John B. Sanfilippo & Son, Inc. (NASDAQ:JBSS) Q3 2024 Earnings Call Transcript May 5, 2024

John B. Sanfilippo & Son, Inc. isn't one of the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds at the end of the third quarter (see the details here).

Operator: Good day, and welcome to the John B. Sanfilippo & Son's Third Quarter Fiscal 2024 Operating Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this call is being recorded. I would like to turn the call over to Jeffrey Sanfilippo, CEO. Please go ahead.

Jeffrey Sanfilippo: Thank you, Michelle. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our 2024 third quarter earnings conference call. Thank you for joining us. On the call with me today is Jasper Sanfilippo, our COO; and Frank Pellegrino, our CFO. We may make some forward-looking statements today. These statements are based on our current expectations and they involve certain risks and uncertainties. The factors that could negatively impact results are explained in the various SEC filings that we have made, including Forms 10-K and 10-Q. We encourage you to refer to these filings to learn more about these risks and uncertainties that are inherent in our business. Looking at results, I'm happy to report the Lakeville acquisition increased quarterly sales volume by 18.1 million pounds or 24.1% over third quarter of fiscal 2023 and increased our quarterly net sales by approximately $46.9 million or 19.7% over the third quarter of fiscal '23.

Our integration has made great progress in optimizing the operations in Lakeville, and we currently expect it to become accretive to our operating income during the upcoming fourth quarter, which is significantly ahead of our initial schedule. We also sold in the third quarter approximately $3.2 million of our own internally developed nutrition bars from our Elgin, Illinois manufacturing facility. This complements the snack bars produced in Lakeville. I'd like to personally thank all our employees who have worked with passion, dedication, and a sense of urgency to optimize the operations in Lakeville and continue to drive improvements. The company just held our Board of Directors meeting in Lakeville where the officers had a chance to tour the plant.

I am so proud of the management team in that facility who are now part of the JBSS family. Their commitment to quality, safety, and customer service is remarkable. Even though we continue to operate in an environment of elevated retail selling prices and cautious consumers, our consumer distribution channel delivered strong results. Our private brand business reversed two consecutive quarters of decreasing sales volume. While our branded business sales volume decreased in the quarter, it represented a significant improvement over the decreases we experienced over the last three quarters as we continue to see strong momentum at a major e-commerce customer for our branded products. This time last year, we started seeing signs of a challenging operating and inflationary environment.

Despite these headwinds, our company executed our strategies, optimized our cost structure and supply chain and created capabilities to expand our product offerings. In Q3 of fiscal '23, we started shipping our first private brand bars to a major retailer. Since that time, we’ve gained new private brand business at many other retailers across the country. We continue to receive favorable feedback from our partners and expect to gain additional new customers in subsequent quarters. And we are working on numerous innovative sales opportunities utilizing our new bar capabilities. Our Board of Directors met yesterday and approved a $1 per share special cash dividend, reinforcing our goal of creating long-term shareholder value by returning capital to our shareholders.

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