Julie Francis
Analyst · factors, including the risk factors described in the company's annual and quarterly reports filed with the SEC. The company assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements made during the call, except as required by law. This call will contain references to certain non-GAAP measures, which the company believes are useful in evaluating the company's performance. A reconciliation of these measures to the most comparable GAAP measures is included in today's earnings release, which was issued this morning before the markets opened and is available at www.mgpingredients.com. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Julie Francis, President and CEO of MGP Ingredients
Good morning. I'd like to thank you all for joining us today on our first quarter 2026 earnings call. Let's kick it off with a review of some of our quarterly results and progress made against our key initiatives, and then Brandon can go into the financial metrics during his comments. Sales in the first quarter of 2026 came in at $106.4 million, down versus the prior year, but in line with our expectations. Adjusted EBITDA of $15 million and adjusted basic EPS of $0.15 also declined versus the first quarter of last year. However, both of these key metrics were ahead of expectations. We are pleased with this performance as it helps to validate the work we've been doing to drive progress in our business while simultaneously navigating a challenging industry backdrop. In the first quarter, we continue to focus our energy on the areas we can control and to sharpen our strategic focus and strengthen execution across the organization. For Branded Spirits, we maintained momentum in our Premium Plus portfolio in the first quarter, which was led by Penelope Bourbon and benefited from improved demand for select mid-price offerings. We also delivered solid growth in Ingredient Solutions as the improvement the team has made in operational reliability are taking hold and delivering results. While I plan to talk more about our segment performance later, I'd like to share a few recent actions we have taken. As you know, we've been strengthening and revamping our strategy, marketing and supply chain functions in order to add specific capabilities to address new and existing opportunities and to build out best-in-class processes designed to balance improved commercial planning while driving disciplined execution and long-term success. As part of these efforts, we recently announced there will be a temporary idling of our distilling operations in Kentucky at Limestone Branch and Lux Row starting in May. Like many companies across the industry, we are navigating this challenging environment and taking the steps we believe are necessary to better align our operations and inventory. While this temporary idling will unfortunately affect 33 employees, it is not expected to impact the availability of our products or our services to our customers, and it is necessary to adjust our production to align with current inventory levels. We'd like to remind everyone that our largest facility in Lawrenceburg, Indiana remains fully operational and will continue to operate to serve our brands, clients and customers. Shifting to our business segments. I'll begin with Branded Spirits, which remains a focus as our primary long-term growth driver. As expected, first quarter sales were down year-over-year. However, we continue to see constructive progress, particularly within the Premium Plus and mid-priced tiers. We view these price tiers as critical to the long-term health of our portfolio, and we are pleased to see they both saw growth in the quarter. Importantly, gross margin expanded 180 basis points to 47.8%, reflecting improved mix and early benefits from our revenue growth management initiatives. Gross profit of $21.1 million was down versus the prior year and primarily driven by an expected decline in sales of private label products within our other category. Premium Plus sales increased 1.5%, supported by continued consumer demand for our differentiated high-quality offerings and the increasing effectiveness of our focused growth strategies. Penelope Bourbon once again delivered strong performance with sales up 10% year-over-year. As you recall, this brand is cycling the highly successful launch of Penelope Wheated in the first quarter of last year. Even against this comparison, we saw growth driven by sustained and growing momentum in our core SKU Penelope Four Grain, along with strong consumer response to limited time releases such as Havana, Rio and American Light whiskey. We are also encouraged by the early traction from our new ready-to-pour offerings, including our black walnut and apple cinnamon old-fashioned products, which continue to expand Penelope's consumption occasions. Turning to Yellowstone. Despite a year-over-year decline for the first quarter, we are seeing early signs of stabilization and recovery, supported by deliberate investments in innovation and digital capabilities. Our ultra-premium limited release Yellowstone recollection has been exceptionally well received, earning strong critical acclaim and press coverage with consumer demand exceeding our initial expectations. As discussed in our last earnings call, we continue to increase our investment in digital marketing and media capabilities. Yellowstone is the first brand we've deployed a fully integrated digital activation strategy, combining best-in-class social media execution with targeted paid media in focus states, including select control states. In Pennsylvania and California, for example, this approach, combined with revenue growth management initiatives drove robust double-digit growth for Yellowstone in the first quarter versus the prior year. Turning to tequila, where our El Mayor brand delivered year-over-year growth, driven by continued progress in price pack architecture efforts. This included expanded 1.75-liter offerings and the introduction of 375-milliliter sizes as consumers increasingly adopt premium tequila across a broader range of occasions and price points. Similarly, Exotico tequila was up strong double digits, fueled by the addition of a 1-liter offering, which is enabling continued gains in on-premise distribution alongside price optimization. Additionally, the 375-milliliter size is allowing consumers to trade up from mixed tequila to high-quality 100% agave tequila at an attractive price point in off-premise channels. For mid- and value priced portfolios, combined sales declined 3% in the first quarter. These are improving trends as we continue to prioritize our strongest performing SKUs and channels. Revenue growth management and price pack channel optimization remain critical levers in these categories, and we are encouraged by early results as we execute against this strategy. Looking ahead, we are intentionally concentrating resources behind approximately 10 of our most promising brands with a clear focus on purposeful differentiation and innovation to support sustainable long-term growth. At the same time, we are managing the portfolio with discipline. As discussed on our prior call, we have initiated comprehensive portfolio review and rationalization. During the first quarter of 2026, we discontinued more than 30 tail brands with approximately 15 additional brands planned to be discontinued by the end of this year. Combined, these brands represent approximately 1% of segment net sales, and we expect, when annualized, will represent an estimated 20 basis point of improvement to the segment's gross margin profile. For our Branded Spirits segment, we are excited about the opportunities ahead across our broader portfolio. As with all growth trajectories, we will take many steps forward, some bigger and some smaller. We also will likely alternate between some really healthy quarters and some softer ones as we continue to successfully prioritize our best-performing offerings and ramp up our investments in these brands while continuing to cycle new product introductions. Turning to Distilling Solutions, where despite the challenging domestic whiskey supply environment, our first quarter results came in as expected. Segment sales of $28 million decreased 40% over year, while gross profit of $8.6 million declined 54% as elevated inventory levels continued. In the first quarter, we maintained our focus on creating a differentiated value proposition to better position MGP as a long-term strategic partner for both large and small customers. Our brown goods customers expansion efforts are taking hold as demonstrated by growth of 9% in aged sales and the addition of more than 20 new customers in the first quarter, including a significant national private label whiskey customer. We are proud of the customer expansion progress we are making, particularly given the current industry backdrop. As discussed on our last earnings call, we are also broadening our premium white goods offerings, and these efforts are focused on complementing our brown goods portfolio. During the quarter, we transacted our first customer sale under this new highly customized initiative. While we are pleased with the progress we are making, given the unique and highly customized nature of these product offerings, these projects will take time to fully commercialize and scale. That said, we now expect growth from this initiative to begin picking up in the second half of this year. Our focus on premium white goods is designed to leverage the scale, heritage and quality of our Indiana distillery to produce premium gin and grain neutral spirits, which can then be customized to meet each customer-specific needs. We expect that this effort will allow us to move beyond commoditized offerings, generate more attractive economics and better asset utilization rates and also serve as a bridge to longer-term and deeper relationships with strategic customers. Our efforts are also focused on driving cash generation by increasing our value-added service offerings as we look to attract and retain a wider pool of customers. Warehouse services made up approximately 30% of our Distilling Solutions segment sales in the first quarter, and both sales and gross profit were up versus the prior year. Turning now to our Ingredient Solutions segment, where sales of $34.2 million, increased 29% versus the prior year. This growth was primarily driven by higher sales volume, price and mix for our specialty wheat proteins and starches. Gross profit of $3.8 million was up 56% with gross margin of 11.2%, up nearly 200 basis points as higher sales of specialty protein and starch products were partially offset by higher waste disposal costs. This successful first quarter was driven by continued improvements in operational reliability with each month better than the past one. For the quarter, efficiency was up 14% year-over-year with a slower start to the year firmly offset by a solid March. We plan to continue to move towards greater efficiency as we improve overall and as we begin to cycle previous throughput issues. Effluent disposal has been more complex and more costly than initially projected. Reducing waste and disposal costs are a key priorities, and we're implementing additional measures by year-end and continue to expect to remove these costs over the long term. At the end of the second quarter and into the third, we have a planned shutdown for scheduled maintenance and capital projects designed to further improve reliability and throughput and to provide some relief in our waste stream disposal costs. Brandon will share the related financial impacts in a moment. Despite the effluent challenge, we are moving in the right direction Ingredient Solutions. We are pleased with the momentum as better operational reliability means we have more product to sell. And this is key as we continue to see increasing demand for our proprietary and unique products. We will remain focused on driving growth through our specialty fiber, Fibersym, our specialty protein Arise and our extrusion protein, ProTerra. Now I'd like to highlight the progress we are making in driving an ownership cost management mindset that is supporting growth and our bottom line by eliminating waste, driving efficiencies and maximizing effectiveness. One reinvestment example of this is the work we completed to streamline marketing services and to reduce our nonworking media spend while reinvesting those savings into our Yellowstone digital marketing programs. Going forward, we will continue to reinforce this mindset by embedding productivity and cost discipline into our operating routines, performance management and compensation metrics. Productivity and a cost management focus are becoming a part of our regular management teams, helping us to uncover and track opportunities to eliminate waste and driving us to operate more efficiently and effectively across the entire organization. And with that, I'd like to turn the call over to Brandon.