Gus Griffin
Analyst · SunTrust. Please go ahead
Thank you, Mike. And thank you all for joining us. On this call, we will provide an overview of our results, updates on key financial performance metrics and discussion of progress against our strategy. Then we will take your questions. Now turning to results. 2017 marked the third full year of the implementation of our strategic plan. We continue to build on the strong foundation we've established. And we are very pleased with the results for this quarter and the year as they underscore this continued progress against our long term strategic goals. Both of our business segments showed strong growth over the prior year, driving operating income growth that was consistent with our guidance. Consolidated net sales for the year increased 9.2%, gross profit increased 16.4% and MGP met its guidance of 10% to 15% growth in operating income, excluding the special items from 2016. Looking at each segment individually. In our Distillery Products segment, full year net sales grew 9.7% as we continue to see strong demand for our premium beverage alcohol. Total food grade alcohol net sales grew 11.9% for the year, driven by year-over-year growth of 18.4% in premium beverage alcohol. The growth within premium beverage alcohol was driven by 25% increase in net sales of our brown goods and an 8.3% increase in net sales of our white goods. These results reflect strong underlying market trends, the benefits of us building strong partnerships with existing customers and our successful efforts to attract new customers for our range of whiskey, vodka and gin offerings. The Distilled Spirits Council recently released their annual economic bridging, which highlighted the strong market trends. For the eight straight years, spirits gained share of total beverage alcohol with sales volume for total Distilled Spirits increasing 2.6% and American whiskey grew annual sales volume at 6.4% and the five year CAGR for volume accelerated for the sixth straight year. The premiumization trends also continued with annual sales value for American whiskey up 8.1%. There is certainly a lot of good news here. However, when comparing our results to the results for the overall industry, it is clear that we are outperforming the broader market. Our efforts to further expand our sales coverage and offer capabilities and product offerings that meet our customers' needs has given us broader exposure to the fastest growing industry categories and segments. MGP is the largest producer of rye whiskey in United States. And while the total American whiskey category is growing nicely, rye whiskey, a subset of American whiskey grew annual volumes 16.2% with a five year CAGR of plus 25% in the rye category and the U.S. is now over 900,000 cases. We are also fortunate to have customers who utilize our whiskey products to make high end brands. 58% of the American whiskey category is at the high-end or super premium pricing segments. With super premium, the fastest growing segment growing over 18%. White Goods show a similar story with overall annual vodka volume up 2.2% with the high end segment growing at 14.5%. The gin category was down slightly but super premium segment increased the volume 11.2%. In our Distillery Products segment, one of our key strategies was to migrate the food grade alcohol mix towards premium beverage alcohol and away from lower margin in more volatile sales of industrial alcohol. In 2017 for the full year, sales of premium beverage alcohol represented 70% of total food grade sales, up from 66% in 2016. We believed that this strategy of maximizing the value of our production would help insulate us from external factors. So despite strong pricing pressure in the industrial alcohol market and year-long downward pressure from soft global pricing conditions for our distillers feed co-product or DDG, gross margins for our Distillery Segment expanded 160 basis points and segment gross profit grew 17.6%, reaching $66.8 million for the year. Consistent with our long-term strategy, we continue to build our inventory of aged whiskey. In addition to using this aged whiskey to support the development of our own brands, it is also used to strengthen our market position and our ability to attract and retain new distillery customers. Due to the sustained robust growth of the American whiskey category, we continue to see strong demand for aged whiskey as customers seek to fill inventory gaps driven by higher than expected consumer demand. We continue to leverage limited sales of rightly aged whiskey to support our existing partnerships and to attract new customers for our new Distillery Products. We remain focused on building our inventory of aged whiskey. And even with the strategic sales, we increased our year-end inventory by 29%, reaching $65.7 million at cost at the close of the year. Turning to Ingredient Solutions. Net sales grew 6.5% while gross profit improved 8.9% to $9.2 million for the year. Gross margins expanded 40 basis points, supported by higher net sales in both our specialty wheat protein and specialty wheat starch businesses. We take a long term view on the growth of our businesses, identifying strong macro consumer trends and making the appropriate investments of time and capital to leverage those trends. The growth of our specialty ingredients products this year reflect that approach. We knew the patent on our Fibersym specialty wheat starch products would expire last June, and we took actions to strengthen our position in the market and build upon the strong partnerships with our customers. These actions ensure we’d be able to continue to benefit from the increase in consumer interest and enhanced dietary fiber. As a result, we saw strong growth in that business. Similarly, we invested the time and funds to reestablish and build our texture wheat protein business to maximize the potential offered by the increased consumer interest in plant based proteins. As a result, sale of our TruTex specialty wheat protein product more than doubled in 2017. We are very pleased with this progress and excited about the potential for this key growth platform. We are very pleased with the fourth quarter and the full year results as we remain confident in our ability to execute our long term strategic plan and maximize opportunities provided by the macro trends for both of our business segments. This concludes my initial remarks. Let me now turn things to Tom Pigott for a review of key metrics and numbers. Tom?