growth that's projected there. And then, on the guac, how much that is associated with the squeeze or any other new products there? Thanks.

Yes. So, I can give you more details later. But, in general on the salads business, we have a huge push to gain incrementality. So we have several new product lines that we are going to be testing and launching that are going to be incremental to our current business. And what I mean by incremental would be something that's just beyond a regular salad, the plant-based protein salads you've heard me talk about. And we also have some other salads that we believe, as we are working much more closer with our customers for a new sales force, there's still a lot of whitespace for us to gain in the U.S. in terms of ACV and we're developing new lines of salads that meet the customers' needs, as well as -- the sweet spot what consumers want. So that's on the south side and on the avocado product side, we continue to gain distribution on squeeze. But we also have gaining distribution on our Cabo fresh tubs, which is turning out to be a very strong brand name for us with millennials and those areas, we're going to see continued growth in as we move forward to the fiscal year.

Just a real quick, last one, the guide for EBITDA this year, does that include any expectation of leverage on the SG&A line?

So in other words, are we scaling or improving the SG&A line as a percent of revenues? It's coming down and we are realizing actual dollar savings, if you sort of net out some of the COVID dollars that we have, at this point sort of reserved in there. As a percent of revenue, so it is not coming down because we are decreasing revenues by a significant amount. So we too believe that we have the right level of SG&A. We've carved it back quite a bit in this past year, which right-size the business with closed offices. We're taking a much tighter look at making sure that the spend that we have in marketing and R&D is very effective. And it will be down year-over-year. It's part of the $11 million that I will reference, it's roughly half of that. But again, given the decrease in core veg revenues as well as, some of the mild impact that we're having, as well -- unfavorable impact actually on being because of the food service component, the overall revenue line is sort of compressing that number, so you're not seeing an actual benefit from an overall OpEx ratio standpoint, but the actual expense is down.

So maybe flattish, slightly up?

Yes. No, it's pretty close to flat. But it's rounding up a bit. Yes, and I was referring more to Curation.

Okay. Thank you so much. Lots of good information. Thank you.

Our next question is from Mark Smith with Lake Street Capital Markets. Please proceed.

Most might have been answered, but just wanted to look at kind of big picture as you're looking at COVID impact that's built into your guidance. Have you just seen enough kind of sequential improvements, late last year and really, so far this year in 2021, to give you the confidence that it's really more so up just Q1 impact and you don't have as much impact through the rest of the year.

Yes. Let me answer that. And then, Brian, you may want to add some more color as well. We have seen in COVID, we've talked that there is an ongoing costs and you still get in our facilities, right for the increase in sanitation, the social distancing, extra cleaning we have to do things in the offices. What we're planning for though is, once again, I'm being conservative is, if we have "a second wave in the flu season" we have some conservatism built in for COVID impact in both businesses. Brian maybe you want to add to that?

Yes. So one, we've got something that's roughly in the 150 to 200 basis points of revenue sort of built into our numbers. And we have them actually built in across the year at this point, rather than just looking at Q1 and thinking that everything magically gets better as soon as we get to September. I think we all can see that's not the case. So we have sort of built in across the entire year at this point, sort of the patterns and what is a more stable set of numbers coming out of May, that we saw back in April, which really caused most of the disruptions we had in Q4. And we sort of taking those patterns and vaulted them forward across the entire year. So, given the uncertainty that maybe more than enough, maybe just lean -- maybe less. And I think we're all trying to figure out what we're doing with that. Does that help you? Did that answer your question?

Yes. That's helpful that you've built it in for kind of a full year and we're looking at the full impact.

And I guess and also, just back to one of the questions earlier on OpEx number, some of that burden as well across the years built into that number now sort of explain along with the lower revenues, why that number is being held up a little bit more than it might otherwise?

Okay. That makes sense. And then just as we look at Curation, we've talked a lot about in other call here, but any other headwinds that you see kind of excluding COVID, as you look at kind of crops, labor, anything else that you're kind of keeping your eyes on right now that may pop up and cause some headwinds here?

Yes. We're keeping our eye on labor. Our facility in Santa Maria has been a hotspot. We've had a very low amount of our employees have had diagnosed with COVID. They have not contracted in the plant. So it's something that we keeping an eye on because it's hard to get people from -- on weekends to maybe social gather. But, in general, that's an area that we are managing very actively with our COVID task force that's ran by our Head of Quality and Food Safety. And so even though we've had some people who have had it. We have absolutely no hotspots in our facilities. And it's something that we continually keep an eye on.

Okay. If you had any labor issues on bringing on new people as you've looked at expanding capacity in certain facilities?

No. We have not. We are taking our -- as you know, making our footprint much smaller. And we're being able to really improve our efficiencies, not through the amount of people we have, in fact nicely done, a lot of work over the last year in our Guad facility to automate. How we're really getting there is through a focus on new manufacturing principles. Set it around, are we really getting to get our lines run more efficiently, to engage employees, train them, to help us be able to go and sweat the assets more and improve our overall [indiscernible]. It's how we transformed the facility in Mexico last year. And we're applying those principles to both Guad and our Bowling Green facilities.

Okay. And then, last one for me, just kind of going back to kind of the growth within the guac business and if we look at kind of emerging brands and competitively it may be hard to speak to, but within this built into double-digit growth, is there any new products that are coming later in the year that's kind of built into that or is that kind of core business that you have in products today?

It's a core -- we've a lot of stuff built into core business. We have some items that we're looking at that are not built into our plan that we may or may not get into this fiscal year.

[Operator Instructions] Our next question is from Mitch Pinheiro with Sturdivant & Company. Please proceed.

Couple of questions for me. The first quarter of '21, are we going to be positive EBITDA on an adjusted basis?

Yes.

Okay. And though, should we expect earnings per share to be just doing the math, it looks like it might be negative or better than Q1 of the prior year?

Our EBITDA is going to be positive.

Okay. Second question is balance sheet, over the years, I've noticed your working capital keeps climbing and not just climbing because, I guess some business went up, but as a percentage of sales, it keeps moving the highest rate, I've seen it since covering you guys. Why is it going up? And what is your expectation for working capital? Is it going to be a source of cash or use of cash in '21?

Yes. I see it as being a source of cash. But what we have happening here, this is something that is a great question for us to just introduce this to folks who may not have already locked into it. With the Yucatan business, the way that our business model works is from really October through April maybe sometimes in the May. We are not only building inventory to service and fulfill current orders but we are building up a safety stock of inventory to carry us through the summer months. And so as we're coming through those months, we're actually building up somewhere between an additional 15 million to 20 million in inventory onto our balance sheet. So you're seeing that as, a pretty huge use of funds as we go through those months. As we then go through the months from May sort of through to September, you're seeing as deplete that inventory when we begin to sort of start building it up at a slower rate, but then as accelerated rate as we move back into the next cycle. So that is a -- I would say that the other parts of -- apart from CapEx spend that sort of comes in at different periods, Eat Smart as a pretty stable, I think seasonality in terms of revenues and trading assets and liabilities, that go with it. We do have the seasonality that it's centered more in Q2 and Q3, it goes with the raw product risk reserve that I referred to earlier. But then, probably the biggest thing that will give the balance sheet a degree of seasonality that it is not seen in the past has been and will be this Yucatan cycle that I just described.

What was their additional inventory as of May 31, being built Yucatan?

It was being built all the way from October across the year into May. So as we were sort of navigating a lot of the issues of, one, nailing down our cost out much of that was delivered in the fourth quarter. Reworking the business model and stabilizing the business model Yucatan from the beginning of last year, which we finally worked our way through some of that high priced inventory in the early February timeframe. But all along that cycle from October on, we were building up the asset base and inventory base that we knew we would need in May to carry us through the summer to avoid what happened last summer, which is that we had to produce during the summer during the very, very high approved cost seasonally.

So, yes. We did not run to May 31. So we took the plant down in early May, so that we would not repeat what happened to us. Last year we had run into the high food costs. So, we're very confident about that we have put away that if that was your question, in terms of understanding the cost.

Yes. No, I got. That's good. And then, I didn't really understand one other thing. Did you answer the question what your CapEx spending is going to be in '21?

Yes. Let's go for guiding, and we've also committed to the bank as well, a total number of 34 million for the year. And in doing so, we've committed to limiting that, which is right in line with our operations. The bank was with us on that to 12 million for the first half of the year; 12 million or less for the first half of the year, 34 million or less for the whole year.

We have reached the end of our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to management for closing remarks.

Thank you today for your time and your continued interest in Landec. This ends the conference call.

Thank you. This does conclude today's conference call. You may disconnect your lines at this time and have a pleasant day.