LFCR - NASDAQ

Good afternoon, and thank you for joining Lifecore's Fiscal 2025 Third Quarter Earnings Call. During the call, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. Now I would like to turn the call over to Stephanie Diaz, Manager of Investor Relations for Lifecore.

Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us today to discuss Lifecore Biomedical's third quarter fiscal 2025 earnings results. Hosting the call today from Lifecore are Paul Josephs, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Ryan Lake, Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin today, we'd like to remind everyone that certain statements made in the course of this conference call contain forward-looking statements. It is important to note that the forward-looking statements made during this call reflect management's judgment and analysis only as of today, April 3, 2025, and the company's actual results could differ materially from those projected in such forward-looking statements. For a more thorough discussion of the risks and uncertainties associated with any forward-looking statements, please see the disclaimer regarding forward-looking statements that is included in our fiscal 2025 third quarter earnings release, which was furnished to the SEC today on Form 8-K as well as our other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including, but not limited to the company's Form 10-Q for third quarter of fiscal 2025, which was filed this afternoon. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Paul Josephs, Chief Executive Officer.

Thank you, Stephanie. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us for our fiscal 2025 third quarter update. During the third quarter, Lifecore continued to aggressively and successfully execute against our stated plan for the year, with noteworthy accomplishments across multiple areas of our business. During the period, our team signed multiple new agreements with both new and existing customers. Our revenues for the period remained strong, and on target for our guidance for the year, and our cash balance was strengthened through the sale of our unused filler. Lastly, significant improvements and efficiencies, were incorporated throughout our business, to enhance our overall operations and improve our margins. I will provide additional details on business development and operations for the period, following an overview of our third quarter fiscal 2025 financial results. With that, I'll turn the call over to Ryan.

Thank you, Paul. In conjunction with my comments, I'd like to recommend that participants refer to Lifecore's Form 10-Q filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which we filed today. I'll now go over results, for the third quarter and nine months ended February 23, 2025, beginning with results for the quarter. Revenues for the three months ended February 23, 2025, were $35.2 million a decrease of 2%, compared to $35.7 million for the comparable prior year period. The decrease in revenues, was primarily due to $1.5 million decrease in CDMO revenues, primarily due to completion of discrete development revenue, project life cycles and timing of customer projects, offset by our hyaluronic acid or HA manufacturing revenues, which increased $1 million primarily from increased demand from a customer, due to their supply chain initiatives. Gross profit for the three months ended February 23, 2025, was $9.8 million, compared to $11.9 million, for the same period last year. The $2 million decline in gross profit, is due to a $3 million decrease in CDMO gross profit, primarily due to prior year adjustments of inventories, to their net realizable value and lower development revenue, offset by $1 million increase in HA manufacturing gross profit, due to increased volumes and manufacturing variances. Selling, general and administrative expenses for the three months ended February 23, 2025 were $10.1 million, compared to $9.8 million for the same period last year. Excluding the increase in stock-based compensation, SG&A decreased by $0.7 million due to lower finance and accounting consulting. Also included in SG&A expenses for the current period is $2.2 million, primarily related to litigation expenses, related to an activist investor matter in a securities class action lawsuit. The prior period included $2.3 million, primarily related to incremental audit and consulting fees, related to the financial restatement, and expenses related to the divestiture of Curation Foods. For the three months ended February 23, 2025, the company recorded a net loss of $14.8 million or $0.47 of loss per diluted share, as compared to net income of $15.6 million and $0.42 of income per diluted share, for the same period last year, which included a one-time favorable $21 million, non-cash fair market value adjustment to the debt derivative liability, associated with the term loan credit facility. Adjusted EBITDA, for the three months ended February 23, 2025, was $5.7 million, a decrease of $0.7 million, compared to $6.4 million in the prior year period. The decrease in adjusted EBITDA, was primarily due to the decrease in gross profit, exclusive of inventory and equipment write-off of $1.1 million. I'll now review results, for the first nine months of fiscal 2025. Revenues for the nine months ended February 23, 2025, were $92.4 million, an increase of 2%, compared to $90.4 million for the comparable prior year period. The increase in revenues, was due to a $3 million increase in HA manufacturing demand, primarily due to our largest customer supply chain initiatives. This was slightly offset, by a decrease in CDMO revenues, primarily due to completion of discrete development revenue, project life cycles and timing of customer projects. Gross profit for the nine months ended February 23, 2025, was $26.3 million, compared to $24.6 million for the same period last year. The $1.7 million improvement in gross profit, is primarily due to an increase in HA manufacturing gross profit, due to increased volumes and manufacturing variances. CDMO gross profit, was essentially flat year-over-year, due to offsetting factors. Selling, general and administrative expenses, for the nine months ended February 23, 2025, were $35.1 million, compared to $28.2 million for the same period last year. Excluding a $3.8 million increase in stock-based compensation, SG&A is up $3.1 million, primarily from a shift of legacy matters. Included in SG&A for the current period, is $9.5 million primarily related to various legacy legal matters, and costs associated with the financial restatement. The prior period included $7.2 million, primarily related to incremental audit and consulting fees, related to the financial restatement, and expenses related to strategic alternatives and the divestiture of Curation Foods. For the nine months ended February 23, 2025, the company recorded a net loss of $37.6 million, and $1.24 of loss per diluted share, as compared to net income of $19.1 million and $0.52 of income per diluted share, for the same period last year, which included a one-time favorable $41.9 million non-cash fair market value adjustment, to the debt derivative liability associated, with the term loan credit facility. Adjusted EBITDA, for the nine months ended February 23, 2025, was $10.4 million, a $0.6 million increase, from $9.8 million in the prior year period. The increase in adjusted EBITDA, was primarily due to the increase in gross profit, exclusive of inventory and equipment write-off of $0.8 million. Our financial performance for the quarter, was steady and consistent with guidance. As such, we are reiterating our financial guidance, for the fiscal year and expect revenue to be approximately $126.5 million to $130 million and adjusted EBITDA to be in the range of $19 million to $21 million, and with our cash balance bolstered by the sale of our isolator filler, we believe we remain well positioned for future growth. This concludes my financial overview. For those interested in reviewing our non-GAAP reconciliations, please refer to our 8-K filing, or the press release issued today. I'll now turn the call back over to Paul, for an update on operations and achievements during the period.

Thank you, Ryan. During the third quarter, our team continued to successfully execute against our plan that, was outlined during our Investor Day presentation last November. This strategy is focused on driving a 12% revenue CAGR, and increasing EBITDA margins, to over 25% over the next few years. Key contributors to this growth plan, include maximizing our existing customer business, the advancement of programs currently within our late stage development pipeline towards commercialization, and finally winning new and impactful business that, will continue to fill our project pipeline, from early stage work to commercialization. During the third quarter, we continue to make substantive progress in each of these core areas. First, with respect to maximizing our existing customer business, our team continues to make meaningful progress on an expansion program, with one of our large multinational partners. As we communicated in our 2024 Investor Day, this partnership is poised to deliver a significant inflection point in volume demand in 2027, and this impactful project remains on target. We are excited to expand our business, with this partner and serve their needs in a more meaningful way. Their continued and growing confidence in Lifecore as a partner, continues to serve as validation for the quality work of our team. With respect to our second strategic goal, which is the advancement of our pipeline towards commercialization, several important milestones were achieved during the quarter giving us great optimism for this important objective. As previously disclosed, 10 of Lifecore's late stage pipeline programs, are poised for potential FDA approval and commercialization by 2028, and while there is no guarantee that they will all reach the finish line, even a modest subset of this group, could generate substantial and impactful growth, for the company in the midterm. During the quarter, our project management team signed statements of work with multiple partners in our late stage pipeline, which will continue to move these programs closer to commercialization. This includes a significant statement of work with a large multinational partner. Separately, one of the aforementioned programs is committed now to advancing to a Process Performance Qualification, or PPQ campaign at Lifecore in late 2025, or early 2026. PPQ programs are particularly important, as they are a pre-commercialization requirement. And while we caution that, the execution of a PPQ campaign, is only the beginning of a one to two year journey, towards commercial approval and subsequent manufacturing, we cannot understate the importance that we believe, such programs may have on our growth now and in the future, as we expect they will drive an increase in revenues, capacity, utilization and ultimately an improvement in our margins. We are pleased with the advancement of these late stage programs, and believe the progress during the quarter, continues to support our expectations, for commercialization of the programs in the midterm. Turning now to the third area of our strategic growth focus, our team continues to sign new and impactful business at various stages of development. Lifecore has added six new customers during the first nine months of our fiscal 2025. Notably, this includes a new agreement with Nirsum Laboratories, signed during the third quarter. Nirsum selected Lifecore, to provide CDMO services focused in on supporting clinical development of its lead campaign NRS-033. NRS-033 is a novel treatment for opioid use disorder, and alcohol use disorder that is currently entering Phase 2 in clinical development. Under the newly signed agreement, Lifecore will continue to provide Nirsum with filled syringes, for use in clinical development of NRS-033. Subsequent to the quarter end, we added a seventh new customer, signing an agreement with Humanetics that is focused in on the company's exciting BIO 300 program. We will be responsible for conducting a tech transfer of the existing fill finish process for BIO 300 including a formulation development, gap assessment and filling up a pilot batch. This will be followed by analytical method work, including feasibility assessments designed to estimate future development work, for the product candidate. BIO 300 is the exact type of promising cutting edge biopharmaceutical product we strive to support, and we are excited to have been selected by Humanetics to provide these services. Though Lifecore's past focus was on complex, highly viscous formulations, our new business development team is dedicated to the promotion of our broad capabilities, to best position the company, to support products across multiple modalities. Given this goal, we are very pleased with the continued expansion, and evolution of our new business pipeline. Each of these programs is currently undergoing qualification review, and we believe we will be successful in adding multiple new programs, to our manufacturing pipeline in the months ahead. I would now like to shift the focus, to the important organizational strategies and measures that, we are actively implementing, to enhance our sustainability and profitability. Specifically, we are reducing operational expenses, facilitating a performance driven culture, and strengthening our recognized commitment to quality. While we made progress in each of these initiatives during the quarter, I would like to highlight the substantial improvements that we have made, in reducing the cost of our operations over the past few months. First and foremost, Lifecore utilizes state-of-the-art technologies, and employs what we believe, to be the best CDMO talent in the industry. Our commitment to quality, is unwavering and we will never reduce the cost required, to maintain the high standards that our customers, and the patients they serve expect. With that said, our new leadership team reviews monthly metrics, trends and opportunities. We continue to identify meaningful areas that, can improve our efficiency and productivity, without compromising the quality service we deliver. We have and are continuing to take action, to capitalize on these opportunities and continue to reduce operational expenses, as a percent of our overall revenue. Specifically, our - production efficiencies, have continued to improve throughout the fiscal year. A prime example, is the better coordination between our supply chain and operations team, which has resulted in a less volatile production schedule that, has allowed us to better manage our workforce, without compromising customer service. In addition, via enhanced training and improved management processes, we are experiencing improved productivity in all direct labor areas, aseptic, packaging and fermentation. Finally, we have also improved our fermentation processing efficiency, which has resulted in an increase in our yields and less waste. With respect to our business operations, we have eliminated numerous consulting relationships, in favor of hiring the right number of employees in-house. For example, we have now rebuilt our finance team, by eliminating unnecessary outside parties, and hiring a small number of highly experienced, and talented personnel. Our new finance team is focused, efficient and more than keeping us in compliance, with all regulatory requirements and has quickly added value, to our overall business. In addition to common sense cost cutting measures, we have also made key investments that, will further enhance our operations. One example, is recent implementation of live production monitoring. The data captured by this system, assists management in assessing performance and measuring output, allowing our team to make adjustments in real-time to increase efficiencies. With an eye to efficiency, our team is implementing similar enhancements throughout our company, including updating our pricing with customers in order to account for inflationary factors. In closing, I believe it is evident that we are executing aggressively against the plan, we articulated last November. We are working with existing customers, to accommodate their future manufacturing needs, we are supporting our late stage clients, as they advance towards potential regulatory approval and commercialization, and we are successfully pursuing new business opportunities, in an expanded range of products and formulations, across multiple modalities. Further, we are reorganizing our business, to better support the value creation derived, from our three-pronged growth strategy. Steps taken to-date, have resulted in newfound efficiencies in performance across our workforce, and increased production outputs. This has been done, without disruption to our business, or those of our customers, and we continue to deliver exceptional quality throughout the organization. Looking ahead, we believe that our plan and actions today, are positioning us well to meet the goals and objectives that we have articulated for fiscal 2025. We look forward to reporting on our progress in coming months. This concludes our prepared remarks for today. Operator, you may now open the call for questions.

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] And our first question will be coming from the line of Matthew Hewitt of Craig-Hallum Capital Group. Your line is open.

Good afternoon and thank you for taking the questions. Obviously front of mind for everybody over the last 24 hours is on the tariff front. And while it's at least at the moment clear that pharmaceuticals, are not going to be impacted, or hit with attacks, there has been chatter about wanting, or the desire to bring back drug manufacturing in the U.S. I'm just curious, what you've heard over the past couple of months, from prospective customers that you've been talking about, and are you seeing that desire and willingness to repatriate drug manufacturing year, and what does that mean for you, as you look at the remainder of this calendar year?

Good afternoon, Matt. Thanks for the question. Last month, we were at one of our largest conferences, the drug, which is what's called DCAT in New York called Drug, Chemical & Associated Technologies Conference. And we met with a number of large multinational pharmaceutical companies. And I admit in my past number of years I've been in this business, I've never heard as much discussion, a lot of it theoretical, around Western manufacturing and the importance of domestic manufacturing, driven a lot by the - what we're characterizing as administrative uncertainty. So nothing quantitative to move on today, but certainly from a qualitative perspective based on the near term discussions that we've had, certainly top of mind for a lot of our customers and prospects.

That's helpful. Thank you. And then maybe just, and I'm sorry if I missed this, but the Humanetics contract post quarter that you signed, congratulations. What stage is that? Also a later stage, obviously, if it's a transfer. But how should we be thinking about that?

Think of it as a Phase 2, Matt. It was a site transfer from another contract manufacturer, where they thought there was a better value proposition to work with Lifecore Biomedical. So we're excited to work with them in our backyard, and it's a promising project. We're excited.

That's great. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. One moment for the next question. And our next question will be coming from the line of Michael Petusky of Barrington Research. Your line is open.

Hi, good afternoon guys. So Paul, I guess if you touched on this, I missed it in the prepared remarks, last quarter you talked about, hi, we've got, you know, we've identified 50 opportunities. 30% of these are multinationals. I'm just wondering, roughly 90 days later I think that, is there anything you can sort of say about, those conversations or progress or how your capabilities, are sort of being seen by particularly some of the bigger guys. But anything you want to say about, as you try to sort of build the customer base? Thanks.

Thanks for the question, Mike. Yes, we continue to be pleased with the progress and I think, composition of our pipeline. Obviously, now the key is for us to continue to, move those programs through the various stages of the sales process towards closure. I will say from a leading indicator perspective, we had, I believe it's four large multinationals on site at Lifecore during the quarter, which is three of those in January, which is, big number for us, relatively speaking. So it tells me that our strategy is working. And certainly last month at DCAT, we certainly met with more large multinational companies, than heretofore the organization has met with, one of the busiest schedules that I've been a part of. And based on the feedback from the legacy team, certainly the quality of the companies that we were meeting with, was better than it's ever been.

Awesome. Quick one for Ryan. Ryan, I haven't had a chance to go through the Q yet. What was the cash flow from ops and CapEx in the quarter, if you have that?

Yes, thanks for the question, Michael. So, we saw some daylight this quarter, and had positive cash flow from operations of about $2 million. And this is despite some one-time non-recurring expenses that we had from legacy legal matters of over $2 million. And there was still a portion, of the filler as well that had not been paid for. So looking at the proceeds and capital spending items, net for the quarter within investing activities, it was, let's see, net for the quarter within investing activities. I believe we were pretty close to, free cash flow breakeven for the quarter.

I just want to make sure, I'm interpreting that comment correctly. So CapEx was roughly around $2 million as well?

Yes, net of roughly $3.5 million of the filler that was paid for. So it looked like CapEx spending was up a little bit, but it wasn't yet to net it against, some of the proceeds that we received from the filler.

Okay. Then the outlook just on, I guess the remainder of the fiscal, meaning the last quarter in terms of, I guess expectations around cash flow from ops, or free cash generation. Any thoughts on that?

Yes, so I think importantly too to note is, we ended the Q3 with a little over $30 million in liquidity, close to $31 million. So including cash off the balance sheet was a little over $5 million. And then availability under our revolver was a little over $25 million. So just as, just to reiterate, we had used approximately $17 million of the proceeds from the pipe and filler sale, to reduce the revolver to save on interest expense, while maintaining the same level of liquidity. So we expect this to continue to improve, as we receive the remaining $10 million in proceeds from the filler sale. And as we think about, kind of the remainder of the year, we're still expecting to be cash flow positive, from operations in the second half. And certainly depending on the course of timing, of any of the one-time non-recurring items, we expect to see a pretty dramatic improvement in free cash flow altogether in the second half of the year. And depending on the timing of capital expenditures, I think as you'll recall Michael, we previously communicated we'd expect to be free cash flow neutral, for the second half and we still believe that, and perhaps even slightly positive.

Awesome. And then I guess, you've made - I guess a comment or two around, continuing to look at reducing operating expenses, and obviously you're making really good progress on that SG&A line. I'm just curious, should we look at sort of Q3's SG&A level as sort of the run rate, or do you feel like there's material improvement, even that you can get off of? What has been pretty darn good improvement, in a short period of time?

That's a, it's a great question. So SG&A was down sequentially, and it's been trending down ever since the first quarter. We're still expecting to see G&A spend decrease, overall in the second half of the year, compared to the first half. And as we mentioned earlier, we've made some great progress over the past couple of months, off boarding consultants and also the expectations around stock-based compensation will. We're expecting that to continue to trend down. I think one of the things to look at as well, is what we tried to call out, or some of the legacy legal matters and items. And if you look at the quarter, I mean that was over $2 million. I mean once those things are behind us, right. We should see a pretty dramatic decrease in overall SG&A spend. And you'll also have noticed within the quarter, there's about a $700,000 improvement due to lower, finance and accounting consulting, compared to the prior year.

All right. Very good. Thanks, guys.

Thank you.

Thank you. And that does conclude today's Q&A session. I would like to turn the call over to. Sorry, turn the call back over for closing remarks. Thank you.

Thank you, operator. In closing, I wish to thank our investors who continue to support our growth strategy for the future. I also wish to acknowledge our customers, and collaborators who continue to entrust Lifecore as their partner of choice. And most importantly, I wish to extend my sincere gratitude to our incredibly hardworking, and talented team for driving each of the successes that we have at Lifecore. With the support of each of these stakeholders, and with our strategic priorities both clear and achievable, we believe we are well positioned, to achieve growth and sustainable profitability in the coming years. That concludes our call today. Thank you for participating.