Q3 2024 Laird Superfood Inc Earnings Call
Please and gentlemen, please remain holding. Your conference call will begin shortly. Again, please remain holding. Your conference call will begin shortly.
Sierra: Hello everyone. Thank you for attending today's layered Superfood Thurk Quarter 2020 for financial results call. My name is Sierra and I'll be your moderator for today. All lines of your muted until the QU and A-Smec is in the call and I'll now return the call over to Trevor Rousseau with the company. Please go ahead.
The End
Trevor Rousseau: Thank you, and good afternoon.
Speaker Change: Welcome to Layers' Secretary 3rd quarter, 2024 Irina's Conference Colin Webcast.
Speaker Change: On today's call, our Jason Vieth, very super-dude to President and Chief Executive Officer and Anya Hamill, our Chief Financial Officer.
by now, I'm sure one should have access to the company's second quarter earnings release, which is filed today at the Marketplace.
Speaker Change: In available on the Investual Relations section, we're at the 3th website at www.vatre3.com
Before we begin, please note that during this call, the management may make forward-looking statements within the context of federal security for us.
These statements are based on management, current expectations, and involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materialistic risks.
Speaker Change: Please refer to today's press release in other findings at the SEC or decode discussion of these risks and uncertainties.
Speaker Change: With that, I'll turn it off for Jason.
Jason: Thank you, Trevor. Good afternoon. As usual, I want to again by thanking all of our investors that continue to follow and support their superfood. And welcome all of you that are just joining the journey.
Jason: Today I am once again thrilled to be able to share outstanding results for our large superfood business.
Jason: In the third quarter, we grew net sales by impressive 28%. Marking the third straight quarter with strong double digit net sales growth.
Jason: This also marks another quarter where we delivered solid fail games across both our e-commerce and our wholesale channels and where we are growing our top line while also holding or even increasing our send deficiencies across both trade promotional and marketing activities.
Jason: Q3 Net Sales Growth was once again led by our e-commerce business, which grew by an outstanding 42% year over year.
Jason: Hamill's once again led the way, increasing by more than 132 percent. Driven by superior commercial execution and bolstered by stronger inventory positions in 2024 and a strong prime day execution.
Jason: Our DTC platform also grew by 10%, even while up against a very challenging lab given the level of promotional productivity that we executed a year ago.
Jason: virtually all of our DTC internal metrics for flashing green again in Q3 with subscription revenue of by 19% average order size of by 8%
Jason: and NetSale for Me Mal increasing by 38% in the quarter.
Jason: Similarly, our sales on Amazon were driven by strong increases in subscription sales, new customer acquisition and gains in winning the 5-ox for our core products.
Jason: and also please report that next fail from our wholesale business, increasing Q3 by nearly 13% year over year.
Jason: in the Natural Channel as measured by Spings.
Jason: Our growth rate for the 12 weeks ending October 6, 2024 was 27%.
Jason: Driven by double-digit top-line growth in all of the products that we measure, including powder creamers, liquid creamers, coffee, and instant lattice. This growth was driven by a nearly equal split of distribution gains and increases in our sales velocity.
Jason: In New Low, we grew even faster, up by 40% in the same 12 week period, ending October 6, 2024.
Jason: and while we remain strategically cautious in expanding to the conventional grocery channel, I'm going to tell you that you'll soon be able to find more of our products in new stores in several retailers across the country, including Kruger, Alvarcant's Safeway, Wagman and more.
Jason: Moving into operations, our supply chain team continues to do a solid job of supporting our growing business.
Jason: During Q3, we expanded our gross margin to 43%, which represents a 12-point increase versus the third quarter of 2023, and marks the fourth straight quarter that we have achieved at least a 40% gross margin.
Jason: This improvement was driven in large part by the strategic sourcing of our top ingredients, where we will continue to focus during 2025.
Jason: Our biggest operational challenge in the third quarter, and frankly, throughout 2024, has been in keeping product on retailers' shelves and available to our e-commerce consumers.
Jason: Because we have consistently exceeded our growth targets during the last few quarters, our supply chain has been in a perpetual chase throughout the year.
Jason: The team has done an admirable job of juggling ingredient supply and manufacturing availability, essentially playing a game of whack-a-mole as they've moved from issue to issue.
Jason: And while there have been some minor out of stock during 2024, we remain in a strong inventory position and expect to be back fully in stock for the important Black Friday events and holiday buying season.
Jason: I also want to share some of the progress that we have been making in building a more environmentally sustainable business.
Jason: During the past year, we have been able to introduce 30% or more post-consumer recycled material into all of our gut-seeded creamer pouches, as well as our nutrition and protein bars.
Jason: Impressively, we have done this without any significant incremental cost to our business.
Jason: This is a meaningful ambition for our team and to our consumers and we're in the process of outlining additional goals and creating a multi-year sustainability program.
Jason: Many of you were with us during the turnaround that we executed over the past couple of years. And I'm pleased to be able to assert that we are now solidly into the transformation of Laird's Superfood into a high growth premium branded business with strong gross margins.
Jason: Thus far in 2024, our net sales have grown by nearly 27%.
Jason: At the same time, we've been able to increase our gross margin by 15.3 points, going from 26.4% gross margin to 41.7%, which is well ahead of our financial goal to maintain gross margin in the high 30s.
Jason: Our net loss for the three quarters of this year has been shaved to less than $1.5 million, which is nearly a $9 million improvement versus the same time period last year.
Jason: And during the last 12 months, our cash balance actually increased by $776,000 from $7.4 million to more than $8.2 million as of September 30, 2024.
Jason: And while Q3 and the entire 2024 financial performance has been a tremendous improvement versus our historical performance at Laird's Superfood, we're even more excited about the future opportunities for our brand and business.
Jason: As we have shared before, we still have a tremendous amount of white space to expand distribution and drive sales velocity growth within the natural channel, and we have not really even begun to expand into the conventional grocery channel or into the massive on-premise channel for food consumption.
Jason: We remain confident that we can continue to build our e-commerce business behind relevant and engaging content from our founders and other influencers within health, wellness, nutrition, and fitness.
Jason: And as consumers increasingly seek out healthier and more natural foods, our Laird Superfood portfolio is perfectly positioned to fuel them in their journey.
Jason: With that, I will now turn it over to Anya to discuss our third quarter results in more detail.
Anya Hamill: Thank you.
Anya Hamill: Thank you, Jason, and good afternoon, everyone.
Anya Hamill: As Jason noted, in the third quarter, we have continued to make progress, executing this strategy we articulated earlier in the year.
Anya Hamill: which is to return the business to growth while improving profitability. I am pleased to share with you that our third quarter results were strong on every key metric, building on the first half of the year momentum and delivering significant improvements versus the same period prior year.
Anya Hamill: Net sales grew 28% to a record $11.8 million compared to $9.2 million in the prior year period and were up by $1.8 million sequentially versus the second quarter of 2024.
Anya Hamill: Our e-commerce channel led the company's growth, increasing by 42% year-over-year and accounting for 58% of our total net sales.
Anya Hamill: Sales on the Amazon platform had by far the best quarter in the company's history, delivering an impressive 133% growth, driven by outstanding commercial execution and a better in-stock inventory position.
Anya Hamill: Wholesale net sales increased by 13% year-over-year and contributed 42% of total net sales.
Anya Hamill: As well as more efficient promotional spend. This was partially offset by timing of club channel orders.
Anya Hamill: Cross margin for the third quarter came in at 43%, reaching a new high and extending 12 points versus last year.
Anya Hamill: This margin extension was driven by supply chain cost savings initiatives.
Anya Hamill: Specifically, from a strategic shift to direct procurement of key raw materials, settlement with a supplier to recover costs previously incurred in connection with the quality event experienced in 2023, as well as reduction in inefficient trade promotion spend.
Anya Hamill: I am pleased to highlight that this is the fourth consecutive quarter where we have achieved gross margins at or above the 40% threshold. These results further support our expectations for sustainably achieving gross margins in at least the high 30s in the coming quarters.
Anya Hamill: Operating expenses decreased 0.3 million in the third quarter compared to the third quarter last year, driven by lower sales and marketing costs as we improve the efficiency of our marketing programs.
Anya Hamill: This was in part offset by higher general and administrative expenses, driven by higher professional fees and stock-based compensation, which is a non-cash expense.
Anya Hamill: Operating expenses as a percentage of net sales were lower by 16 points compared to the prior year quarter as we focus on ongoing expense management in order to improve our bottom line.
Anya Hamill: Net loss for the third quarter was $0.2 million, which is $2.5 million better than during the prior year period.
Anya Hamill: Turning to our balance sheet, we ended the quarter with $8.2 million in cash.
Anya Hamill: And I am particularly pleased to report that for the second quarter in a row, we have delivered a positive quarterly cash flow, which was $374,000 in Q3 and totaled $495,000 for the first nine months of the year.
Anya Hamill: reflecting our improved performance and disciplined management of our working capital, which decreased year-over-year excluding cash while driving year-to-date revenue growth of 27%.
Anya Hamill: We also have no debt outstanding and no expected need to draw on our line of credit.
Anya Hamill: We continue to project that we have enough cash to fund our operations as we grow our business and make operating improvements that drive us towards breakeven and profitability.
Anya Hamill: Overall, we feel confident about the remainder of 2024. We expect continued growth in our core business segments, as we remain focused on executing our strategic priorities.
Anya Hamill: As such, we're increasing our full year guidance on both net sales and gross margin. We now expect net sales to be in the range of 43 to 44 million for the full year 2024, which represents 26 to 29% growth versus prior year.
Anya Hamill: And gross margin is expected to expand to approximately 41 to 42%, representing 11 to 12 point improvement versus 2023.
Anya Hamill: Looking ahead to 2025, we made a decision to strategically focus on growth, and in doing so, we expect to achieve 20-25% top-line growth and to manage our P&L to positive cash flow and EBITDA.
Speaker Change: And now I will turn the discussion back over to Jason for any closing remarks.
Jason Vieth: Thank you Anya, and thank you once again to all of you who are supporting our journey at Laird's Superfood.
Anya Hamill: Our last four quarters demonstrate an incredible turnaround in our business.
Anya Hamill: One where we not only have shored up our finances, but have also returned our business to best-in-class growth rates in the industry.
Anya Hamill: Operator, this concludes our prepared remarks and we are now ready to open the call to questions.
Speaker Change: Thank you.
Speaker Change: Do we not begin the Q&A session?
Speaker Change: If you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad.
Anya Hamill: If you would like to remove that question, press star followed by two.
Anya Hamill: And if you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before asking your question.
Anya Hamill: Our first question today comes from Alex Furman with Craig Howell. Your line is now open.
Alex Furman: It's been more driven by by the online business. Curious, you know, how you get to that 2025% growth next year, if that maybe looks a little bit different.
Alex Furman: Hey Alex, how are you doing? It's good to hear you here again today. Good, good, Jason. Good to hear from you as well.
Alex Furman: Yeah, thank you.
Alex Furman: It's a great question and one that we've been pressing the team on. The reality
Alex Furman: on this, Alex, is we had a great year this year.
Alex Furman: in the online business, the e-com business, a bit unexpectedly. You know, we had pulled a lot of spend out and we knew that we were getting the better marketing tactics, but we were really pleasantly surprised with the performance this year. And, you know, the great thing about it is we've got quite a number of
Anya Hamill: of our purchases to repeat purchasers and our repeat purchasers to subscribers. And as a result, we have very sticky revenue to go into next year.
Anya Hamill: And so we still feel really great about our ability to grow DTC and
Anya Hamill: And at the same time, Amazon has been on fire, as you saw. And we know that we still have a lot of latent growth in Amazon, just executing the playbook that we've been running. So we think that that e-com business is going to continue to do really well.
Anya Hamill: Probably though we would expect even more growth next year as we look at the wholesale business.
Anya Hamill: We did pick up a number of accounts, as I just mentioned, and, you know, we're being very strategic and selective with the retailers that we're working with. I think I had mentioned previously that we've been entering in with Target into a couple of
Anya Hamill: categories and the performance looks good there. And same thing with these other recaps that I mentioned, but the reality behind that too is
Anya Hamill: Our natural channel sales have been on fire, and it's been a combination of additional distribution, including a lot that we've gained this year, as well as velocity gains, and fairly equal, as I mentioned, the velocity and the distribution gains that we've had this year.
Anya Hamill: Speaker 1 So.
Anya Hamill: It's really a case where everything's kind of hitting at the same point. And that's, or sorry, hitting, I'm sorry, that everything is really kind of hitting at the same time.
Anya Hamill: and that's the point that Anya was making with regards to next year and how to think about our business.
Anya Hamill: We're going to invest into growth. We have a lot of opportunities in front of us right now with consumers online as well as retailers and their consumers and guests.
Anya Hamill: at their, you know, where they're shopping out in physical stores.
Anya Hamill: We want to make sure that we have sharp prices on promotion with extra display, as much as we can, and that we're marketing behind the brand and really getting to new consumers, but also leveraging that database, the very strong database that we have.
Anya Hamill: We have an incredible database with, as we've mentioned, over half a million consumers that are very loyal to our brand. And we have the ability to launch new products into those channels. So you're going to see strong growth across
Anya Hamill: All of these channels next year, Alex, and you're going to see it come across, frankly, across
Anya Hamill: All of our categories. We are
Anya Hamill: Winning in all of our categories. When I go look at the spins report, everything is green right now. Everything is lighting up green and it's been that way this year. And it's the same thing on the e-com platforms of Amazon and DTC. So we're going to just
Anya Hamill: We're going to use 25 to just reinvest and grow and build this business, you know, very carefully. So, you know, as you know, we've been very good stewards.
Anya Hamill: with Marketing Dollars, and we really watch the ROAD and ROIs very carefully, but we're in a position right now where we can spend effectively, and so we're going to do that, and you're going to see really great growth across all these channels as we go forward in our opinion.
Speaker Change: That's really helpful, Jason. Thank you. And then, you know, if I could just follow up as you, you know, think about your expansion into more mainstream grocery and big box type retailers, as well as the success you're having in your more long standing natural food partners, you know, which, which products have have those two categories of retailers really been gravitating as you move towards, you know, some of these more mainstream, you know, bigger retailers? Are they they opting for your core?
Anya Hamill: Powder Creamer SKUs or just any color on which products have been resonating as you open more doors would be helpful.
Jason Vieth: Yeah, you know, it's our legacy is the powder creamers, and we continue to grow those and they continue to do really well.
Jason Vieth: But that's a space, you know, that dry shelf is a space that'll never be as productive as the liquid creamers. And so from a sales velocity per point of distribution, the liquid creamers are markedly stronger, but we're doing well in both of those. You know, when we go measure ourselves and analyze.
Jason Vieth: what we call a quintile performance assessment, where we go look at all the products that are on shelf.
Jason Vieth: and break it into five quintiles and look at where we stand. We're typically always in that top quintile or somewhere between Q1, Q2, or maybe into Q3. A couple of stragglers, but by and large,
Jason Vieth: We're at the top of these performance metrics that we look at.
Jason Vieth: So we look really good in both of those, you know, that the powder creamers had a rough year, two years ago.
Jason Vieth: But they've had a really good year this year, and we've seen nice distribution growth as well as velocity growth.
Jason Vieth: And we're flipping that liquid creamer over to a large size, which is going to be a 50% upsizing, a 50% uppricing.
Jason Vieth: There's a little bit more value to the consumer, but really what it is, it's just a convenience play to give them more creamer so they don't have to
Jason Vieth: buy as often and run out at home, and there's incremental consumption whenever you do that. So we're really excited about liquid creamers. We're going to next year we've had some great distribution wins on that also. So both of those categories, Alex, look great and then
Jason Vieth: The coffee and the instant latte products have just been on fire this year. They've driven a lot of our growth
Jason Vieth: on cutting grocery. They're doing great online. And so we're going to continue, you know, we're launching new SKUs in both of those new items in both of those categories. And we're seeing a lot of success. We launched a protein creamer.
Jason Vieth: that we've sold out of a couple of times this year and we just blew past.
Jason Vieth: Our expectations and are now running bigger batches off of that.
Jason Vieth: We have a new maca creamer that's coming out in the, I'm sorry, maca instant latte, rather, that's coming out in that instant latte space. And then we've launched a couple of new coffee products and are continuing to bring more functionality, specifically through the adaptogenic functional mushrooms.
Jason Vieth: and retailers and consumers are really gravitating to those skews. So I think those are the four product areas that you're going to see really exploding as we go into next year, in addition to Greens, which has been on fire all year for us.
Speaker Change: That's really helpful, Jason. Thanks very much.
Jason Vieth: You bet, Alex.
Speaker Change: Our next question comes from J.P. Woolman with Frost Capital Partners. Your line is now open.
Speaker Change: Transcription by CastingWords
J.P. Woolman: Hi Anya, hi Jason, thanks for taking the question. If I could just start maybe kind of touching in on growth a little bit more, and I want to simply go to kind of the discounts and promotional activity. You know, it sounds like it.
J.P. Woolman: It sounds like it's going to be kind of a continued focus next year with with the prepared remark about in
J.P. Woolman: vesting some of that margin. And so I was hoping you could kind of just talk about, you know, where you're seeing the most success, what kind of promotions you are finding really resonate, and just kind of how you're thinking about next year in terms of discounting and promotional activity. Unknown Speaker
Speaker Change: Yeah. Hey, JP. Thanks for that question. And, and I'll jump in and then Anya, if you want to.
J.P. Woolman: Give your vocal cords a workout, you can jump in as well.
J.P. Woolman: is so
Speaker Change: It's really interesting, JP. A year ago, you probably recall, we overspent on the trade line and we really invested too much into pricing.
J.P. Woolman: we felt the consumer was a little bit shaky last year, and we were trying to entice them to purchases, especially first-time consumers and their purchases. And what we found is we gave too much away. And in doing that, we were really giving away our brand equity as well. So we made a strategic pivot at the end of last year, really in Q4 that we've carried forward this year to do a lot less pricing promotion.
J.P. Woolman: And it's been very effective. As you can see from the net sales increases that we've had this year, selling at full price has worked out a lot better for us. And what that's done is it's really let us keep up the premium cachet of the brand. We heard from our consumers specifically that we are a premium brand and they're surprised to see us on sale as often as we were last year. What we do now is we run fewer deeper sales online.
J.P. Woolman: So we leverage Amazon Prime Days.
J.P. Woolman: We leverage Black Friday internally on DTC and then we have one other big sale on the DTC business.
J.P. Woolman: And then by and large, we really don't run a lot of promotions.
J.P. Woolman: Steve Rousseau, Steven Richie, Jason Vieth, Anya Hamill, Unknown Executive
J.P. Woolman: are giving them the functionality of the food and they're willing to pay for it at the price that it's at without the need for promotion. So we've really backed away from that pricing promotion and that extends into the grocery as well.
J.P. Woolman: We pulled back.
Speaker Change: Cash on you, would we pull back probably 10 points or so of trade over the course of the year? 11. 11 points, yeah. Yeah, and so, you know, that's really a very...
J.P. Woolman: on quality promotion. So we call quality merchant. And that's a function of getting a secondary display or getting into the circulars at grocers and in what's called feature and display. And so that's really where you'll see us focusing next year. We have a couple of big planned
J.P. Woolman: or committed promotions will pick up that secondary display. And that's just a tremendous way to introduce your products to a lot of new consumers in a tight timeframe. And so that's really going to be where our focus is next year. But I would just think about it as more of the same in terms of
J.P. Woolman: The Pricing Promotion that we're going to do. There will be more concerted marketing efforts to really build the brand and drive awareness and pick up more consumers.
J.P. Woolman: Found a number of marketing tactics that have worked really well over the last 12 months.
J.P. Woolman: especially those that leverage our founders and share the functionality of the food and general health wellness.
J.P. Woolman: Fitness and Nutrition Tips and so across the various social media platforms.
Speaker Change: Great, that's very helpful. Um, and then maybe just, you know, I think Jason, you actually kind of touched on it a little bit there, but if we just kind of step out and think about the customer base now, you know, how are you guys thinking about.
J.P. Woolman: the customer, and kind of whether you've extended whether you've made that kind of next jump into
J.P. Woolman: sort of a new set of customers, maybe a little bit beyond some of the very strict health and wellness focused customers, like, could you just kind of give us, you know, with another year of projected strong growth, like,
J.P. Woolman: Have you made that kind of next jump into a new customer set or how are you thinking about where you kind of are versus a year ago there?
Speaker Change: Yeah, well, that's a great question. And that's one that, you know, the smaller company without as much data as some of us are used to having, it's one that we extrapolate some of the data against quite often. So, so look, I'll tell you, when I first got here a couple of years ago, we were largely really what we had our consumer set was,
J.P. Woolman: and I think of this in kind of, you know, an expanding circle diagram. So at the core, we really were what we had were Laird and Gabby's friends and family, and we've been launched.
J.P. Woolman: Essentially into groups that Laird and Gabby knew, whether through Instagram or just leverage, you know, in some of the followership we were able to establish there off of their own accounts.
J.P. Woolman: or if it was just leveraging Laird and Gabby and who they were to people. So, you know, up and down the West Coast, in the surfer community, and then into some of the health and wellness circles. That's really who our consumer was at that point, with one exception. The one exception was we had done
J.P. Woolman: And this was a few years ago, but we had done some executions.
J.P. Woolman: specifically with some influencer shoppers that would go up and down the aisles and throw product in. And what we found is that was great for one-time hits whenever you launch it, but it was extremely expensive and those weren't the right consumers. So those folks largely fell away. And ultimately, we were left with Laird and Gabby's friends and followers.
J.P. Woolman: In that next 18 months or so, when I got here, we really focused on getting to the health and wellness diehards.
J.P. Woolman: specifically.
J.P. Woolman: kind of think about it in that West Coast area, some of the enclaves, health and wellness enclaves like Colorado, parts of Texas, you know, Austin, Dallas, specifically, Minneapolis, Chicago, you have some some folks that are really focused on health and wellness. And we really
J.P. Woolman: I would say targeted that core and didn't really geographically make it to the East Coast. And there are a lot of reasons for that, including just a little bit of a lower Q score or awareness score of Laird and Gabby, the Hamiltons.
J.P. Woolman: And in the last year, I would tell you,
J.P. Woolman: Pushed that next in that next concentric circle where
J.P. Woolman: Now we're pushing out from the diehard, what I call the health and wellness diehards, into the kind of health and wellness.
J.P. Woolman: aware. You know, people that know they need to eat better, that are hearing about functional foods, that are trying new foods. And that's why we're so careful, you know, as we're spending our marketing dollars and watching our ROAS, we're being very careful because once you start moving to a group that doesn't know you as well or isn't as aligned to those interests,
J.P. Woolman: you can start spending very inefficiently. And that's where I'd say we've done in our marketing team has done just an incredible job of
J.P. Woolman: holding on to those returns and carefully putting their toes into
J.P. Woolman: the pools of a couple of people. And we've had very, I'd say in the last year to your question specifically, we've had really great success in finding and tapping into new consumer sets. And so we're watching our geography expand, we're watching our consumer set expand. And now, because of the push into the conventional channel,
J.P. Woolman: I think we're finding now we're going to find another set of consumers altogether. So yes, the answer is yes, we are expanding, but we are we're certainly doing it with modest spend and very carefully.
Speaker Change: Great, yeah, certainly a high-level, huge question there.
Speaker Change: If I could sneak just one last one in, I just want to maybe talk.
Speaker Change: You know, I think this goes a little bit to sort of
Speaker Change: Maybe the out of stocks or
Speaker Change: the inventory balance and you guys have done a great job
Speaker Change: tight operation there. And I want to just kind of get a sense of how you're thinking about cash and your current liquidity position, just given sort of this, this return to growth. And just want to know, you know, what are your thoughts on that? I mean, I think, you know, I think, you know,
Speaker Change: How you feel given maybe a need to at times have a little bit more inventory or maybe if you're wishing to have a little bit more inventory. Can you just kind of talk about liquidity, please?
Speaker Change: Hi, JP. This is Anya. Thank you for that question. Yeah, so as you know, we put an ABL in place. It's a line of credit. We'll put it in place in Q2. We have not drawn on it.
Speaker Change: But we do have it available if we need to finance our work in capital expansion.
Speaker Change: So far, we have been able to manage it efficiently, really balancing our AR, AP, and inventory, perfecting our sales and operations forecasting, refining that, you know, in order to really efficiently manage our working capital.
Speaker Change: But, you know, if we need it for growth next year, we have this EBL available should we need to draw upon it.
Speaker Change: Yeah, so JP, let me add a little bit more to that. So, you know, we're in a position as you as you're astutely pointing out where we're going to need to invest into additional inventory. We've been running very tight all year. And so we're probably a little bit under inventory right now as well versus where we'd like to be.
Speaker Change: We do have a backstop in that ADL.
Speaker Change: We don't plan to use it. It's something that we put in place, as we mentioned previously, just as
Speaker Change: a little bit of extra cushion because we could, but we're still sitting here. I mean, we've increased cash, as you know, in the last year and we're up, what is it Anya, almost a half a million dollars or right around a half a million dollars year over year. And we expect to be able to continue to generate cash, you know, next year. I mentioned we'll continue to.
Speaker Change: and in fact, increase our investment into growth next year. But at the same time, we're not looking to shrink our cash.
Speaker Change: balance at all. So there will be that normal fluctuation from quarter to quarter, but I would anticipate that a year from now we're coming back to you guys and talking about how we once again increased our cash balances in 2025 just as we have done now in 2024. So
Speaker Change: We don't want to take we don't anticipate taking cash to operate our business. We don't see any reason to we believe that we have
Speaker Change: As far as we can see, we have a very solid P&L now.
Speaker Change: And for us, you know, the only reason we'd raise cash now is if we found that, you know, just that incredible investment opportunity in a new product, or if we saw an amazing acquisition that fit our business incredibly well and it felt like, you know, it really changed the nature of our business.
Speaker Change: Maybe then we feel differently, but we have the cash, we need to operate this business. We're confident of that right now. So as we go forward, we anticipate we're just in a great place to be able to continue doing what we're doing.
Speaker Change: Transcription by CastingWords
Speaker Change: Great. Well, thank you for taking my questions and best of luck going forward.
Speaker Change: Yeah, thank you much.
Speaker Change: Thank you all for your questions.
Speaker Change: There are no longer questions in queue, so I'll pass the conference back to the management team for any further or closing remarks.
Speaker Change: I'll just close, I think you guys have heard enough from me today, but I'll just close by saying that we couldn't be more excited about where we are.
Speaker Change: Now, hopefully y'all agree, we've had a great year at Laird's Superfood. We're in a very different position than we've been.
Speaker Change: at any point while I've been here. And
Speaker Change: At the same time, we couldn't be more excited about where we are for the balance of this year and in general for our future.
Speaker Change: We've got, as Anya pointed out previously in this call, we're in a great position for 2025, expecting to grow 20% or more next year and continuing to add to our cash
Speaker Change: balance on the balance sheet. So I'll thank you all for joining today. Look forward to getting back in front of you with another quarter that hopefully looks a lot like this one.
Speaker Change: Unknown Speaker
Speaker Change: That will conclude today's conference call. Thank you all for your participation. You may now disconnect your line.