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Reed's, Inc. (REED)

Q3 2015 Earnings Call· Thu, Nov 12, 2015

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good afternoon, and welcome to the Reed's Third Quarter 2015 Earnings Conference Call for the period ending September 30, 2015. My name is Edison, and I will be your conference call operator today. Participating today's call, we have Chris Reed, the CEO and Founder of Reed's Incorporated; and Dan Miles, Chief Financial Officer. Following management’s remarks they will take questions. Before we begin today's call, I have Safe Harbor statement to read to our listeners. I would like to remind our listeners that during today's call, management's remarks may contain forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties, and that management may have additional forward-looking statements in response to your questions. Therefore, the company claims protection of the Safe Harbor of forward-looking statements that are contained in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ from those discussed today due to such risks, but are not limited to risks relating to demand for the company's products, dependence on third-party distributors, changes in the competitive environment, and access to capital, and other information detailed from time-to-time in the company's filings with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. In addition, any projections as to the company's future performance represents management's estimates as of today, November 12, 2015. Reed's Inc. assumes no obligations to update these projections in the future as market conditions change. I will now turn the call over to Mr. Miles, who will begin with his prepared remarks. Please go ahead.

Daniel Miles

Management

Thank you, Edison. Hello, everyone. Thank you for your interest in Reed's Inc., and thank you for joining us today for Reed's 2015 third quarter earnings call. My name is Dan Miles and I am the CFO of Reed's. In addition to the press release issued today, we’ve also filed our 10-Q for the third quarter of 2015 and then 8-K describing an exciting new lending agreement completed earlier this week. Let's turn to the results for the third quarter. Demand remains strong for Reed's beverages although our production operations could not meet that demand. Total net sales for the third quarter ending September 30, 2015 were $10 million, a decrease of 13% versus the third quarter of 2014. We believe that sales would have been substantially higher if were not continue to out-of-stock issues driven by significantly lower than expected production at our existing East Coast pack facility and the delay in our second East Coast facility coming online. Our promotional expenses for the third quarter, which includes items such as promotional spends with retailers and slotting fees rose 13%, and accounted for 12% of gross sales or $1.2 million for the quarter compared to $1.2 million, but 9% of gross sales in the third quarter of 2014. Promotions that were plan prior to the interruption had a disproportional negative impact on the margins. We been able to hit the $5 million in additional sales that we may have reached our promotional expenses would not have been the higher than 8% for the quarter. Sales for the first nine months of 2015 increased 3.4% to $33.6 million as compared to $32.5 million for the first nine months of 2015. Gross profit for the first nine months of 2015 was $8.5 million as compared to $10.5 million for the first…

Christopher Reed

Management

Well. Thanks Dan, appreciated. Chris Reed, the CEO and Founder of Reeds, Inc. The third quarter is particularly difficult time, we are already deep into the fourth quarter and I would like to feel we are deep into the recovery from the last two quarters. Production shortfalls for the third quarter causes to not fill at least $5 million of orders that we would typically filled. And it seems that in the world of business the tough thing to do is to create products that customers want and to create the demand to get the awareness on your products and the easier thing to do business is to make the widgets and get them to market. So it would have been nice to see a $16 million quarter, the same thing happened during the second quarter we posed I think $12.3 then we had about $2 million in orders that so we couldn't sell because the production shortfalls. Not only that the new facility that we've been working on throughout the beginning of 2015, we anticipated having it up and running in May 2015, number of the expenses that showed up in the third quarter are this product didn't make the grade there were produced at the plant. We tried to push a situation that was just going to take its time and trying to come to fruition when it could. And finally, now in the beginning of October we have production – not full production actually we production from the second facility on East Coast than in the Midwest we have our third facility for the East Coast area producing the product that was part of the our backup to our backup, but the second and our third plant for mostly East Coast production. For the two facilities combined…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] We do have a question from [indiscernible]. Please proceed.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Hello, Chris and congratulations on your product. I’m a team member of [Hope Foods] and have been for 10 years and I’ve seen your products fly out the doors people [indiscernible] and being a small investor I only have about 9000 shares I would like more. I love to see more consistent news about the company under….

Christopher Reed

Management

You want to hear more news on a more consistent basis on some of the wins that we are having.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Yes, exactly. I think that would help the small investor rather than and just wondering what’s going on when I see the stock up.

Christopher Reed

Management

Yes, I appreciate that. I think particularly during this time we are anticipating putting out more news and more interim kind of information on the recovery right now, we think - it’s definitely kind of a surprising quarter for us to post and I think people are really going to need to hear from us especially in the next few months, but I think that you'll see with the recovery of the finances in the company and the growth in second and third quarter of next year I think you'll see the response in stock and assuming that world’s still rolling and turning well in fact as we will see a nice recovery in the stock. We are aware that we need to communicate more and it has been a deep focus right now there's been a big scramble to get the – we not only brought on the third facility, but the fourth facility during this time, but that was a huge effort for us and I think you might have been a little bit remiss and keeping the news coming.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] We do have a question from [indiscernible]. Please proceed.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Hi Chris, I was wondering if you can tell us a little bit about what’s going around with Kombucha and now what’s going on with that products line?

Christopher Reed

Management

All right, thanks for joining us today. The Kombucha line –during the time we were down to somewhere close to 50% filling of order, production time where we produced Kombucha on the West Coast at our West Coast facility and we were definitely stretched very thin trying to keep up with everything and there wasn't a product that did not come to a place where it was being shorted in the marketplace. So Kombucha sales in August were at 50% of where they were three months prior and ACV, the percentage of store is carrying at natural foods during this period of time went from like 76% down to around 47%. So we lost almost 30% ACV. We are just getting back in stock on Kombucha, we did a bit more production in September so sales were up about 50% from August to September and October is recovering nicely. So we actually anticipate getting back on a growth curve with our Kombucha. The consumers have voted where it is the 46% that we were down probably 40% in accounts, but our sales were only down 20%. So the account are kept it actually have a pretty good growth on a per account basis. So the Kombucha still very strong in the consumer mind we are moving back into position to accelerate Kombucha you know its interesting if you watch the news on Kombucha, hear a lot of chatter in the press like the Wall Street Journal and an article I think was two days ago were they talked about the issue Kombucha’s having with the tobacco and firearms people of having to hire an alcohol level and the interesting thing about Reed’s is a public company and as a chemical engineer I wasn't willing to dance with the public regulatory…

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Great, thanks.

Operator

Operator

The next question comes from the line of [indiscernible]. Please proceed.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Chris Reed how are you doing, [indiscernible] in San Antonio, Texas.

Christopher Reed

Management

Hi, how are you doing?

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Doing great. Big fan of your product. And I had two questions if you don’t mind. I tried your Stronger Ginger Brew it’s fantastic I love it. But we don’t give out here.

Christopher Reed

Management

It’s hard to launch a product that you get ready and you announce to the world and then you're sort on production on your core product. So it felt a little foolish to get it out in the market. I think quite frankly every ginger - 90%, 95% of the Ginger Beer lovers prefer the stronger over the extra, the extras are number one SKU we just can't wait to unleash it. And we are starting to unleash it. So there is a big pent-up demand. We will get there, probably you will start getting it soon.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Yes, it’s phenomenal, you said some of 8 ounces and I tried it and that was great and just waiting for the bigger ones. The next question is I mean there is no Kombucha that even comes closer to yours, out there, I’ve tried them all, not only issue, just the packaging the label, where do you have that.

Christopher Reed

Management

So you are saying a label, it looks right or what you think you need.

Christopher Reed

Management

It’s still float and it doesn’t look good and I think that probably keep some of the folks out there that aren’t familiar with your product from purchasing it and…

Daniel Miles

Management

I had to clarify, the packaging, we were pretty ambitious when we did a curvature of the bottles that like that, you won’t see too many bottles that curve in and we got a new material from every – that’s was flexible plastic and we got a machine, I guess to get ahead of myself with trying too hard to get the labels fixed. I think there’s been improvements, we’ve learned to do it better, but still not perfect with the new plant that’s coming on board in LA, we have a very high-tech $600,000 label coming in here that I'm being told will be a label with perfection. And I tell you if this doesn't solve it and we won't see that till February. So right now it's more important just to get it back in the stock and fully supplying the people who’ve currently tolerate the package look and feel right now, but we will see improvement, worst-case scenario we go to a flat sided bottle in February, March, or April of next year. So it is clear to us also that we want to have a package that represents the liquid and sorry for that.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Okay, Chris I really appreciate and look forward to 2016.

Christopher Reed

Management

Thank you.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

You bet. Thank you. End of Q&A

Operator

Operator

And Mr. Reed, there appear to be no further question on the telephone.

Christopher Reed

Management

All right, thank you very much and look forward to much more exciting quarters coming up. Appreciate your time today. Bye.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude the conference call for today. And we thank you for your participation and ask that you please disconnect your line.