Welcome to the BellRing Brands Third Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call and Webcast. Hosting the call today for BellRing Brands are Darcy Davenport, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Paul Rode, Chief Financial Officer. Today's call is being recorded and will be available for replay beginning at 1:30 p.m. Eastern Time.

The dial-in number is (800)-839-5241. No passcode is required. At this time, all participants have been placed in a listen-only mode. It is now my pleasure to turn the floor over to Matt Manor, Investor Relations of BellRing Brands for introductions. You may go ahead..

Good morning, and thank you for joining us today for BellRing Brands Third Quarter Fiscal '22 Earnings Call. With me today are Darcy Davenport, our President and CEO; and Paul Rode, our CFO. Darcy and Paul will begin with prepared remarks. And afterwards, we'll have a brief question-and-answer session.

The press release and supplemental slide presentation that support these remarks are posted on our website in both the Investor Relations and the SEC filings sections at bellring.com. In addition, the release and slides are available on the SEC's website.

Before we continue, I'd like to remind you that this call will contain certain forward-looking statements, which are subject to risks and uncertainties that should be carefully considered by investors as actual results could differ materially from these statements.

These forward-looking statements are current as of the date of this call, and management undertakes no obligation to update these statements. As a reminder, this call is being recorded, and an audio replay will be available on our website. And finally, this Paul will discuss certain non-GAAP measures.

For a reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to the nearest GAAP measure, see our press release issued yesterday and posted on our website. With that, I will turn the call over to Darcy..

Thanks, Matt, and thank you all for joining us. Last evening, we reported our third quarter results and posted the supplemental presentation to our website. I'd like to start with the quarter's headlines. Net sales grew 8% over prior year, and our adjusted EBITDA was up 15% with healthy margins. Premier Protein is tracking to our expectations.

It grew 7% net sales versus prior year and grew sequentially 23% over Q2. Premier shake supply continues to be tight, and we continue to allocate supply. However, I'm pleased with the progress we are making to satisfy our customers.

In fact, this quarter, we prioritized building some inventory to improve customer fill rates rather than maximizing our sales volume in the quarter. This helps both BellRing and our customers more reliably build the brand. Meanwhile, Dymatize continues to show impressive momentum.

Elasticity was a bit higher than expected but the brand still had a strong quarter, up 17%. As you saw in yesterday's press release, we tightened our fiscal '22 guidance range for both sales and adjusted EBITDA. We slightly reduced the top end of sales growth and increased the bottom end of our EBITDA range, factoring in our actual Q3 performance.

As planned, Q4 expectations are largely unchanged and sales should sequentially grow versus Q3 and deliver our largest year-on-year growth rate in '22. Our guidance delivers an annual sales growth rate of between 11% and 14% coupled with robust EBITDA despite capacity constraints and limited promotion and marketing.

Our industry, like many others, is experiencing inflationary pressures. We continue to see our major dairy protein inputs for our shake products escalate. As a result, we announced an additional price increase on Premier Protein RTD shakes effective Q1 of 2023.

Our preliminary '23 outlook still suggests our '22 back half adjusted EBITDA dollar run rate to be a reasonable proxy for the full year fiscal '23. We believe our net sales will be above our long-term algorithm of 10% to 12% growth, driven by both strong volume and pricing. We will provide more detail on fiscal '23 next quarter.

Now turning to our category, brand highlights and updates on our capacity expansion. We continue to see healthy growth in the convenient nutrition category. Ready-to-drink beverages grew 9% and ready-to-mix powders grew 14% in dollars.

Although pricing was a major factor for the dollar growth, consumer tailwinds around wellness and healthier food solutions continue to push the category higher. Premier Protein continues to demonstrate tremendous strength.

Market share returned to growth in Q3 and TDPs stabilized, while repeat rates and velocity has held steady continuing to exhibit our high consumer loyalty. While Premier Protein shake consumption and household penetration declined in Q3, this is consistent with our expectations given our intentional pullback in promotion, marketing and SKUs.

We expect overall shake consumption to be down in Q4 as well versus prior year as we lap a big promotional period. Encouragingly, July, which had little promotion in the prior year, posted a consumption increase of 11% as a result of improved retailer stock levels.

We remain confident we will continue to see this type of improvement as our new supply continues to ramp up, and we return to offense in fiscal '23. These metrics reaffirm that we have a long runway for sustained growth. Turning to Dymatize. The brand had another great quarter with consumption dollars in the U.S.

up 21% across tracked and untracked channels, and that momentum continued into July. Although we did see a distribution loss in club as a result of our last price increase, all other key channels saw significant double-digit growth despite reduced promotion and marketing. Overall, the brand's health remains strong.

Dymatize is the #1 or #2 sports protein brand in most of our key retailers with a ton of upside. As planned, we will begin to ramp up marketing and promotions in Q4 to further drive demand. Moving to our capacity expansion. We remain on track.

We improved our service levels, trade inventories are starting to rebuild and our co-man partners are producing largely as expected. We increased our shake production by 20% versus prior quarter. In closing, I'm pleased with our year-to-date performance in a very challenging environment.

We remain on track to deliver not only our full year guidance but equally important, complete our key objectives that will set us up for a strong fiscal '23 and beyond. We have two leading mainstream brands with tremendous consumer loyalty. Premier Protein is gaining momentum and market share despite no demand-driving activities.

New capacity is coming along as expected, which paves the way for future years of robust growth. Dymatize continues to win with mainstream athletes and the brand is accelerating into Q4 with a new media campaign, distribution drive and new products. We feel confident about our long-term outlook in the building blocks we have in place to get there.

Thank you for your continued support, and I look forward to updating you on our progress next quarter along with more specifics around the upcoming fiscal year. I will now turn the call over to Paul..

Thanks, Darcy, and good morning, everyone. Net sales for the quarter were $371 million and adjusted EBITDA was $81 million. Net sales grew 8% over prior year and adjusted EBITDA increased 15% with adjusted EBITDA margins of 21.8%.

Premier Protein net sales grew 7%, driven by higher average net selling prices reflecting price increases and reduced promotional activity, offset partially by a 9% volume decline. Remember, last year's third quarter was exceptionally strong, and we depleted inventory in addition to selling what we produced.

These prior year inventory reductions in contrast to a planned inventory build in the current quarter resulted in volume declines despite production increases. Dymatize net sales grew 17% compared to a year ago, driven by higher net pricing and favorable product mix, offset partially by lower volumes.

Volumes were impacted by several factors, including elasticities from recent pricing actions, reductions in trade inventory levels during the third quarter and lapping prior year promotional activities. Gross profit of $120 million grew 8%, with gross margins of 32.4%.

Gross margins were flat to prior years, our pricing actions offset significant inflation. Excluding onetime items, SG&A expenses increased $2 million compared to last year, and as a percent of sales improved 40 basis points.

Our cash flow in the third quarter was unfavorably impacted by higher working capital, primarily increased finished good inventory and raw materials. Take inventory levels increased as planned as we continue to rebuild safety stock to better service customers.

We expect working capital to moderate in the fourth quarter and result in stronger free cash flow. During the quarter, we repaid $25 million against our revolving credit facility. As of June 30, net debt was $889 million and net leverage was 3.5x. Turning to our outlook.

We timed our fiscal 2022 guidance range for net sales of $1.39 billion to $1.42 billion and adjusted EBITDA of $262 million to $268 million. Our sales outlook for the quarter remains largely unchanged with double-digit net sales growth expected for Premier Protein and Dymatize, which both benefit from higher net pricing.

Similar to the third quarter, we are lapping significant shake inventory reductions as shipments outpaced production and is an expected headwind from our protein shake volumes in the fourth quarter.

We expect sequential net sales growth from the third quarter driven by new products on both brands as well as increased distribution, promotional activity and media support for Dymatize. We expect fourth quarter adjusted EBITDA to grow significantly from prior year, benefiting from higher net sales and modestly higher margins.

We anticipate fourth quarter gross margins to improve compared to prior year but declined sequentially from the third quarter as a result of expected dairy protein inflation. In closing, we are encouraged by our third quarter performance and are well positioned to close out another strong year. I will now turn it over to the operator for questions..

Thank you. [Operator Instructions]. Our first question will come from Ken Goldman with JPMorgan. Your line is now open..

Hi, good morning everybody. I wanted to follow-up, Darcy, on the guidance or outlook for fiscal '23, and thank you again for providing that and updating it. Was there a minor change and how you are sort of looking at sales. I think previously sort of a midpoint that you were looking for. I know these are all kind of rough numbers, it's around 12%.

It sounds like you're guiding for a little bit higher than that, if I'm hearing you correctly. So I just wanted to make sure I'm not reading too much into this.

Are you actually tweaking that number higher a little bit or am I just kind of overthinking it?.

You're not overthinking it. That was our intention. And the main reason is last quarter, we didn't factor in the price increase..

Got it. Okay. So it's all pricing. I assume there's some elasticity built in there, too.

Can you talk a little bit about the elasticity level you're baking in for next year?.

At this point, I don't want to go into details about '23, what we wanted to do with simply obviously, last quarter, we gave you a guide. And this quarter, it changed a little bit for the positive.

So we wanted to give you an update, but we will go into detail about all of the -- about giving you a guidance, a range for both top and bottom line next quarter..

Yes. No complaints, you've been generous with that rate. I just wanted to ask one quick follow-up. Do you have an update -- if you said this, forgive me, do you have an update on the timing of the SKU assortment sort of rejuvenation, I guess, for lack of a better word for Premier.

What I mean is when do those SKUs sort of come back on shelf that aren't there right now?.

Yes. We said -- last quarter, we said that we expected to the latter part of this year and into next year, we would be focused on increasing inventory, fill rate, trade inventories, et cetera. We would introduce the new flavors or at least we expect to introduce the new flavors, kind of mid-'23.

And then marketing and promotion would be slated towards the end of '23. And there's nothing -- I think that's still in place..

Got it. Thanks so much..

Thank you..

Thank you. Our next question will come from Pamela Kaufman with Morgan Stanley. Your line is now open..

Hi, good morning..

Good morning..

Can you give your perspective on how the active nutrition category performs in an environment where consumers are under increasing pressure and looking for savings.

I know the category was pretty nascent in '08, '09, but maybe just some historical context on how it performed then? And how you think about its resilience in a tougher macro backdrop?.

Sure. It's a great question. And you're right. I mean you think about this category, and it's really only about 30 years old. So it was small in the last downturn. I'll talk about first on my thoughts on the category and then I'll briefly hit on our brands. So the category in general -- let's talk about RTDs.

Most RTDs and especially our brands being Premier Protein are used as breakfast replacements. So when you think about the cost of, for instance, our shake and Premier is about $2, anywhere between $1.50 to $2. It's a pretty cheap breakfast.

And what's also interesting is there's very low substitutability for some of -- like a high-protein, low-sugar option. So I think that based on our research, first of all, Premier is really set up well for kind of a recessionary environment. And I think the overall -- the RTD category is well positioned. From a powder standpoint, same thing.

It's, for the most part, a supplement. And these are high loyalty consumers that are just trying to figure out new ways to increase their protein intake. From a Dymatize standpoint, we have high consumer loyalty. I think we -- our most loyal are going to stay loyal. It is a pretty high -- it's a high-priced item.

So I do believe we're going to be -- we're going to see some shifting. And actually, we saw it this quarter. We're going to see some shifting into smaller sizes. So we have -- our biggest size of Dymatize is now close to $100. So what we've seen this quarter is a move to the smaller sizes.

And then we did see some move into less expensive kind of less quality protein. And so I think we'll see some of that. So expect -- so I think the category is good. macro trends are still there and providing tailwinds to the category. Our specific brands, I believe, are set up well, but I do think we're going to see some trade down in powders..

And I just wanted to follow-up on your comments on Dymatize. You've taken a lot of pricing on the brand and noted that elasticities have come in a bit higher than you expected.

So how do you think about balancing pricing growth on Dymatize versus driving further household penetration gains? And how have the consumer reaction to pricing influence your strategy going forward?.

Yes, Powders, specifically, you're exactly right. We've taken a fair amount of pricing on Dymatize and overall, the category because we're in historic highs on weigh pricing. And candidly, we have -- at certain times in the year, we hadn't even covered the price increase with the cost increases.

What we've seen, I'll first start with my comments about Q3 being a little bit higher in our elasticity than we expected. We forecasted kind of moderate elasticity.

What was interesting is what we saw this quarter specifically is consumers -- once the price was reflected, the higher price was reflected, consumers almost had a little bit of sticker shock because I talked about that $100 price point. They paused and then evaluated and then came back and purchased for the most part smaller sizes of Dymatize.

So I think that pause and revaluation, we did not expect, and so that's why that kind of the higher-than-expected elasticity really occurred in Q3. And it's why we feel good about our forecast for elasticity on Dymatize in Q4 and beyond. So that is a little bit more color on the Dymatize asset.

Your question about how do you balance kind of taking more price versus driving demand. We don't have any -- when I talked about taking another price increase that is just done as Premier, it is not on Dymatize. We do not have any plans to take further price on Dymatize.

And actually, now we are going into Q4, we are going to be -- we have a new media campaign. We have a distribution drive. We're launching a couple of new products. So we're really getting back to accelerating demand on that brand. Up to now, we've kind of held back on our demand-driving activities on Dymatize.

And now we're kind of pressing the accelerator. So I think that looking forward, we don't expect any additional pricing and we're all about driving demand..

Got it, thank you..

Thank you..

Ben, your line is open, please make sure your phone is not on mute. Hearing no response, we'll go to our next question from Andrew Lazar with Barclays. Your line is open..

Hi, Darcy and Paul..

Good morning..

Darcy, first off, I'm just curious, what do you think caused the difference, I guess, between sort of consensus sales estimates for the third quarter and what you guys reported.

Was the entirety of the difference, do you think the decision that you talked about to sort of rebuild inventory rather than sort of maximizing product sales in the quarter? Or maybe we saw mismodeled it to start with. I'm trying to get a sense of what that difference was..

Yes, really two factors. The first is around Dymatize. So I talked about -- elasticities were slightly higher than expected in Q3. We also had a reduction of trade inventory levels in Q3. So that first with Dymatize.

The second piece is what you referred to and what I talked about in my prepared remarks was the choice to build inventory and kind of prioritize fill rate over maximizing sales in the quarter..

And you feel like you'll still do that, but maybe not to an extent in the fourth quarter that changes your outlook on the fourth quarter sales, it seems like..

Correct..

Okay. And then maybe you can remind me I don't know if there are any learnings from the last time you went through the capacity constraint issue. This was pre-IPO. Sort of what happened to household penetration trends then. And I don't know if household penetration took a dip in response to those capacity constraints then.

And then reaccelerated once capacity came online? Or if the brand was in a different place back then such that it didn't behave the same way..

All right. Yes, household penetration in TDPs household penetration and market share. It did take a little bit of a dip. It was a little bit shorter. I think the brand was in a different place then. But in general, we saw a little bit of a dip. And then once we started reaccelerating demand, bringing back our new items, filling out the shelves.

All of the metrics rebounded very quickly, like within call it, three to six months, everything rebounded, so and we expect this to be the same. And I also believe that the brand now -- first of all, last time we went down to two flavors only. This time, we have seven flavors on the shelf. The brand is bigger.

We have more loyalty and more household penetration. So I don't think everything would say that we will rebound kind of either in the same amount of time or even a little faster..

Thank you..

Thanks..

Thank you. Our next question will come from Ben with Stephens. Your line is now open..

Hey guys, sorry about the technical difficulties. Tim [indiscernible] on for Ben. If I can ask a two-part question on the sales breakout. The first part, can you guys delineate between the capacity constraints versus demand elasticity for the price increases and how each of those impacted volumes, specifically with Premier..

Make sure I heard your question, correctly. So for Premier, as we've taken pricing, we have not seen any elasticities on our shakes to date. So as we took the March, April price increase, our consumption trends have been very stable and steady throughout that time period that would suggest that there's no less to say on our shakes to date..

And then second part, as you guys start to ramp up on the promotional spend, is that going to be more focused on driving category usage, so bringing people that don't use Premier even to the category as a precise replacement vehicle, is that driving higher purchase rates? Or is it going to be increasing just visibility to the brand overall to help with distribution in the new channels..

Yes, Ben, so when I talked about increasing promotional and marketing spend in Q4, I just want to make sure that it was clear, it's on Dymatize. It is not on Premier..

Right..

Are you talking about for '23?.

Correct, yes..

Yes, so on Premier, when we begin driving demand again and doing marketing. Yes, our marketing effort is all around household penetration. So we have a pretty high buy rate, one of -- kind of the highest in the category, and it's been pretty stable throughout this period of time. And now -- but it is -- this is a household penetration story.

We still are -- even though we're the highest household penetration within the category, we still believe there's a ton of upside were between 7% and 8%, and we believe that it can go much higher. So it's all about new households..

And then if I could maybe sneak in one quick question on capital allocation. Moving forward, I know you mentioned the working capital demand in the quarter.

As cash flow normalizes, do you guys have a preference on debt reduction versus sharing [indiscernible] preference one way or the other?.

Yes, sure. So our primary focus is to delever. So we do have -- we have amount on our revolving credit facility that we did pay down $25 million in the quarter. So we'll continue to focus on that. But we will continue to look at share repurchase as opportunistic where we see attractive opportunities to enter.

We will buy, but those are delevering is our priority, but opportunistic share repurchases is also a key priority for us..

Thanks guys. I'll hop back in the queue..

Thank you..

Thank you..

Thank you. Our next question will come from Kaumil Gajrawala with Credit Suisse. Your line is now open..

Hi, thank you. First one, just a quick one. As you're thinking about your costs for the rest of this year and next year.

Are there any hedges or things that we should know about just as it relates to how that might work through the P&L? And then secondly, can you maybe just talk a bit about performance by channel, perhaps what you're seeing in club versus e-com versus -- and even if -- I assume, given the capacity issues, the expansion into groceries has slowed, but any update there would also be useful.

Thanks..

Yes, so on your first question, no, there's really -- there's no hedging that would have an impact that you would need to factor in. Most of our protein buys, which is our biggest buys, mostly firm fixed contracts.

There is some indexing based on the CME and other indexes, but we have -- fiscal '22, we certainly have a good line of sight of what our costs are at this point, and we obviously have some coverage into fiscal '23 as well but from a hedging perspective, there's nothing that you need to model in..

And regarding consumption by channel, Kaumil, are you asking about Premier or Dymatize?.

Really both, but probably Premier a bit more..

Okay. Well, I'll go through both quickly. So Premier, during the quarter, -- and if you look at our supplemental, that kind of goes through, but I'll give you a little more information that's not even in there. When you're looking versus a year-ago, the change is going to be all about if we're lapping promotion prior-year.

So what we find is when you actually look at the trends, they're very stable on Premier. But the year-ago number vastly -- when you're comparing versus a year-ago, it changes if there was a promotion last year. So just so you know that. When you look at July, so what's not in the supplemental, and that doesn't have a lot of promotion in prior-year.

You start seeing -- for the most part, we are up -- so I said 11% in my prepared remarks; untracked is up 16%; tracked is up 7%; and overall club is a 10%; mass is up 15%; food is about flat; e-com up 25%. So really solid growth rates when you take away the noise from last year promotions. So I think that is very -- I think it's very encouraging.

When comparing what's going on across those channels, it really has to do with fill rates. So where we have solid fill rates, solid supply, the business is doing great, where we're -- don't exactly have the right flavors on shelf, et cetera, the consumption is affected. So that's the first part.

Dymatize really strong double-digit growth across all channels with one exception, which is Club when we took our last price increase, we lost distribution in a club account, and that shows in the supplemental. When you go to July in Dymatize, same story, up about 27% overall in tracked and untracked.

Double-digit in both and again, double-digit across the board with the exception of Club..

Useful, thank you..

Thanks..

Thank you. Our next question will come from John Baumgartner with Mizuho Securities. Your line is now open..

Good morning. Thanks for the questions. Maybe first on the Dymatize business, Darcy, your explanation on the pause and reevaluate makes a lot of sense.

But are you able to get a lead from that dynamic to the extent that maybe it implies sort of an absolute ceiling on pricing for the category that maybe indicates more limited future opportunities for mix accretive innovation? Or do you still have a high willingness from the consumer to pay for differentiation, this resistance is just more tied to the rate of pricing over a short-term period?.

I really think it's the latter. This category, as you know just has taken a ton of pricing. I mean, I think on average, pricing is up 25% to 30% in a very short period of time. So I think that that's why I kind of called it a temporary sticker shock.

And what was interesting is it didn't -- it was truly temporary because what we saw is consumers kind of lean -- I think what -- I mean my view of it is that they saw it, they paused. They went back and did some more research and then came back. And again, now we're seeing pretty consistent consumption. But higher 20 serve, lower 5 pound.

And so -- and the only other dynamic I would say is we are seeing some of those I don't know, maybe lower value consumers or less loyal consumers, where in channels where they don't have the option of multiple different Dymatize sizes. We have seen some a small percentage go to less premium options. And I think my take on that.

I think that makes sense. You guys are seeing it across other categories with private label. In the powder category, we see some movement to private label, a slight increase of market share, but more often just going to kind of less premium branded products..

Okay. That makes sense. Thank you for that. And then a follow-up for Paul. Upon gross margin, can you quantify the impacts from the network inventory inefficiency really imbalances this quarter.

I think it was like 200 basis points last quarter as the new supply ramps, how quickly do you think you can get that network headwind to moderate? And I'm just trying to get a sense for the opportunity to recover gross margins from supply chain normalization as opposed to just waiting for commodity deflation to set in? Thank you..

Yes, I'm happy to report that the inefficiencies were -- we saw improvements on that front this quarter. So it definitely peaked in the second quarter, and we saw it come back dramatically in the third quarter. So it was less than 50 basis points headwind in the third quarter.

We'll still keep some of this as we have from time to time imbalances within say, a flavor or product, but we expect it to moderate as we go forward and we really pull about our expectations for those inefficiencies as we continue on..

Thanks for your time..

Thank you. Our next question will come from Ken Zaslow with Bank of Montreal. Your line is now open..

Hey, good morning guys..

Hey, Ken..

Good morning..

So just a quick question. I don't know if you said this. What gave you the comments to actually raise the EBITDA? And does that create a new base from which because I remember starting the day when you were able to get a higher EBITDA kind of came back down once the new capacity.

But I'm assuming that this EBITDA is here to stay? And just -- I guess that's my two-part question..

You want to hit that, Paul?.

Well, do you want to hit the increase, I guess, from....

Yes, yes. So from a guidance standpoint, Ken, sorry, you can tell we're not in the same spot. From a guidance standpoint, it really was factoring in Q3 actuals. So we were -- that -- we typically tighten the range in Q3. So we did on both net sales and EBITDA and we've seen some favorability throughout the year.

And so we -- it's basically our run rate going into Q4.

And do you want to hit kind of going into the future, Paul?.

Yes. We still feel good about delivering EBITDA margins within our algorithm. We're in the neighborhood of 90% this year around that last year. So as we look forward, we continue to believe that we can deliver EBITDA margins in that range.

And then we'll see as we move forward of how inflation plays out and where there might be expansion opportunities to expand that as we go forward as well, depending on levels of investment behind the brand marketing activities, but we still feel good about our ability to continue to deliver EBITDA, strong EBITDA margins going forward..

I guess is there a give back of EBITDA in 2023 given the smaller production? Or does this become a new space in which we kind of kind of continue to grow from?.

Yes, if your question is obviously, EBITDA margin is over 20% this quarter, we would not expect that to continue going forward, partially because we have further inflation coming, but no, we're targeting still more to be in that -- on the higher half of our algorithm, which is 18% to 20%..

Okay, and then can you just one quick one. Can you just remind us exactly the cadence of capacity coming online in 2023. And then I'll leave it there. Thank you..

Yes, we have three new comments coming on in '23. We have a small one in the first half and two major comments coming in in the second half, actually Q4. We always know it's back-end loaded because of the two major ones are Greenfield facilities to able to take two plus years to build. They are on track. We see pictures all the time.

And the production, basically, you're looking at the quarters on '23, the production grows every quarter..

Appreciate it, thank you guys..

Yes, thanks..

Operator, we cannot hear you..

Perhaps Ken was the last one..

[Indiscernible]. Yes, we're showing no other additional questions. Thank you all..

Thank you..