Q2 2024 Sow Good Inc Earnings Call
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Speaker Change: Good morning, everyone, and thank you for participating in today's conference call to discuss SoGood's financial results for the second quarter ended June 30th, 2024. Joining us today are SoGood's co-founder and CEO, Claudia Goldfarb, and Interim Chief Financial Officer, Brendon Fischer. Following their remarks, we'll open the call for questions.
Speaker Change: Before we go further, I would like to turn the call over to Mr. Slack as he reads the company's Safe Harbor Statement within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 that provides important cautions regarding forward-looking statements. Cody, please go ahead.
Claudia Goldfarb: Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us in today's conference call to discuss SoGood's financial results for the second quarter ended June 30th, 2024.
Mr. Slack: Certain statements made during this call are forward-looking statements including those concerning our financial outlook, our market opportunities, and the impact of the global economic environment on our business.
Mr. Slack: These statements are based on currently available information and assumptions, and we undertake no duty to update this information except as required by law. These statements are also subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, including those highlighted in today's earnings release and our filings with the FCC.
Mr. Slack: Additional information concerning these statements and the risks and uncertainties associated with them is highlighted in today's earnings release and in our filings with the SEC. Copies are available on SEC's website or on our investor relations website.
Mr. Slack: Furthermore, we will discuss adjusted EBITDA and non-GAAP financial measure on today's call. A reconciliation of adjusted EBITDA to net income or loss, the nearest comparable non-GAAP financial measure on today's call is available in our earnings press release at our investor relations website. For more information, please visit www.earningspress.com.
Mr. Slack: With that, I will turn the call over to Claudia.
Claudia Goldfarb: Thank you, Cody. And good morning, everyone. We appreciate you joining us today to discuss our second quarter 2024 financial results.
Claudia Goldfarb: I am thrilled to report another exceptional quarter with sequential revenue growth of 37%, driving net income of $3.3 million or $0.29 per share.
Speaker Change: Adjusted EBITDA also surged to $6.2 million compared to a negative $2.1 million in Q2 of last year.
Speaker Change: These remarkable results highlight the power of our innovative and disruptive product offerings and the strength of our exceptional team.
Speaker Change: I extend my deepest gratitude to our employees for their unwavering commitment to so good and our vision.
Speaker Change: Our collective efforts have enabled us to help revolutionize the candy industry, introducing products that not only delight our customers, but also set new standards for quality and innovation.
Speaker Change: We have consistently pushed the boundaries, ensuring that our offerings remain at the forefront of the nascent freeze-dried candy market.
Speaker Change: As we look ahead, we remain steadfast in our mission to innovate and lead this category.
Speaker Change: During our last call, we highlighted the significant milestones we reached early in our second quarter that have helped pave the way to achieving our initiatives as a public company.
Speaker Change: To summarize, in May, we successfully listed our common stock to the NASDAQ Capital Markets Exchange.
Speaker Change: This strategic move expanded our investor base and increased our market visibility, driving improvements in liquidity and long-term shareholder value.
Speaker Change: The positive impact of this listing is already evident, confirming that we are on the right path. Along with this listing, we completed an underwritten public offering, raising $12.8 million in proceeds net of underwriting fees.
Speaker Change: This influx of capital positions us exceptionally well to achieve our ambitious strategic objectives for 2024 and beyond.
Speaker Change: I will have more to say about these strategic initiatives that we've outlined at the beginning of the year, our new product offerings, our increase in in-house manufacturing, the strengthening of our supply chain.
Speaker Change: and updates on the third quarter in my concluding remarks. But first, I will pass it to Brendon to walk through our Q2 results in detail. Brendon, over to you.
Brendon: Thank you, Claudia. Jumping right into our financial performance, revenue in the second quarter of 2024 increased significantly to $15.6 million compared to $1.3 million in the prior year period.
Brendon: On a sequential basis, revenue this quarter increased 37% over the first quarter of 2024.
Speaker Change: Overall, our top-line growth continues to be driven by our strategic pivot to the production of freeze-dried candy and our increased ability to meet growing market demand through the expansion of our production capacity.
Speaker Change: Gross profit in the second quarter of 2024 increased significantly to nine million compared to negative 1.6 million for the same period in 2023.
Speaker Change: Gross margin was 57.6% in the second quarter of 2024, up considerably from 40.6% in the first quarter of 2024.
Speaker Change: The sequential margin expansion was driven by strong revenue growth, but also lower raw material costs, improved sales mix, and price optimization.
Speaker Change: Please note, we moved into our new facility late in the quarter, so rent costs were not as prevalent in Q2 cost of sales as they will be in Q3.
Speaker Change: This, along with continued investment in our operations to increase our production capacity, will create near-term headwinds to quarterly gross margins that are expected to drive margin expansion over the long term.
Speaker Change: Operating expenses in the second quarter of 2024 were 4.1 million compared to 0.9 million for the same period in 2023.
Speaker Change: The increase was primarily driven by higher compensation and professional services expenses. SoGood scaled its business and invested in systems and process improvements, as well as executed on its NASDAQ listing and underwritten public offerings.
Speaker Change: Net income in the second quarter of 2024 increased substantially to $3.3 million, or $0.29 per diluted share, compared to a net loss of $3.3 million, or a loss of $0.68 per diluted share, for the same period in 2023.
Speaker Change: The improvement reflects the higher level of growth profit generated during the quarter.
Speaker Change: Adjusted EBITDA in the second quarter of 2024 improved significantly to $6.2 million compared to a negative $2.1 million for the same period in 2023, and $2.5 million in the first quarter of 2024.
Speaker Change: Moving to the balance sheet, we ended the second quarter of 2024 with cash and cash equivalents of 14.4 million compared to 2.4 million as of December 31st, 2023.
Speaker Change: This increase in cash and cash equivalents is primarily driven by the public offering we completed in the second quarter, where we raised $12.8 million in proceeds net of underwriting fees.
Speaker Change: We intend to use the net proceeds from their offering for general corporate purposes, which will include capital expenditures for the expansion of production capacity, funding working and gross capital, expanding our sales and marketing efforts, and reducing certain tranches of indebtedness.
Speaker Change: We would like to thank our new and existing investors for their support and look forward to further enhancing our foundation for growth.
Speaker Change: This concludes my prepared remarks. I'll now turn to call Claudia for closing remarks. Claudia.
Claudia Goldfarb: Thank you, Brendon. As we've discussed throughout this call and over the past few quarters, we have made rapid progress since launching our first freeze-dried candy SKUs in the first quarter of 2023.
Claudia Goldfarb: In this first year of focusing on freeze-dried candy, we have meaningfully expanded our production infrastructure, our retail customer and distributor network, and our SKU and store count.
Claudia Goldfarb: We firmly believe this is just the beginning of our growth trajectory. As this rapid trajectory unfolds, we continue to gain valuable insights into our business operations at scale, as well as retail and customer buying behaviors.
Claudia Goldfarb: An example of this is our candy shipments in July and early August slowed due to the sweltering summer conditions.
Claudia Goldfarb: This year's extreme heat posed a logistical challenge affecting product quality during transportation and storage.
Claudia Goldfarb: To safeguard our product integrity and quality, to limit returns and avoid any negative brand reputational impact, we strategically decided to pause shipments to customers.
Speaker Change: that did not have temperature-controlled warehouses or trucking, irrespective of continuing growing customer demand. Despite this pause, our customers maintained strong in-stock positions, ensuring in-store velocities were unaffected.
Speaker Change: To address the seasonality in the coming years, we will work closely with our retail partners to ensure that they are well positioned with sufficient stock prior to the peak heat month where shipping will once again decrease.
Speaker Change: Additionally, through discussions with our customers.
Speaker Change: We're observing that consumers tend to spend less on the candy category during the summer months as our younger demographic target is out of school, families are away on vacation, and consumers are otherwise shifting from their normal routines and buying patterns.
Speaker Change: Furthermore, with beach vacations at a peak, consumers often become more health-conscious, impacting overall candy sales.
Speaker Change: We believe this will be a normal seasonal trend moving forward, and as a result of the summer candy buying trend and strategic shipping reduction, we anticipate a downturn in Q3 sales relative to the second quarter.
Speaker Change: However, Q4 is poised for a resurgence toward normal accelerating rate of growth.
Speaker Change: Field by critical factors such as customer restocking, the back-to-school rush, and the peak holiday buying surge, including Halloween.
Speaker Change: Our targeted initiatives will amplify this momentum, positioning us for exceptional growth as we close out this year.
Speaker Change: At the beginning of the year, we outlined strategic initiatives designed to propel our mission of revolutionizing the candy category.
Speaker Change: We remain confident that these initiatives are the right path forward, consistently guiding us toward our objective of market disruption.
Speaker Change: Our unwavering commitment to these strategies underscores our dedication to innovation and excellence, ensuring that we continue to set new standards and exceed expectations within the industry.
Speaker Change: To recap those strategies, first, expanding production capacity.
Speaker Change: Our Q2 production capacity surpassed projections, reaching over 7.5 million units compared to the 7.2 million we had projected.
Speaker Change: We installed our fifth freeze dryer with a sixth freeze dryer under construction and expected to be completed by the end of the third quarter.
Speaker Change: We have secured a long-term lease and moved into a 324,000 square foot production facility in Dallas, enabling us to further expand our production capacity and optimize our shipping and distribution operations.
Speaker Change: Initial deposits for an additional six proprietary free starters have been secured which would be placed in our new Dallas facility.
Speaker Change: This enhanced capacity optimizes our raw material storage, product packaging, and overall operational efficiencies to fulfill the increased order volumes we receive.
Speaker Change: This expansion also allows us to uphold our stringent food safety and quality standards while integrating more of our custom-built proprietary freeze dryers and specialized packaging environments.
Speaker Change: We commenced distribution from the new facility in June, and we plan to initiate packaging operations and freeze-dry production by the end of the year.
Speaker Change: Second, disrupting the candy category.
Speaker Change: We are driving relentless innovation in the category, introducing new treats such as lemon puffs, and by the end of the third quarter, we will unveil over 10 new SKUs.
Speaker Change: Mint, Chamoy flavored, and Seasonal Candies, as well as smaller bag sizes of our top performing SKUs.
Speaker Change: These offerings are crafted to elevate Halloween celebrations, perfectly suited for gift bags and party fay fairs, and provide ultimate convenience for lunch boxes and on-the-go snacking.
Speaker Change: Our strategic efforts to elevate product quality, expand our offerings, and drive innovation are dependent on bringing more of our manufacturing in-house to strengthen our competitive advantage.
Speaker Change: To advance these goals, we launched a pivotal initiative in the second quarter to produce our very own chew candies in our new Dallas facility.
Speaker Change: This strategic move powerfully distinguishes us from competitors who depend on external overseas suppliers for their candy production.
Speaker Change: They rely on costly branded candies whose availability and supply chain can be unpredictable and whose formulations have not been optimized for the freeze-drying process.
Speaker Change: By controlling our raw material supply chain, we can enhance our product quality with custom formulations, foster further innovation, and mitigate potential disruptions from overseas markets.
Speaker Change: This production equipment has already been ordered and is expected to arrive in the fourth quarter of this year.
Speaker Change: We anticipate production of our two candies to begin by the end of the first quarter of 2025.
Speaker Change: A significant step made possible by our manufacturing expertise and one that will further solidify our competitive advantage and reinforce our market leadership.
Speaker Change: Third, strengthening distribution partnerships.
Speaker Change: We made substantial progress in diversifying our distribution partnerships and expanding our retail presence.
Speaker Change: We launched new SKUs and displays across major retailers and convenience stores, enhancing our market penetration and our brand visibility.
Speaker Change: Recent updates include Five Below continuing to be a very strong partner and we anticipate launching two to four new SKUs during the third quarter.
Speaker Change: We anticipate launching our first Halloween seasonal skew with Cracker Barrel this month.
Speaker Change: We'll be launching a full seasonal line featuring freeze-dried marshmallows in the shapes of various holiday figures such as Santas, Easter bunnies and hearts with our retail partners throughout the year.
Speaker Change: We launched six SKUs in ATB in June and performed very well, earning a significant reorder. We expect to add two to three additional SKUs to their assortment by the beginning of the fourth quarter. Thank you. For more information, please visit www.fema.gov
Speaker Change: We added five new SKUs in Big Lots in May, and we launched SOGA displays in 300 of their stores for increased exposure and brand building, capitalizing on and lifting their existing strong sales.
Speaker Change: We launched displays in 1,897 Kroger stores in early summer. Our original launch in Kroger contained 56 units of product.
Speaker Change: After a strong performance, we launched a second round of displays containing 116 units and new SKUs. Thank you for your patience.
Speaker Change: Our sales with Kroger continue to perform strongly, and we expect to launch seasonal items this Easter in their stores.
Speaker Change: We launched our 116 SKU count displays in all Albertsons divisions throughout early summer and saw extremely exciting sales performance with continued reorders.
Speaker Change: We increased our target store presence to nearly 2,000 stores this summer. We continue to perform strongly and are collaborating on ways to grow the partnership.
Speaker Change: We launched our displays in over 400 Sprout stores in July and are excited to see strong performance.
Speaker Change: We launched three SKUs at Ross in June, and after strong sales, we added our new Lemon Puffs to the assortment, and we're actively discussing ways to grow the partnership after such an exciting launch.
Speaker Change: We launched four SKUs in nearly 8,711 stores in June. Sales continue performing, highlighting our success in the convenience store space.
Speaker Change: Due to our exceptional performance in the space, we're launching an additional 1,500 circle caves in September.
Speaker Change: Other exciting retail opportunities include international markets, international duty free shops, and thousands of additional fee store door launches in October and November.
Speaker Change: As we look to the coming quarters, we continue to be humbled by the consumer's response to our product and positive reception to our treats on social media. This consumer support has translated to strong organic sales velocity.
Speaker Change: To further support this demand, develop this category, and cement our position as the category maker and leader, we hired FinPartners, an integrated marketing agency that is helping us develop a comprehensive marketing strategy.
Speaker Change: Our focus to date has been on solidifying our advantage in the freeze-dried candy space through building a strong brand.
Speaker Change: scaling our production and distribution capabilities without compromising our stringent food safety and quality standards and diversifying our distribution strategy across all channels.
Speaker Change: We deliberately developed this economic vote prior to making any significant investment.
Speaker Change: Now, with our robust operational foundation in place and primed for further growth, we are eager to fortify these barriers to entry even further.
Speaker Change: In addition to bringing our two candy making capabilities in-house, our engineers have spent the last four months designing and developing proprietary packaging machines
Speaker Change: specifically to automate our packaging processes.
Speaker Change: Unlike traditional automated machinery currently used in the market, our innovative systems maintain the same high quality as our hand packing process, ensuring no compromise in our product quality.
Speaker Change: We believe that the combination of our freeze drying and manufacturing expertise, along with candy made right here in the USA, will significantly widen our competitive advantage in this disruptive, fast-growing segment of the market.
Speaker Change: These investments not only give us greater control over food safety and quality, but also allow us to optimize ingredient formulations and drive our innovation pipeline.
Speaker Change: Ultimately, this enhances the consumer experience with our product and solidifies our competitive advantage.
Speaker Change: In fact, just last week, a buyer from one of America's leading retailers asked us, so why choose so good?
Speaker Change: What resonated the most with the buyer was the fact that we are expert manufacturers.
Speaker Change: As this market evolves and imitators emerge, our manufacturing prowess and expertise in freeze drying and food manufacturing are evident in the superior quality of our products.
Speaker Change: And when you're dealing with some of the biggest retailers in the world, these qualities truly matter.
Speaker Change: So as we reach the halfway mark of 2024 with momentum that we expect to continue and accelerate in the fourth quarter,
Speaker Change: This ongoing growth will be driven by our innovative product portfolio, increasing production capacity, enhanced manufacturing capabilities, and our growing customer base.
Speaker Change: We look forward to sharing more exciting updates over the coming quarters and thank you very much for your continued support. Operator will now open the call for Q&A.
Speaker Change: Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. If you have a question or a comment at this time, please press star 11 on your telephone. If your question has been answered, you wish to move yourself from the queue, please press star 11 again. We'll pause for a moment while we compile our Q&A roster.
Speaker Change: Unknown Executive, Jackie Keshner, Brendon Fischer
Speaker Change: Our first question comes from George Kelly with Roth Capital Partners. Your line is open.
Speaker Change: Thanks for watching!
George Kelly: Hey everybody, thanks for taking my questions.
Brendon Fischer: morning, Brendon.
George Kelly: So maybe to start, I was hoping for some more detail just regarding the weather related and seasonal slowdown that you explained.
Speaker Change: in the press release and your remarks.
Speaker Change: So curious, I guess the question, a couple of questions on that topic. When did you start seeing a slowdown? Has it stabilized at all?
Speaker Change: in Q3. And is there any other kind of quantification or added context just to get a better sense of the sort of level of slowdown that you've seen? I don't know if you could give your weekly sales numbers for certain periods or anything else just to give more context.
Speaker Change: Yeah, hi George, good morning. So we started seeing the sales
Speaker Change: slowdown in July and by sales slowdown. We had two trucks that we shipped out
Speaker Change: And if you guys all remember, you know, record setting heats across the country. During those two shipments, we started seeing melting of the product.
Speaker Change: So, you know, within about 48 hours, which is about how long the truck route was, particularly our gummy product, the worms and the bears had just clumped together within the bag. And so
Speaker Change: We returned, obviously, we replaced all of that product and started sending products via refrigerated trailers. Now the issue that we ran into is
Speaker Change: Awesome, you know, easy solution. You start shipping with refrigerated trailers, you control the temperature in transit, problem solved.
Speaker Change: But what we found is even though we were prepared to do that, a lot of our retail partners don't have either temperature controlled warehouses. So they were running into that same issue within their warehousing.
Speaker Change: or from their distribution centers to the stores, they weren't able to have refrigerated trailers do that leg of the shipment.
Speaker Change: And so we decided to pause.
Speaker Change: All shipping. We spoke with our retailers. They felt that they had sufficient in stock.
Speaker Change: to take us through July, August.
Speaker Change: and not affect in-store velocities. And so we anticipate that sales will start, and by sales I mean shipments, right? Our shipments to our retailers, because we're not seeing an impact in in-store velocities.
Speaker Change: We'll start again in about two weeks as temperatures begin to come back down.
Speaker Change: Now, because of this lesson learned, you know, as you guys all know, this is our first full year in freeze drying. We're already actively working on how to address this on a go forward basis.
Speaker Change: So when this hits next year, because we do expect this to be an annual seasonal event.
Speaker Change: We will have distributors in place that have refrigerated warehousing and transportation available so that this doesn't occur again.
Speaker Change: As for weekly sales, George, you know we don't provide guidance or ongoing
George Kelly: information. So we don't have that information for you now. But we're looking for a really strong fourth quarter as we rebound as customers begin to restock what what they work through in their existing inventory.
George Kelly: Okay, that's really helpful context.
Speaker Change: And then the second issue on the slowdown, though, I thought you had talked about maybe slower velocities, just due to more seasonal trends, you know, people out of school and vacations and all that stuff. So could you maybe explain that? Because just based on the answer to the prior question, it seems like you're still comfortable with the velocities you're seeing. So maybe just high level, like, what are you seeing with respect to velocity at some of these new retail?
Speaker Change: Partnerships, and any surprises, I guess, that you've observed.
Speaker Change: Yeah, so, you know, outside of the weather temperature, there haven't been huge surprises. There was a slight slowdown and, you know, we're talking about probably maybe two less units per store per week per store.
Speaker Change: per store, you know, like let's say if we're going to a five below or some of the other customers that we're talking about. So not a substantial, significant slowdown, but definitely slight slowdowns in velocity on shelf.
Speaker Change: Now, having said that, we had incredibly successful launches during the third quarter.
Speaker Change: We launched with H-E-B, with Albertsons, with Kroger, they took full displays and those launches just exceeded expectations and outperformed what we anticipated and what the retail buyers anticipated.
Speaker Change: So, from an on-shelf, you know, getting off-shelf once we're in-store.
Speaker Change: There are no surprises and we're continuing to see very strong demand that we anticipate is going to continue to grow as, you know, people go back to regular schedules, schools back in session, and, you know, fourth quarter, we're incredibly excited. Halloween's coming. It Christmas is coming, you know, we're launching skews that we feel are going to really cater to.
Ted Dose: to those.
Speaker Change: timings and events. I am looking forward to and I hope that I see our new little mini bags in every trick-or-treat basket in the U.S. this coming Halloween. So, you know, we're really excited about the demand that we see on a go-forward basis.
Speaker Change: That's great. And then last question for me. You explained the
Speaker Change: continued internalization or I guess optimization of your input.
Speaker Change: Candy.
Speaker Change: And so I'm curious, could you walk through again the timing on your
Speaker Change: process there. I think it has to do with just the gummy stuff that's still the biggest sort of branded input that you're utilizing. When do you expect that to happen and how significant, upon conclusion, maybe next year, how significant could the gross margin savings be on that?
Speaker Change: Yeah, so Eric, on that, most of the candy that we transferred, we moved away from the higher cost brand of candy really in this quarter. So there's not a lot of the higher cost brand candy that we're still using. So most of that impact
Speaker Change: is going to be self, was self in this quarter, which is a very rapid pace, faster than I thought. I always underestimate how quickly Ira and Claudia can move when they put their minds to things.
Speaker Change: So we got most of that Impact in this quarter. There may be some marginal benefits in the next quarter But I would say most of that raw material sourcing benefit is coming through right now
Speaker Change: Okay, thank you.
Speaker Change: Again, ladies and gentlemen, if you have a question or comment at this time, please press star 11 on your telephone. One moment for our next question.
Speaker Change: Our next question comes from Eric Desleries with Craig Hallam Capital Group. Your line is open.
Eric Desleries: Great, thank you for taking my questions and congrats on a strong quarter here.
Speaker Change: Thank you.
Eric Desleries: My first question is on the seasonal trends, wondering what you are seeing or hearing from from the sort of competitive landscape? I mean, is this something that you this sort of extreme heat? Is this something that you see as impacting sort of the whole category? Is this something more, you know, almost Texas?
Speaker Change: I'm just kind of wondering if you could comment on any competitive dynamics as this extreme heat is sort of impacting the category.
Speaker Change: Thank you for watching.
Speaker Change: We're definitely hearing across the the board that the extreme heat and the seasonality of You know summer is affecting the candy category as a whole You know recent Nielsen data shows that the candy categories down, you know a little under 8% year-over-year So definitely feeling it across the board
Speaker Change: and, you know,
Speaker Change: Eric, you know us well. One of the things that we're always going to focus on is our long-term strategies.
Eric Desleries: The quality of our product.
Eric Desleries: and that consumer experience and so.
Eric Desleries: Even though we could have continued shipping trailers to stores and not all products would have been bad.
Eric Desleries: We decided very strategically not to do that.
Eric Desleries: regardless of what other competitors do or do not do, because, you know.
Eric Desleries: we're in this for the long term. You know, we want to be the dominant player for years to come. And to do that, you have to have the best product, best quality, best service for your customers.
Eric Desleries: and so that's why we decided to pause the shipments regardless of what other competitors were doing or not.
Eric Desleries: And that was very much a, you know, us wide.
Eric Desleries: slow down in the candy category, not specific.
Eric Desleries: to Dallas.
Speaker Change: And, you know, the other thing we learned is people are taking beach vacations and, you know, that they're buying fruits and yogurt instead of candy for two months while, while they try to hit the
Speaker Change: the beaches. So, you know, we see a strong resurgence coming back in the fourth quarter as a lot of those pieces, you know, fall off the board.
Speaker Change: All right, that's helpful. I appreciate the color there. On the gross margin side, obviously very, very strong this quarter.
Speaker Change: Brendon, you were mentioning, as you move into the new Dallas facility, obviously, there's some increased rent expense that'll hit COGS. And, you know, I think you.
Speaker Change: sort of characterize it as a short term headwind, but something that, you know, could lead to a long term margin expansion.
Speaker Change: I'm
Speaker Change: sort of weighing that plus the commentary on utilizing more refrigerated trailers, and I'm guessing that's going to sort of increase cogs just in and of itself. So to the extent that you have visibility here, I'm just wondering,
Speaker Change: sort of how we should think about the long-term gross margin potential as it relates to this current Q2 kind of mid to high 50s. Do you see long-term expansion from here or is it, you know, more so from that kind of 40% level as we look out long-term? Thanks.
Speaker Change: Yeah, so in general kind of giving the long-term expectations is really difficult to say just because we have so many moving parts We're managing. I mean if you just look at our at the business level When you as a company, we're still in our infancy. We're dealing with rapidly evolving customer base sales mix We have new products coming online new product sizes
Speaker Change: We're adjusting the raw material sourcing, and we have the new facility as well as automated packaging and all the caning making, so we're going to have a lot of moving parts.
Speaker Change: to the margin story in the next couple of quarters. So it's really tough to say where we're gonna fall out on that.
Speaker Change: Now, as far as the current quarter, you know,
Speaker Change: We got real big benefits from three areas. One was price mix. We had a very favorable price mix during the quarter
Speaker Change: and we also had the lower raw material costs from moving away from the higher branded products. And we also got some increased operational efficiencies, primarily in labor utilization and overhead utilization.
Speaker Change: Now, if we go through those going forward, we do expect to see a near-term pullback off of the number we delivered in Q2. And that's going to be driven by the fact that on price mix, we're really comfortable with our pricing strategy right now.
Speaker Change: But we do have variability related to the sales mix that's going to be in there Quarter to quarter so that might impact it a little bit going forward
Speaker Change: In addition, we're also going to be seeing probably an increase in slotting fees, marketing promotion fees, which tend to net out against pricing, so that may have an impact on the price mix side of the business.
Speaker Change: On the raw material costs, you know, as I said in the earlier answer to George's question,
Speaker Change: That's mostly priced in and we suspect that to be sustainable. Now as we do stuff like in-house canning production there may be changes there but for the most part the raw material costs benefit. We'll see maybe a little bit more benefit in the future but not most of that got priced in this quarter.
Speaker Change: on the operational efficiencies, you know, we're going to continue to get efficient.
Speaker Change: But we will probably see a pullback in the overhead efficiencies that we achieved this quarter and really what that was driven by.
Speaker Change: We signed the new facility later than we expected during the quarter. So we really had to be at full capacity on our prior warehouse space. We're basically operating at 110% on that space.
Speaker Change: You know, it's great for the bottom line, but it's not a great place to work out on an everyday basis So as we move into that new facility, you know, we're going to have the increased rent from that I am probably a pullback in some of the overhead efficiencies we achieved this quarter
Speaker Change: So again, it's tough to give you an exact range at this point, but I do expect some pullback off of the Q2 levels.
Speaker Change: Yeah, no, that all makes sense to me.
Speaker Change: Last question for me here on the on the chew candies.
Speaker Change: Just wondering if you could expand on that a bit. I guess just to clarify, are these still
Speaker Change: Freeze-dried products, you know, should we think of them as, I guess, almost like multi-textured freeze-dried candies or
Speaker Change: you know slightly less less crunchy freeze-dried candies or is this kind of a new product category all together just kind of wondering if you could help us understand that a bit more.
Speaker Change: Yeah, no, definitely. You know, Eric, we've always believed in vertically integrating all of our production capacity, you know, as we're looking around really controlling our supply chain, our quality.
Speaker Change: And, you know, our product mix is incredibly important. And so
Speaker Change: Sweet Bites, Sour Bites.
Speaker Change: Sweet Squares, you know, those staples to our current assortment are what we're going to be bringing in house.
Speaker Change: And we really wanted to do that in order to increase the quality of the product. So they're going to be even crunchier, they're going to be more flavorful, they're going to, you know, have even more of that freeze dried impact to the consumer.
Speaker Change: It's also really going to help us with innovation. One of the things that we're continually...
Speaker Change: Hearing from our retail partners and our consumers is that they want more. They want more innovation. They want Greater concentration and flavor. So by bringing this in-house, we're going to be able to give them What they're asking for
Speaker Change: Yeah, just to step that out a little bit, Eric, just saying that just in how we refer to certain product lines, choose for the most part, our rainbow bites are the sweet bites, the sour bites, those type of products. And then we have gummy products. So that's also just a nomenclature that we use internally.
Speaker Change: Choose versus Gumby. So they're not new products in the sense of a category
Speaker Change: Got it. Got it. Yeah, that's very helpful. I guess we could almost think of this as sort of more improvement on the raw materials costs for these specific SKUs. Is that kind of the right way to think about it? That is the correct way to think about it.
Speaker Change: Awesome. All right. Thank you for taking my questions.
Eric Desleries: Thanks, Eric.
Speaker Change: I'm not showing any further questions at this time. I'd like to turn the call back over to Claudia for any closing remarks.
Claudia Goldfarb: First of all, everyone, I'd just like to continue.
Claudia Goldfarb: Thank you for your continued support. We have had, you know, a record year we're continuing to grow and we're incredibly excited as to where so good is headed. And we couldn't have done it without all of your support. So thank you. Have a wonderful day and we are incredibly excited.
Claudia Goldfarb: to keep you updated in the quarters to come.
Speaker Change: Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. This concludes today's presentation. You may now disconnect and have a wonderful day.
Speaker Change: Let us know in the comment section below.