Q1 2021 Harvest Health & Recreation Inc Earnings Call

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Good morning, and welcome to the harvest Health <unk> Recreation Conference call.

First quarter, 2021 financial and operating results and discuss the company's performance outlook at this time.

We'll be in a listen only mode.

Our call will begin with prepared comments by the management.

Well not be a question and answer session during today's call.

Today's conference call is being recorded I would now like to turn the conference over to your host Christine Hersey director of Investor Relations for Harvey.

Thank you you may begin.

Thank you good morning, everyone and welcome to harvest first quarter 2021 earnings call on today's call, our founder and Chief Executive Officer, Steve White.

Today's remarks May include forward looking statements, which are subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results to differ materially from these statements. These risks and uncertainties are detailed in the Companys reports filed with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission and Canadian Securities regulators <unk>.

Our annual report on form 10-K, which was filed on March 30th 2021 and our quarterly report on form 10-Q, which will be filed this week.

This report when filed along with today's earnings press release, and our Powerpoint presentation can be found under the investors section of our website.

Harvest assumes no obligation to update or revise any forward looking statements.

To reflect the events or circumstances that may arise following today's call.

The discussion harvest, we will refer to non-GAAP financial measures, including adjusted EBITDA, a reconciliation of non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures is included in our earnings press release, and SEC and SEDAR filings. Please note all financial information is provided in U S dollars unless otherwise indicated.

I'll now turn the call over to Steve White Harvest founder and Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead. Thank you Christy.

Good morning, everyone and thank you for joining us I. Appreciate your continued support and interest in harvest and the opportunity to provide you with an update on the organization.

Today's call will focus solely on harvest and our fourth first quarter results for.

For details pertaining to the planned acquisition of harvest for truly please refer to the information provided in the press release presentation, and Investor call, which will follow this call.

As we outlined during our last call we remain focused on building a sustainable and scalable business. During this time when the current patchwork of laws and regulations limit the number of competitors serving this rapidly growing industry.

We have worked over the past year to streamline our operations and deepen our footprint in our defined core markets.

These markets are well populated state regulated limited license markets that allow the opportunity to build scale and a potential upside from catalysts such as expansion to include recreational sales.

Our core markets off with fast and favorable returns, which we can redeploy as we identify to enter new states that meet our criteria for capital allocation.

For 2021, we have identified three top operational priorities and two top financial priorities that support our goal of positioning the company to best take advantage of current and future growth opportunities in U S. Canada.

The operational priorities include first successfully managing new recreational sales in Arizona.

Increasing our cultivation output and third.

Getting our Pennsylvania stores open as quickly as we can.

Financially our priorities are first improving our balance sheet and second increasing overall per foot financial performance by focusing on impactful kpis.

Starting with our first operational priority in 2021 successfully managing the addition of recreational sales in Arizona.

As I described during our last call our per team did a phenomenal job preparing for and implementing recreational sales in our home state.

We began selling the recreational customers at all of our existing 15 locations in Arizona on January 22nd.

And realize the significant increase in revenue during the first quarter.

We referenced about a 100% increase in sales excluding March which was positively impacted by stimulus checks.

Now that the initial launch has been completed we are focused on fine tuning our operations to ensure that we continue to provide our patients and customers with a wide assortment of products and deliver outstanding customer service.

Over the past few months, we've been able to improve our processes and increased store throughput and efficiency.

For an online ordering and pick up for all customers and reducing customer lines and wait times.

We are in the process of redesigning and in some cases, expanding a few of our dispensers to better accommodate both medical patients and recreational customers.

This work will provide additional space to showcase more products and serve a greater number of customers more quickly.

Retail location upgrades will be completed at various points throughout the year in April we relaunched our loyalty program harvest High Society would we reward tiers and expanded offerings and perks.

All of these initiatives are expected to provide better overall patient and customer experiences experiences ultimately driving more traffic.

Overall, we've been able to provide our patients and customers with a wide array of products across all categories. Despite the significant increase in demand and some tightening in the wholesale market.

We continue to evaluate the market and we anticipate the ongoing expansion of our own cultivation and manufacturing operations will partly reduce our need for third party products.

We expect pricing and product availability to return to normalized levels over time additional participants enter the market and as the industry continues to ramp up supply.

We are very pleased with our performance, thus far in Arizona, which continues to exceed our prelaunch expectations.

We'll continue to monitor available market data in Arizona as the year unfolds to test our assumptions against real world conditions.

Further in Arizona, we have 15 stores with our 15th excuse me with our 16th location currently scheduled to open this summer.

And locations 17, and 18 to open in the near term as we work through the location approval process or.

Our 19th store will return to the harvest portfolio at the conclusion of an agreement that ends in 2023.

Our second operational priority. This year is to significantly increase our cultivation output and.

In order to do that we must meet our construction timelines and meet or exceed our production goals.

By meeting our output wells, we expect to see improved margin in both Arizona, and Pennsylvania increased revenue in Maryland, and in Florida, We expect increased revenue and store openings.

During the first quarter of 2021 year over year, our combined flower and trim output increased 88%.

And bench square square footage increased 61%.

Specifically in Florida, we opened two new locations last week, and we expect additional locations throughout the year.

Additional flowers harvest it.

The output from recently completed expansion activities is expected to add supply to existing stores and also support new store openings in the near term.

We are continuing to expand our cultivation capacity in Gainesville intellectual Florida.

In Pennsylvania, we are currently expanding our cultivation capacity in our writing facility.

In Maryland, we recently received the applicable permits to commence an indoor expansion and Hancock, Maryland.

Instructions starts this week.

In Arizona, we have ongoing expansion projects at various stages in our Magnolia Wilcox and camp Verde facilities.

Our third operational priority in 2021 is to add retail locations in Pennsylvania.

Currently we have nine open retail locations in March we opened our ninth location in White Hall, and we expect to open our 10th location over the summer pending regulatory approvals with some additional openings in the back half of the year.

As a part of our continuing efforts to improve the financial health of harvest. We have also identified two financial priorities for 2021.

Our first financial priority is to improve our balance sheet, while securing growth capital.

During the first quarter, we divested noncore retail assets in North Dakota, and completed the sale leaseback transaction for our cultivation facility intellectual Florida.

Harvest ended the first quarter of 2021 with approximately $107 million in cash.

$270 million in debt.

Our second financial priority is to improve our overall financial performance by focusing on key revenue drivers in improving margins.

Key revenue drivers in 2021 include maximizing the opportunity provided by the launch of recreational sales in Arizona, and continuing to expand retail cultivation and manufacturing operations.

We are pleased with the progress we have made thus far with respect to both revenue and margin.

We realized strong revenue growth and we were able to achieve significant margin expansion during the first quarter.

Our gross margin improved significantly due to the refinement of our pricing strategy and the elimination and restructuring of margin dilutive licensing contracts at the end of 2020.

Higher revenue strict cost controls and efficiencies of scale contributed to our improved operating margin and adjusted EBIT margin.

We will continue to focus on our key operational and financial priorities throughout 2021, we believe that our approach will better position the company for future growth opportunities. We are already realizing benefits from this strategy as demonstrated by our first quarter financial performance.

First quarter sales of $88 $8 million represent a 101% increase year over year, and a 27% increase from the fourth quarter approximately 90% of our first quarter revenue was derived from our core markets, Arizona, Florida, Maryland, and Pennsylvania.

The revenue mix during the first quarter was 87% retail and 13% wholesale and other.

As of May 10th harvest owned operated or managed 39 retail locations in five states, including 15 open dispensaries in Arizona.

First quarter same store sales increased by 134% year over year for the 29 stores that were opened during both periods for.

For the 34 stores that were opened in both the first quarter of 2021 and the fourth quarter of 2020 same store sales increased by 52% sequentially.

During the first quarter traffic increased by 61%, while basket size declined 5% compared to the fourth quarter.

In the first quarter, we realized a significant step up in revenue driven by the launch of recreational sales in Arizona. In addition to continued revenue growth from our existing operations.

Higher revenue from retail sales in Arizona more than offset the decline in licensing revenue due to the cancellation and restructuring are margin dilutive contracts completed at the end of 2020.

And Arizona sales derived from recreational customers increased throughout the quarter, reaching 57% of retail revenue in March while we realized strong sales from recreational customers medical sales in Arizona remained relatively flat declining by one 2% overall in the first quarter compared to the fourth quarter.

Companywide, we did observe an increase in sales due to the issuance of stimulus checks most noticed most noticeably in mid March.

In April our sales figures returned to more normalized levels, but still showed growth above February levels.

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During the quarter, we added one new retail location, we continued our expansion activities at several cultivation and manufacturing facilities.

Gross margin during the first quarter was 53, 9% compared to 44, 8% during the fourth quarter of 2020.

The sequential improvement in gross margin was driven primarily by reduced promotional activity.

And the revision in cancellation of margin dilutive licensing contracts.

While our revenue increased by 27% sequentially SG&A increased by one 1%.

We doubled revenue in the first quarter compared to the prior year, while SG&A decreased by about $500000.

We will continue to focus on containing costs as we further expand our operations, we expect our revenue growth to outpace increases over in costs over time.

Net loss before controlling interest for the first quarter was $23 million.

Net loss includes the impact of a $24 $4 million expense associated with the fair value of warrant liability.

This noncash charge was driven by stock price movement during the quarter, we cannot predict the impact of this accounting treatment for our outstanding warrants each quarter, but we note that it is not reflective of our underlying business.

Our first quarter adjusted EBITDA improved to $26 9 million.

Or 30% of revenue compared to $9 1 million or 13% of revenue during the fourth quarter of 2020.

As we've highlighted before part of our strategic plan includes making targeted investments with fast and favorable returns in our core markets.

During the three months ended in March 2021, we spent approximately $9 6 million on capital expenditures with the majority of the investments made in our core markets, Arizona, Florida, Maryland, and Pennsylvania.

That will remain true throughout 2021.

In our home state of Arizona, We have 18 locations to serve both the medical patients and recreational customers. Once our three additional stores are fully built out.

We expect to open our 16th location in Arizona. This summer. We will also have a 19th locations starting in 2023, when our current licensing arrangement expires in may.

Our retail locations are supported by cultivation facilities in camp Verde, El Mirage, Phoenix, and Wilcox and processing and manufacturing facilities in Flagstaff for Phoenix.

We are expanding indoor cultivation and processing at the Phoenix facility as well as greenhouse cultivation at Wilcox with new capacity expected to be completed during the first half of 2021.

We have also started the process to expand our greenhouse capacity are temporary.

We expect continued strength in the Arizona market as new customers continue to learn about and embrace legal and regulated cannabis products.

Our other three core markets all have future potential upside from recreational cannabis consumption.

In Florida, we have eight open retail locations, including two new locations opening day, we're continuing to expand our cultivation and manufacturing capacity with new product in the store openings coming into the market in 2021.

In Maryland, we currently have three open retail dispensaries, and a cultivation and processing facility.

Harvest is a net wholesaler in the state of Maryland with strong sales outside of our retail operations.

We have begun preliminary planning to further expand our cultivation and manufacturing operations in Hancock, Maryland, and construction starts this week.

In Pennsylvania Harvest currently operates nine open retail dispensaries, and a cultivation and processing facility.

Harvest has five retail licenses, allowing for up to 15 potential retail locations.

We are expanding cultivation and manufacturing operations to enhance margins and support the opening of additional retail locations in 2021.

While we do spend most of our time discussing their core markets and near term expansion plans I would like to point out that we do have assets in non core states that will benefit harvest in the future.

While these assets are in various stages of development today, we may be able to monetize non core assets in a variety of ways, including future development partnership or licensing arrangements or divestiture.

In the meantime, we will continue to expand our operations in core markets and build a foundation for future growth.

Turning now to our 2021 outlook.

We previously provided a 2021 full year revenue target of $380 million.

Based on our progress to date in 2021, we're raising our full year revenue target.

At this time, we are confident that our 2021 revenue will exceed $400 million.

The 2021 revenue target implies continued growth driven by recreational sales in Arizona same store sales growth.

New retail dispensary openings and expanded cultivation and manufacturing operations.

We expect gross margins will continue to fluctuate quarterly due to levels of promotional activity.

And market mix and the cost of third party products, we expect our reported gross margins will remain at or above 50%.

Debt service for the remainder of the year is approximately $44 million.

Capital expenditures for the remainder of the year are expected to range between 25% and $35 million and may be expanded or accelerated depending on the availability of financing.

Our focused strategy and commitment to investing in core markets is already contributing to our improved financial results. We look forward to demonstrating further progress over the coming quarters.

This will conclude our earnings call today.

We hope you will join the separate call to review the details of the planned acquisition of harvest by truly.

Conference call details can be found in the joint press release issued by both companies. This morning.

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Thank you. This concludes today's conference call you may now disconnect.

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