Larry Wexler
Analyst · Craig-Hallum Capital. Sir, your line is open
Thank you, Larry. Let me now give you a quick snapshot of the performance from the segment level. Zig-Zag Products are double-digit growth in the quarter led by a doubling of sales in both our MYO cigar wraps and Canadian businesses, and strong double-digit growth in U.S. rolling papers led by e-commerce and paper cones. Our MYO cigar wrap business compared favorably against the previous year period that experienced a COVID-related disruption, when our third-party manufacturer went offline. Retail sales accelerating, we were able to leverage a more efficient supply chain post the Durfort acquisition to fill the backlog that was built up heading into the current quarter, and further benefited from an inventory trade load-in as our customers built buffer inventory, which pulled roughly two million of sales into the quarter. In the U.S. Zig-Zag paper’s position as the leading premium and overall paper brand strengthened, increasing its share in the measured market by 2.4 points year-over-year to 35.1% according to MSAi. After not growing share for the first three years since our IPO, this was the eighth consecutive quarter of Zig-Zag has realized year-over-year share growth, reflecting the portfolio and channel efforts put in place to revitalize the business where we were still in the early stages of this process. Our new products and our expanding e-commerce platform again provided a boost. During the quarter, our paper cones had 33.3% share of the second in the major channel according to MSAi up 10.5 points from the previous year as our volumes more than double. We continue to lead the growth and penetration of the product in convenience stores, and our expanding our presence in the non-measured alternative channel where Zig-Zag is still underrepresented. In Canada, we had a strong quarter of growth with our business more than doubling, as recreation marketing, which has now being consolidated, continues to ramp and is now being bolstered by DVW. E-commerce was again a big driver of growth, our e-commerce business, which is now double-digits of our U.S. paper sales, it’s still only a year and a half old, and continues to make strides up over 3.5 times last year’s levels and up 50% from the previous quarter. Stoker’s products are high single-digit growth in the quarter with double-digit growth from moist snuff, again being the driver. Stoker’s market share was up to 5.8%, a little over 50 basis points compared to a year ago according to MSAi. Stoker’s moist snuff is now in stores representing 62.2% of industry volumes, 3.8 points above last year’s level, which still leaves a long runway for further growth. Chewing tobacco sales saw low single-digit decline during the quarter after comping against a quarter that saw 6% growth when a competitor experienced COVID-related disruptions in the prior year period. Despite the tough comp, Stoker’s chew gain 20 basis points with a 26% share in the second quarter, according to MSAi to positioning Stoker’s is the number one chewing tobacco brand. With the continued secular shift into the value category and Stoker’s positioning as a leading value brand. The chewing tobacco business is well placed to provide us with a stable annuity stream of cash flow going forward. Moving to NewGen where we once again had a resilient quarter in a very disruptive environment. Our big distribution business, we saw double-digit declines against a tough comp during the prior year, when we’ve benefited from a COVID-related disruption at a B2B competitor and the strong B2C orders during state stay-at-home provisions. The business did benefit from advanced buying in April headed straight through shipping regulations around vaping as a result of the implementation of the PACT Act. We believe, this boosted sales by 2 million during the quarter as customers adjusted to the longer lead times by building inventory. The PACT Act had a meaningful impact on costs, our outbound freight expense in vape business, which we recognize and SGA [ph] was up over 300 basis points as a percentage of its sales from the previous quarter. And this increase was only partially passed onto the customer. We believe that the additional cost and complexities around logistics of delivering vape products to customers caused by the PACT Act that is consolidating industry, further and positions us well to take share. Outside vape, while we haven’t contributed to our growth and we’re encouraged by the early reception of our free white nicotine pouch as we begin its rollout during the second quarter. Going forward, while we continue to expect short-term volatility in the vape distribution business, we like our positioning from a long-term competitive standpoint and are excited by some of our new product launches, including free at Nu-X. And with that, I’ll turn it to Louie for review of our fourth quarter financial performance, Louie?