Russell Diez-Canseco
Analyst · Jefferies
Thank you, Ashley, and good afternoon, everyone. It's great to speak with all of you on our first earnings call as a public company. On today's call, I will briefly review our second quarter financial highlights, provide an overview of our business model and discuss the reasons we believe our brand is well positioned for long-term growth. Jason Dale, our Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer will then review our second quarter financial results in more detail and discuss our fiscal 2020 outlook. We then look forward to taking your questions. First, our second quarter financial highlights. We're pleased to report a strong second quarter. Net revenue increased 84% to $59.3 million compared to the second quarter last year. We also saw positive trends in our key profit metrics. Gross profit margin increased over 400 basis points year-over-year. Adjusted EBITDA improved 111% from the second quarter of 2019 to $9.3 million, demonstrating our continued increasing profitability. Because many of you are new to our story, I would like to provide an overview of our business model and our growth strategy. Vital Farms is on a mission to bring ethical food to the table by coordinating a network of approximately 200 small family farms and bringing their products to a national network of approximately 14,000 stores. Our values are rooted in conscious capitalism, exemplified by our belief that to build a sustainable enterprise, we must prioritize the long-term benefits for each of our stakeholders, our customers and consumers, our employees, whom we call crew members, our farmers and suppliers, our communities, the environment, and our stockholders. We are a Certified B Corporation as well as a Public Benefit Corporation. Our premium and values driven positioning in genders trust with consumers and makes Vital Farms a strategic and valuable brand for retailers. And as we continue to build trusted brand in eggs and butter, I am optimistic about the categories we could potentially disrupt to offer consumers and other stakeholders better options. Since our founding in 2007, we have focused on delivering growth and profitability. For example, we delivered a net sales growth of 64% and a gross profit growth of 71% in the first half of 2020. In the last 52 weeks ending June 14, 2020, we were the number one pasture-raised egg brand with 78% dollar share of the U.S pasture-raised egg market and the number two overall egg brand based on retail dollar sales. Next, I'll turn to our growth strategy. Our growth strategy consists of four key elements. First, expand how full penetration through greater consumer awareness. Second, grow within the retail channel. Third, expand our footprint across food service; four, extend our product offerings through innovation. Now we'll walk through our highlights from quarter two along each of these four dimensions. First, household penetration. In the second quarter, household penetration increased to 2.7%, up from 1.9% at the end of 2019 and up 70 basis points on a sequential basis from the first quarter. We recognize that some of these gains are driven by trends toward more eating at home due to COVID-19. We do see some early signs that consumers who are trying our products for the first time are making repeat purchases. For example, during the COVID stock-up period, the eight weeks ending April 19, approximately 450,000 new buying households purchased Vital Farms eggs. In the following 8 week period ending June 14, 20% have already become repeat purchasers and 45% of those purchased Vital Farms eggs multiple times during those 8 weeks. Second, grow within the retail channel. During the second quarter, Vital Farms store count increased by over 700 doors, driven primarily by the grocery or food class of trade. Our velocities in that class of trade remained robust despite the extended distribution. And in the natural channel, including whole foods, lot of these increased by double digits. Third, expand our footprint across food service. Well, we see growth opportunities in food service, the headwinds in that sector in quarter two limited our ability to attract new customers. This remains a small segment of our business, and we look forward to bringing additional focus to it as the sector rebounds. Four, extend our product offerings through innovation. Our focus in quarter two was on the successful ramp up of production of our new Egg Bites, which we launched in August. Egg Bites are a new line of single serve, refrigerated bites made with high quality ingredients, including Vital Farms pasture-raised liquid whole eggs, pasture-raised cheese, humanely raised meats and vegetables. Consumers are staying at home more than usual right now. And for many, their days are busier than ever. We created Egg Bites to address the growing number of consumers who crave a protein packed breakfast made with fresh ingredients, but who don't always have the time to cook. As our first multi ingredient product, this launch has given us valuable experience in the entire innovation process from ideation to procurement, to co-manufacturer management. Our successful launch involve many crew members from across the company and we thank them for their tireless efforts to bring this product to market. Now, I'll talk a bit about the impact of COVID on our business. As we mentioned earlier, we believe COVID related shifts in consumption toward in-home have created tailwinds for our retail products. Since late February, we have focused on the health and well-being of our crew members and other stakeholders. As a result, we have seen limited impact on our supply chain with just two confirmed cases among our operations team at Egg Central Station in Springfield, Missouri. Their continued help and commitment has allowed us to deliver increased production above pre-COVID levels to help supply the increased demand we are experiencing from our retail partners. In summary, we believe Vital Farms is incredibly well-positioned for growth as we remain focused on increasing penetration in both retail and food service channels, increasing brand awareness, ongoing product innovation, and continuing to support family farms as we serve a robust market for food produced from humanely raised animals. I'd like to now turn the call over to Jason, who will walk you through our second quarter financials.