UNFI - NYSE
United Natural Foods, Inc.
UNFI·NYSE
$52.08
-0.11%Consumer DefensiveFood Distribution
United Natural Foods, Inc., together with its subsidiaries, distributes natural, organic, specialty, produce, and conventional grocery and non-food products in the United States and Canada. It operates in two segments, Wholesale and Retail. The company offers grocery and general merchandise, produce, perishables and frozen foods, nutritional supplements and sports nutrition, bulk and foodservice products, and personal care items. It also provides Woodstock brand imports, roasts, packages, and distributes nuts, dried fruits, seeds, trail mixes, granola, natural and organic snack items, and confections. In addition, the company is involved in importing, roasting, packaging, and distributing nuts, dried fruits, seeds, trail mixes, granola, natural and organic snack items, and confections. Further, it offers Blue Marble Brands products through wholesale segment, third-party distributors, and directly to retailers; and Field Day brand products primarily to customers through its independent channel. Additionally, the company provides general merchandise, home, health and beauty care, and pharmacy products, as well as private label products through a network of 74 Cub Foods and Shoppers retail grocery stores; professional services, such as retail store support, advertising, couponing, e-commerce, consumer convenience services, store design, equipment sourcing, electronic payments processing, network and data hosting solutions, and administrative back-office solutions; and marketing services comprising consumer and trade marketing programs, as well as programs to support suppliers in understanding its markets. The company serves chains, independent retailers, and supernatural chains, as well as foodservice, e-commerce, conventional military business, and other sales customers. United Natural Foods, Inc. was founded in 1976 and is headquartered in Providence, Rhode Island.
At a Glance
Live SnapshotMarket Cap$3.17B
EPS-1.9600
P/E Ratio-26.57
Earnings Date06/09/2026
Earnings Call Transcript
UNFI • 2026 • Q2
Operator
Thank you for standing by. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the UNFI Q2 fiscal 2024 earnings call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. Today, we ask you to limit your questions to one question and one follow-up. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press star one again. Thank you. I would now like to turn the call over to Steve Bloomquist, Vice President of Investor Relations. You may begin.
Steve Bloomquist
Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us on UNFI's Q2 fiscal 2024 earnings conference call. By now you should have received a copy of the earnings release from this morning. The press release and earnings presentation, which management will speak to, are available under the Investors section of the company's website at www.unfi.com. We've also included a supplemental disclosure file in Microsoft Excel with key financial information. Joining me for today's call are Sandy Douglas, our Chief Executive Officer, and Matteo Tarditi, our President and Chief Financial Officer. Sandy and Matteo will provide a business update, after which we'll take your questions. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that comments made by management during today's call may contain forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements include plans, expectations, estimates, and projections that might involve significant risks and uncertainties.
Steve Bloomquist
These risks are discussed in the company's earnings release and SEC filings. Actual results may differ materially from the results discussed in these forward-looking statements. I'd like to point out that during today's call, management will refer to certain Non-GAAP financial measures. Definitions and reconciliations to the most comparable GAAP financial measures are included in our press release and the end of our earnings presentation. I now ask you to turn to slide six of our presentation as I turn the call over to Sandy.
Sandy Douglas
Thanks, Steve, and thank you everyone for joining us this morning. In the Q2 of fiscal 2024, UNFI continued to advance our value creation strategy focused on achieving shared, profitable growth with our customers and suppliers. Through our team's disciplined execution of this strategy, including our accretive optimization actions, profitability and free cash flow are growing ahead of our expectations, enabling us to further strengthen our balance sheet and increase our financial flexibility. During our Investor Day in December, we outlined the strategic capabilities we're building to add value for our customers and suppliers and to become a more effective and efficient company. These include enhancements in customer stewardship, merchandising and supplier support, professional and digital services, private brands, technology, supply chain, and productivity.
Sandy Douglas
With our operational rigor and lean mindset as a foundation, we're executing management and reporting routines against each of these capabilities and are delivering continuous improvement and accountability throughout the organization. Let me take a moment to highlight a few examples from the Q2. First, as a part of our focus on building a next generation supply chain to serve our partners more effectively and efficiently, we're continuing to expand Relex, an AI-powered supply chain planning platform across our entire network. Roughly another dozen distribution centers are expected to go live next week, and we expect we will complete our implementation by fiscal year-end. As our Relex implementation progresses, it's helping us to improve customer service, fill rates, and inventory management, which is in turn improving our free cash flow.
Sandy Douglas
We're also focused on growing our private brands assortment to help our customers differentiate and create value for their shoppers. This fiscal year to date, we've launched nearly 50 new private label SKUs that lean into innovation and emerging shopper trends, from health and wellness to value and convenience. While it's still early, we're encouraged by the early adoption of these new products. These new products and thousands more from our broad supplier network were on display at our spring and summer selling shows in Long Beach, California and in Orlando, Florida, which collectively brought nearly 7,000 customers and suppliers together to plan for the upcoming selling season. At the shows, members of our leadership team and I spent time with our partners, listened to their feedback, sought to understand their roadblocks, and discussed how we can help them execute their unique strategies.
Sandy Douglas
These discussions help to ensure alignment that we're investing in the right talent and building the appropriate capabilities to support shared profitable growth for our customers, our suppliers, and in turn, for UNFI. The progress we're making across our strategic priorities is directly translating into our Q2 results. Overall, our Q2 performance reflects the resilience of our customers, our sharpened focus on a growing $90 billion target addressable market, and the strong execution of our strategy, including the successful completion of our network optimization plans. Adjusted EBITDA and free cash flow grew 23% and 26% respectively. This enabled us to continue deleveraging with net leverage down 1 turn from the prior year quarter to 2.7 turns. In line with our strategy, we have been accelerating our optimization initiatives.
Sandy Douglas
These efforts benefited our profitability and free cash flow and have temporarily negatively impacted our sales growth by nearly 500 basis points, primarily driven by the consolidation of our Allentown facility completed last quarter. During the Q2, the large majority of our customer base continued to grow in a dynamic environment despite some softness in food retail. Excluding the impact of optimization, UNFI's wholesale sales grew in line with our target addressable markets estimated low double- to single-digit growth rate this quarter. Though we will always review opportunities to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of our network, we've now completed the initial planned customer conversations and are in various stages of implementation. With these plans now realized, coupled with our strong new business pipeline, we expect that the cycling of larger optimization actions in Q1 2027 will allow our business to return to growth in fiscal 2027.
Sandy Douglas
We remain confident in our long-term expectation to deliver low single-digit average sales growth for fiscal 2024 through fiscal 2028. As we continue to focus on best serving our target addressable market, we expect grocers focused on differentiation to be the primary source of sustained long-term growth within our industry. We believe our heritage in natural, organic, and specialty products, along with the additional capabilities we are building, can help these resilient retailers deliver compelling value, differentiated products, and enhance shopping experiences that will set them apart from mass and discount retailers and support sustainable, profitable growth moving forward. In summary, the strong execution of our strategy is delivering results and has improved profitability and free cash flow ahead of our expectations.
Sandy Douglas
We continue to strengthen our balance sheet and enhance our financial flexibility, which in turn supports our ability to invest in growth and create long-term shared value for our stakeholders. This progress is reflected in our updated outlook for the year, which Matteo will discuss shortly. As UNFI marks its fiftieth anniversary in 2024, our team is poised to build on and accelerate the company's legacy of connecting grocery retailers to food retailing's most innovative products and shopping experiences. We remain laser-focused on becoming our industry's most valued partner by helping retailers and suppliers drive profitable growth for themselves and for UNFI. With that, let me turn it over to Matteo for more detail about our Q2 performance and updated financial outlook.
Matteo Tarditi
Thank you, Sandy, and good morning, everyone. Our Q2 results reflect our focus on building capabilities to create more value for our customers and suppliers while continuing to improve profitability and free cash flow and further reduce leverage. We're also updating our annual outlook based on our year-to-date performance and our current view of the rest of the year. Today, I will provide additional insight into our Q2 operating results, our financial position and capital structure, and our fiscal 2024 outlook. With that, let's start with our Q2 results. If you go to slide eight, our Q2 sales came in at nearly $8 billion, a decline of 2.6% to last year and includes an impact of nearly 500 basis points from our accretive optimization actions.
Matteo Tarditi
These results also reflect inflation, favorable mix, and sequentially weaker underlying food retail trends, partially driven by SNAP uncertainty, weather-related volatility, and a dynamic operating backdrop. Excluding the impacts of planned optimization, our overall business outperformed the market and performed in line with our target addressable market. Natural product sales grew 7%, again outperforming the market driven by continued shopper demand for natural, organic, and specialty products and strong execution from our customers. We also saw benefits from short-term project work, portions of which we expect will wind down during the H2 of fiscal 2024. Conventional product sales declined 12%, with the primary driver again being our strategic network optimization. The majority of this was the result of our planned exit from the Allentown distribution center.
Matteo Tarditi
As a reminder, we expect that the cycling of larger optimization actions in Q1 2027 will allow our business to return to growth in fiscal 2027, and we remain confident in our longer-term expectations to deliver low single-digit average sales growth from fiscal 2026 through fiscal 2028. In retail, total sales fell 8%, largely due to strategic store closures the retail team has completed to optimize its footprint and strengthen the foundation of the business for the future. Same-store sales improved sequentially by 100 basis points, declining by 2% during the quarter compared to 3% last quarter. As discussed at our Investor Day, our team remains focused on continuing to enhance Cub's value proposition, product assortment, and shopping experience in the Minneapolis market. Moving to slide 9, let's review profitability drivers in the quarter.
Matteo Tarditi
Our gross margin rate in the Q2 was 13.2%, up 10 basis points versus last year's Q2. This includes benefits from our optimization work, as well as a modestly higher level of procurement gains. These were partially offset by a lower margin rate of retail, driven in part by pharmacy product mix shift. Operating expenses improved compared to the prior year, reflecting a decline of nearly 6% compared to the prior year, and a 40 basis point reduction in our operating expense rate to 12.2% of net sales. Importantly, we increased DC productivity by over 6%. This performance reflects ongoing benefits from our effectiveness and efficiency initiatives, including multiple projects overseen by our Value Delivery Office, network optimization, automation, and incremental productivity gains from lean daily management as it continues to expand across our network.
Matteo Tarditi
Our disciplined execution, including our focus on capability building, a higher gross margin rate, and reduced operating expenses, drove Adjusted EBITDA growth of over 23% to $179 million. On a rate basis, Adjusted EBITDA was 2.3% of net sales, up about 50 basis points year-over-year. The strong growth in profitability, along with lower net interest from reduced debt levels and lower depreciation expense, resulted in Adjusted EPS of $0.62, a meaningful increase compared to last year's $0.22. Flipping to Slide 10, our Q2 results reflect the continued strengthening of lean practices across the organization, driving measurable gains in safety, quality, delivery, and cost. We have now implemented lean daily management in 36 DCs as of the end of the Q2, a sequential increase of two facilities from Q1.
Matteo Tarditi
We are actively working to improve distribution center effectiveness and efficiency while further eliminating waste, and we continue to see significant short, medium, and long-term opportunities to do so. Beyond our DCs, we're also focused on extending lean practices across the broader organization. Our lean team helped conduct 12 process improvement workshops over the last quarter. Their work included improving the seasonal item buying process, reducing new customer onboarding time, and improving out-of-stock product rates. These efforts, as well as a broader adoption of a lean mindset, are continuing to drive tangible improvements across our business. Since the prior year quarter across the enterprise, we have reduced shrink by over 11%, while throughput and on-time deliveries have both increased nearly 7% each.
Matteo Tarditi
Importantly, while we've made meaningful progress on lean implementations, we're still in the early stages of our lean transformation and believe there is a significant value to be unlocked for customers, suppliers, associates, and shareholders as we continue our lean journey in the months and years ahead. Turning to slide 11, the strategic and operational discipline, combined with more efficient capital investments and working capital use, enabled us to increase quarterly free cash flow by $50 million to $243 million. The strong free cash flow performance in Q2, coupled with higher adjusted EBITDA, enabled us to reduce net debt to its lowest level since fiscal 2018 and to lower our net leverage ratio to 2.7x, a half turn sequential improvement compared to Q1 and a full turn improvement over the past 12 months.
Matteo Tarditi
Given the progress we have already made in our higher outlook for profitability and free cash flow, we are confident that we will continue to deleverage in line with our multi-year targets. We also repurchased nearly 750,000 shares of stock for approximately $25 million at an average price of $33.66. This reflects our conviction in the long-term value creation potential of our business, and we expect to make further opportunistic repurchases as we continue to reduce leverage as part of our capital allocation process. In support of this, after the end of the Q2, we made a voluntary $115 million prepayment on our senior notes at par, which reduced the outstanding amount of this 2028 maturity to $385 million.
Matteo Tarditi
This is expected to reduce annualized net interest expense by over $2 million. Looking at Slide 12, based on our year-to-date performance and forecast for the balance of the year, we are updating our full year outlook for each of our financial metrics as follows. We are lowering our expectations for full year sales to a new range of $31 billion-$31.4 billion, which represents a 1.9% reduction at the midpoint. This new range reflects optimization work that is ahead of schedule, as well as some deceleration in food retail sales trends within a backdrop that remains highly dynamic, as I described earlier. Additionally, while our new business pipeline is strong, we expect these opportunities will be more meaningful contributors to next fiscal year sales.
Matteo Tarditi
As we described earlier, we expect that this new business pipeline, combined with the cycling of larger optimization actions in Q1 2027, will allow our business to return to growth in fiscal 2027. We are increasing our full year outlook for both Adjusted EBITDA and Adjusted EPS. Our updated expectation for Adjusted EBITDA is $680 million-$710 million, a $30 million increase at the midpoint. The new midpoint represents about a 26% increase compared to fiscal 2025, with an implied margin rate expansion of around 50 basis points. The updated range for Adjusted EPS is now $2.30-$2.70 per share, which incorporates the revised range for Adjusted EBITDA, as well as updated estimates for both depreciation and interest expense. We're also maintaining our full year outlook for capital spending at $250 million.
Matteo Tarditi
We expect H2 investment to further accelerate based on the anticipated timing of capital projects, including our ERP implementation and automation. Finally, we are increasing our free cash flow expectation to approximately $330 million for the full year based on our year-to-date performance and our increased profitability expectations. As a result of our higher Adjusted EBITDA and free cash flow expectations, we also anticipate we will be well below our previous year-end net leverage target of 2.5 turns and now expect to be around 2.3 turns at year-end. This updated outlook reflects our confidence in our ability to deliver our plan and to continue to create value for our customers, suppliers, associates, and shareholders.
Matteo Tarditi
As highlighted on Slide 13, we have delivered a solid H1 of the year, driven by the strength of our customers in improving operational effectiveness and efficiency through lean, methodical technology investments, and network optimization. Our updated year-end net leverage expectation that embeds higher Adjusted EBITDA and free cash flow reflects the strong execution of our value creation strategy. As we move into the H2 of the fiscal year, we are focused on building the capabilities that we believe will help our customers and suppliers better execute their strategies while making UNFI a more effective and efficient business partner. With that, operator, please open the line for questions.
Operator
At this time, I would like to remind everyone, in order to ask a question, press Star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. Your first question comes from the line of Kelly Bania with BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Benjamin Wood
Hey, good morning, guys. This is Ben Wood on for Kelly. Thank you for taking our questions. Just wanted to start on the conventional side. I know you guys called out a 5% headwind from network optimization. That looks like a little bit of an acceleration from the Q1. I know the majority of it seems like it's the Allentown exit. I believe that was planned at 3% headwind to top line. Is that still the right way to think about it? I'm just trying to understand if more work was done or if there's something particular about the quarterly cadence that I'm missing.
Matteo Tarditi
Yeah, good morning. On the conventional front, think about the 500 basis points being significantly higher as an impact. It's 500 basis points of optimization headwind on the total natural plus conventional. On a conventional basis, it's more impactful. The majority of the decline, the 12% decline in conventional, was driven by the accretive network optimization that offered net benefits, as you noticed on the EBITDA growth of almost 40% in conventional in the H1 of the year. Relative to the two elements of the accelerated optimization, we exited the Allentown facility at a faster pace than we anticipated and released some accretive benefits in the Q1.
Matteo Tarditi
As we started executing the Q2 in a net of optimization with customers, but also some win-win retention, we had further opportunities to drive accretive network optimization inside conventional. That's kind of what is reflected in the 500 basis points of Q2 headwind, but also in the 24% of EBITDA growth in the H1 of the year.
Benjamin Wood
No, I think that's helpful. To stay on the conventional side as a follow-up. If we peel away the network optimization, it looks like kind of the underlying business may have improved towards you know lower single digit declines versus maybe low to mid single digit declines in Q1. It seems like based on your retail comp disclosures, that's in line with what you saw at the retail business. Wondering if you could expand on maybe what's driving that improvement. Is it better volume? Is it prices? Just any details you can share about the current operating environment that you're seeing on the conventional side. I know you called out SNAP headwinds and maybe some weather, but it seems like underlying trends got maybe a little bit better this quarter.
Matteo Tarditi
Yeah. Let me innovate for a moment because you are picking up an important trend in our business. If you normalize the 2.5% sales decline with the 500 basis points of network optimization, we actually saw low single-digit growth in the broader business, which is in line with the $90 billion target market and reflective of how many of our customers have performed. Relative to the double click into conventional and natural. Natural grew 7%, showing enduring strong trends in the natural products. Relative to the conventional products, if you remove, call it 800-900 basis points of the network optimization impact, the decline was in the low single digits.
Matteo Tarditi
Stable to kind of what we're seeing in the Q1, a little bit of help from inflation and then volume declines, call them in the MSD range.
Sandy Douglas
I think one other thing to throw on top of that is that over 90% of our customers buy natural or both natural and conventional products. That's core to our strategy to help them differentiate and why our target addressable market is growing and why our customer base, excluding the optimization efforts, which are accretive to profitability and were planned, are driving consistent growth consistent with our long-term plan.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of John Heinbockel with Guggenheim. Please go ahead.
John Heinbockel
Hey, guys. I want to start first, you know, you talked about the pipeline. Can you dive into that a little bit when you think about conventional versus natural? You know, is it, you know, new accounts, new categories? What, you know, what does that composition look like? You know, when you talked about low single digit CAGR, right, 26-28. I take that, tell me if I'm wrong, I take that to be the CAGR, meaning the out years will grow closer to 4% than what we're seeing. Obviously, we're seeing a decline this year, but the real out year number is, you know, more in that 4% range. Or is that wrong?
Sandy Douglas
John, I'll let Matteo characterize the modeling relative to our long-term growth algorithm. The answer to the first part of your question on pipeline, as usual, it's a combination of things. The majority is incremental categories with existing customers, which continues to be the most profitable way to expand. It's my favorite kind of growth because it reflects a healthy relationship where we're already adding value and we're being given more work to do. There are brand-new relationships as well, but the large majority of our pipeline is growth with existing customers. Matteo on the out year modeling.
Matteo Tarditi
Yeah, John. When you think about the agreement through 2028, that is an LSD that will get us from 2025 $1.8 billion to roughly $33 billion by 2028. Embedded in that, there is an LSD that is gonna get us in 2027 and 2028 to approximately $33 billion of sales by 2028 for our outlook.
John Heinbockel
Maybe the follow-up productivity, right? That was up 6%, you know, which I think is above what you would characterize as sustainable. I think this may be wrong, but like 3%-5% is fair. Maybe touch on that. If a lot of this growth is new categories, right? You would think cases per mile driven, is that now gonna be a big contributor to productivity gains?
Matteo Tarditi
Yeah. First of all, John, we are pleased with the margin improvement that we've seen in the H1. The EBITDA growth of 24% in the H1, it also embeds 45 basis points or so of margin expansion, some coming from natural growth and gross profit expansion, but a lot of it coming from the OpEx controls and improvements that we established in the last 18 months. Think about throughput through automation, think about the value of the productivity project through Value Delivery Office, and many more things that we're doing through our Lean and the indirect cost spending. We're pleased with the progress. It is a little bit higher than we were expecting as, again, we realize faster benefits from the network optimization.
Matteo Tarditi
We also continue to have a very rich pipeline of cost initiatives, including the $2 billion of indirect expenses that we are methodically analyzing, both, you know, with Lean methodology, as well as with the support of our supply chain teams. Relative to the question on the cost per case, that is obviously a metric that we track very, very closely. Again, initiatives like Lean, Automation, Relex, the new routes that we continue to identify with the route team, are all contributing, you know, to that productivity.
Matteo Tarditi
We are encouraged with what we've seen in the H1, is exactly in line with what we've been saying for some time, that we continue through Lean and methodologies to find many opportunities to become more effective and more efficient to support our customers and drive shared profitable growth together.
Sandy Douglas
John, Matteo said at the end, the one simple through line that I'd like to reinforce, which is, as he leads the implementation of Lean in the company, Lean starts with safety, goes to quality and delivery, and then delivers cost, and it creates a virtuous cycle. Our fill rates are higher than they were last year, higher than they were two years ago. Our on time continues to improve. Our shrink is down. A lot of the productivity, we always say effectiveness before efficiency as a theme to make sure that the strategy is robust for customer benefit and then creates a virtuous cycle of improvement. That's The early days results we're achieving and the significant opportunity that we see ahead through the strategic plan, but beyond actually.
John Heinbockel
Thank you.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Mark Carden with UBS. Please go ahead.
Matthew Rothman
Hi, this is Matthew Rothman on for Mark Carden. Thank you so much for taking our questions. I was wondering if you could help us understand to what degree natural was helped by project work in the quarter versus more kind of underlying growth in the category. Would you say underlying growth was more in the low-single-digit range or mid-single-digit? Thank you.
Matteo Tarditi
Yeah. Good morning, Matthew. As we said before, in 2025, we started ramping some project-based business inside the natural business, the natural product business that ramped very, very quickly in the H2 of 2025. As the customer completes their strategies, is gonna start winding down in the H2 of 2026. What I would say is that in the 7% performance in the Q2 following the roughly 11% growth in the Q1, there is really the enduring dynamic of the natural organic specialty products. What we would expect in the H2 is to see a little bit of the impact of the wind down of the project-based business, while again, the underlying fundamentals, though, of the natural products remain strong.
Matthew Rothman
Great. Very helpful. Then as a follow-up, to what extent are potential headwinds from SNAP factored into your lower guidance? Thank you.
Matteo Tarditi
Broadly speaking, you know, when there are changes to the government assistance programs like SNAP, consumers tend to adjust their overall budget to preserve spending on food and kind of grocery staples. Our experience has been that food at home demand remains resilient as households tend to prioritize essential items. As we thought about the guidance for the remainder of the year and then the algorithm through 2028, we're monitoring SNAP. We think that the impact is manageable and again, it's being fully embedded into our rest of the year outlook and 2027, 2028 algorithm.
Matthew Rothman
Appreciate it. Thank you.
Matteo Tarditi
Thanks.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Leah Jordanov with Goldman Sachs.
Leah Jordan
Thank you. Good morning. You continue to make nice progress on free cash flow, which is great to see. Given this is a multi-year process, just seeing if you could get us caught up on where we are in the journey, you know, what's been done, and as we look to kind of the back half and into 2027, what are the next biggest drivers we should be looking for, especially within working capital?
Matteo Tarditi
Good morning, Leah. We are pleased with the first half performance. We generated almost $190 million of free cash flow in the first six months, which is up $150 million year-over-year. When you think about the drivers, obviously we increased EBITDA by 24% in the first six months. We continue to work on reducing the days sales outstanding on our receivables while capitalizing on the work that we've done on inventory with the decentralized procurement organization that provided benefits in 2025 and is now complemented by the Relex rollout. We have now an AI cloud-based inventory system that reads the demand signals much, much faster and more effectively.
Matteo Tarditi
It's been implemented in our natural DCs, and we are on the way to implement it in the conventional product DCs being done with the process by the end of the year. The combination of more EBITDA, more disciplined working capital management, and then deleveraging the reduced interest expense have all been favorable in our journey to deleverage to 2.2 turns, I would say by the end of 2027. Looking ahead, first of all, relative to the H2 of the year, we would expect a similar level of EBITDA when you think about the flows implied in the $695. There are about $350 million of EBITDA, but we're gonna step up the CapEx spending significantly.
Matteo Tarditi
We had still some growth in the H1 once you normalize for the automation investments that we had in H1 of 2025, and we have a number of safety, maintenance, technology, and supply chain priorities for the H2. We would expect the EBITDA similar to the H1 level to be offset by the higher CapEx. Relative to the look forward in 2027 and 2028 when our guidance is about $300 million of free cash flow, we should expect to continue to see EBITDA growth. The current guidance is $730 million of EBITDA for 2027, $800 million for 2028. Continue to do work on the leverage reduction, which is gonna give us tailwind from an interest expense. We're keeping optionalities relative to working capital support and CapEx.
Matteo Tarditi
That's all territory of high confidence because we wanna have multiple ways to get there and have flexibility relative to working capital investments and CapEx.
Leah Jordan
Thank you, Matteo. That was really helpful detail. Maybe just one quick follow-up related to a comment you guys made in an earlier question. A low single-digit volume decline you called out for the conventional and your underlying core business there. Just, you know, any major callouts on a product category or retailer driver type that's kind of driving that? I guess a bigger question also is we continue to hear about retailers getting more efficient with their own inventory management due to AI and automation. How do you think that could be impacting your volume trends over time as well?
Sandy Douglas
Leah, a good question. I think I would try to separate the landscape into a couple buckets. The first and most obvious point is that our customers, virtually all of them are buying natural and conventional products from us. Where we see customers performing well is when they're fairly deeply into a differentiation strategy that combines competitive costs with unique products and unique experiences. You can think of retailers around the country that play that strategy very well. Broadly speaking, you've obviously got the pure natural players, but within the all other, there are a number of retailers, including Cub, for example, that are working on a differentiation strategy that includes products and experiences while still staying competitive on price.
Sandy Douglas
Those retailers tend to perform better and their sequential performance is better, and our entire strategy is set up to help them. There's a lot of things going on in the marketplace that make it dynamic. What we are working on feverishly with our customers is helping them drive the kinds of strategic transformation that works for them and makes them part of the durable and long-term growing part of the industry, which is substantial. As it relates to inventory, other than some early discussions that we're having with customers about how technology can work across our supply chain with them, with Relex products in retail and Relex products in wholesale, we're not seeing a meaningful change in their inventory, at least broadly speaking.
Leah Jordan
Thank you, Sandy.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Bill Kirk with Roth Capital Partners. Please go ahead.
Bill Kirk
Good morning, everybody. Since your Investor Day, the amount of vendor-funded promotions seems to have increased. I guess, first, are you seeing more of this activity from the manufacturers? Has the increased activity skewed toward any particular category? Second, where your expectation may be for inflation or possible deflation, where it may have changed, how much would you call your change in outlook for inflation commodities-driven versus manufacturer-driven?
Matteo Tarditi
Hey. Morning, Bill. What we saw relative to vendor promotions is that brands are being way more selective with their dollars, shifting toward peak holiday moments and proven channels. What we see that they're pulling back where the ROI is uncertain, which is why promotional activity feels somewhat inconsistent across customers. As we consider our outlook for our fiscal 2026 and our revised guidance, we have not assumed a material step change in promotional levels. What we saw is that promotions increased in November and December to kind of post-pandemic highs as manufacturer leans into holidays, but kind of tightening up elsewhere. We've seen a step down in January, which is in line with historic patterns. That's on the vendor promotion.
Matteo Tarditi
Relative to inflation, right now we have modeled low single digits for the remainder of the year, which is again in line with our prior guidance. Our goal is always to work with suppliers to keep prices low, stable, and predictable, which is the best cure for the industry. While we may have seen some very transient and secondary procurement gains coming from inflation, again, our goal is to always keep it low and predictable, taking advantage of the pre-notices that we get from our suppliers and then working with them and the customers to make it as stable as we can. Sandy, anything you would add?
Sandy Douglas
Yeah. I think, Bill, strategically, again, elevating a bit here. I think our focus with suppliers going forward is to continue to look for ways to make promotional spending more effective and more enduring around key price points. I would call it priority 1A for our particularly our conventional products merchandising is to help our retailers be more and more competitive, particularly on key items. We'll be watching our progress there. That could take the form of a very long-term promotion as opposed to a price reduction. Net net, it ends up creating more value at the shelf, which a lot of our customers are focused on.
Bill Kirk
Understood. If I could sneak one more in. Matteo, you talked about the share repurchases made in the quarter. You've had that program, I think, since 2022, but it was the first time that you've used it since fiscal 2023, I believe. You know, how would you expect to use this program going forward? And what does it say about your outlook and visibility, and you used the word predictability, that you're here using the repurchase program again?
Matteo Tarditi
Yeah, Bill, our main priority continues to be debt reduction and deleveraging. We have again lowered our year-end expectation now for net leverage out to 2.3x from 2.5x before. We continue to remain confident in reducing our net leverage to below 2x by year-end of fiscal 2027. Now, we also continue to have high confidence in our value creation strategy. As we saw an overperformance relative to cash driven by EBITDA and better working capital management, we saw that there was an opportunity to utilize part of the, what was back then, about $140 million share buyback basket, which is now about $110 million, and lock in some buybacks at $33.66 on average.
Matteo Tarditi
As you think about how we thought about the H2 with an implied free cash flow of $140 million. First, we wanted to hit our target of 2.3x of leverage or less. Second, remain in high confidence territory while we do that, but also maintain flexibility for either faster deleverage, more organic investment, or possibly some opportunistic share buybacks.
Bill Kirk
Thank you.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Scott Mushkin with R5 Capital. Please go ahead.
Scott Mushkin
Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. So I just wanted to kind of talk a little bit more philosophically on a long-term basis, thinking about how, you know, kind of where the company was before the acquisition on EBITDA margins. You know, those were over 3%, and obviously, Supervalu brought those down, and the traditional channel seems to have a lower margin, historically. But I was just wondering philosophically, you know, is there, you know, is there a cap on EBITDA margins at some point, you know, below 3%, or is that, you know, or do you guys think with all the efficiencies you can drive out of this business, you know, thinking of, you know, EBITDA margins being able to continue to go up after your, you know, the 2.8 area is something we should consider?
Sandy Douglas
Scott, a good question.
Scott Mushkin
Thanks.
Sandy Douglas
I think of it in the following way. The lean methodology has us think about metrics together, starting with safety, quality, service, and then cost. We invest over $4 billion a year of cost in serving our customers. We see significant opportunities to improve all of those metrics. With each additional improvement, we see more opportunities. No, we do not see a cap on the ability to improve quality or service or safety. In the process of doing that, we're able to improve efficiency. With robust processes and the successful use of technology to improve them opens up roadmaps of opportunity ahead. What we won't do is seek to expand margins at our customers' expense. In fact, we view this as an accretive model with lots of opportunity for growth in the future.
Sandy Douglas
I'll boil it down in this way. We've communicated an outlook for three years that includes margin expansion, that includes growth, includes improving returns on invested capital and free cash flow. As we look past that timeframe, Matteo and I talk about this all the time, we still think we'll be using words like early innings when we leave 2028. That the opportunity feeds the opportunity. Because of the marketing focus on the more durable, differentiated target market, we think there's gonna be opportunity in large amounts in the marketplace for us to continue to help customers, and then the rest of it flows from there.
Matteo Tarditi
Tony, what I would add is that in the outlook algorithm, we talked about 65 basis points of EBITDA expansion from 2025 to 2028. We're pleased with what we've seen in the H1 , where we had almost 50 basis points of expansion through natural growth, gross margin actions, and then a large productivity play.
Sandy Douglas
Yeah. One of the biggest drivers to gross margin was continued reduction of shrink, which is, once again, process improvement that absolutely helps, so that shrink is not a value to anyone. It's pure waste.
Scott Mushkin
All right, guys. That's great insight. Appreciate the thorough answer. My second question revolves around the conventional business, and again, is more philosophical than it is in the here and now. Do you envision the conventional business being able to be flat volumes eventually? I'm talking about volumes, not, you know, not with the inflation, but just volumes being flat. Without making M&A, just, like, the business would end up being flat volumes. How do you get there?
Sandy Douglas
Scott, I think let's separate our business, which is a B2B business, from the industry's business, which is a B2C business. I believe that the trends towards healthier eating are enduring and will sustain. It's the right science. There's emerging consensus, and it's increasingly being democratized by good value in the marketplace. From a UNFI perspective, I think we're in really good position to help retailers maximize that trend from wherever they sit today in the spectrum. So the kind of trite answer I give you is I'm not sure, but we'll be growing our volume with the products that we offer, and we'll have the products that are viable for growing volume because that's where the demand is, and that's what our job is. Beyond that, I'm not sure.
Sandy Douglas
Each customer, interestingly enough, has a unique set of product requirements that are serving different opportunities. While we don't discuss individual customers here. Some really interesting things are happening with conventional products in places that you wouldn't have necessarily expected as players are looking to build their basket or build their customer base for their various platforms. I don't know is the headline answer to your question, but I don't think it matters particularly to UNFI. We're gonna make sure we have the right products, and they'll continue to mix out based on the strategies of our customers and consumer demand.
Scott Mushkin
My interpretation of that, Sandy, and I'll yield, is that in aggregate, and you've told us this before, I think, not to just kinda look at your business necessarily on one segment or the other, but in aggregate, we should think about volumes growing once we're through this period.
Sandy Douglas
I believe the public comments we've made, and Matteo said this earlier, is that we expect the company sales to return to growth next year, and we expect to achieve our three-year sales guide at midpoint, which is about $33 billion, and that we have confidence in doing that. What I would say beyond that is we're always looking for ways to help our customers more and to grow our customer base, and that'll continue, but the guidance is as it is, and we remain confident in it.
Scott Mushkin
All right, guys. Thank you very much for the answers. Appreciate it.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Krisztina Katai with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Jessica Taylor
Hi, this is Jessica Taylor on for Christina. I just wanted to ask specifically about your value-add services and how you're thinking about how those contribute to your margin expansion, specifically, as you line it up with the different business channels.
Sandy Douglas
Yeah. Hi, Jessica. The professional and digital services group continues to grow faster than the company, and we are always looking at services that will either help our customers save money, work with the industry more efficiently, and hopefully grow faster. A lot of our focus of late has been on digital services to help customers use technology. Obviously the services that our customers use depend on where they are in the marketplace. We continue to view this as an important part of our offering. It tends to be more profitable for us because the value added is defined, and so therefore we're helping customers get value that they wouldn't be able to get otherwise. We continue to invest time and energy on talent and new platforms to find new ways to continue to make our customers more competitive.
Jessica Taylor
Thanks. Just as a quick follow-up, can you talk a little bit about how much left you think you have in terms of shrink improvement?
Matteo Tarditi
Morning, Jessica. We made a significant improvement on shrink if you think about 2023, 2024, 2025, and even in the H1 of 2026. It's really been a tight methodology with the supply chain and the procurement teams mapping wing to wing how we were buying, how we were managing inventory, improving the demand signal, and that has created a very significant profit improvement for us in gross profit in the last three years, including a support to the gross profit expansion in the H1 of 2026. For us, the journey on productivity, shrink, waste elimination is never ending. We are never satisfied.
Matteo Tarditi
We recognize that right now we have significantly reduced, you know, the shrink levels, and there is probably a level of structural shrink when you're managing $30 billion of wholesale revenues. With that in mind, we continue to do process mapping and managing inventory levels better that in turn help us reduce shrink. We are not, you know, giving up on the shrink improvement from now on. It'll still be a contributor, to a lesser extent, but a contributor to our margin expansion. Again, our goal right now is 2.4% through 2028, and we're roughly at 2.25% as we close the H1 of the year.
Jessica Taylor
Thanks, Matteo.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Alexander Slagle with Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Alexander Slagle
Hey, good morning. Thanks for all the color today. I wanted to ask on the rising diesel costs and if you could offer any historical perspective on how much you hedge or forward buy and kinda how that passes through fuel surcharges and, you know, what we should think about looking ahead.
Matteo Tarditi
Hey, good morning, Alex. As you can imagine, this is quite a dynamic situation, but we have assessed it, and we believe it is manageable. Relative to the impact of the change in fuel prices to the business, we have a number of tools to manage fuel costs. Firstly, with fuel hedges as well as sharing our fuel price changes with our customers per our contract. It is very early on, as you can imagine. Again, the early assessment when we look at a combination of hedges and contractual protection, we feel that it's very manageable and embedded in our H2 outlook and guidance for 27, 28.
Alexander Slagle
Great. Private brand execution, I see you kinda noted a ramp up with some incremental new products, what kind of progress should we expect over the next, say, year or two?
Sandy Douglas
Mm.
Alexander Slagle
What milestones should we look for next just to see the progress in getting the private brand growth accelerating?
Sandy Douglas
Yeah, I think broadly speaking, we view the private brands portfolio as an important part of the differentiation strategies that we provide to customers. As I mentioned in the script, we had some significant new item activity so far this year, including some pretty hot new products, and we're excited about that. We have a new leader in running our brands portfolio, and I think broadly speaking, you should expect to see our brands portfolio grow faster than our total business. That's been our strategy, and it continues to be.
Sandy Douglas
We're also focusing incrementally on innovation to help drive the good, better, best positioning of our brands in the marketplace and further capturing the opportunity in the natural segment to improve our brand performance and continue to serve customers where they are with the products that'll help them decomplexify their assortment versus some of the mass discounters, et cetera.
Alexander Slagle
All right. Thank you.
Operator
This concludes today's question and answer session. I will now turn the call back to Sandy Douglas for closing remarks.
Sandy Douglas
Thank you, operator. As you heard today, we remain focused on executing our value creation strategy to add value for our customers and suppliers and become a more effective and efficient company. As we mark 50 years in business and look ahead to realize our purpose of better food and helping to create a better future for our stakeholders, we're committed to building the capabilities that will help our partners differentiate, compete, and achieve shared profitable growth. With a long runway of improvement opportunities still ahead of us, we are well-positioned to create long-term sustainable value for all of our key stakeholders, including our shareholders. To our customers and suppliers, we thank you for your continued partnership and collaboration. To the UNFI associates listening today, our thanks for continuing to deliver better for our partners, our communities, and each other.
Sandy Douglas
To our shareholders, we thank you for the trust you continue to place in us. Thanks again for joining us this morning, and we look forward to updating everyone on our progress this summer.
Transcript from March 10, 2026
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