John B. Sanfilippo & Son, Inc. (NASDAQ:JBSS) Q2 2023 Earnings Conference Call February 2, 2023 10:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Jeffrey Sanfilippo – Chief Executive Officer

Frank Pellegrino – Chief Financial Officer

Jasper Sanfilippo – Chief Operating Officer

Conference Call Participants

Jeffrey Sanfilippo

[Call Starts Abruptly] Welcome to our fiscal 2023 second quarter earnings conference call. Thank you for joining us.

On the call with me today is Frank Pellegrino, our CFO; Jasper Sanfilippo, our COO.

We’ll 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.

First, let me start out by performance. During the second quarter, net sales increased over $21 million or 8.3% compared to last year's second quarter, and we delivered strong bottom line growth as our diluted EPS increased 26.5% to a $1.45 per share. Our strong quarterly performance resulted from numerous, continuous improvement initiatives, a focus on reducing our operating costs, reduced discretionary spending and selling price alignment efforts initiated last fiscal year as a response to inflationary cost increases.

We continue to see strong demand for our products, especially from our private brand customers in our consumer channel. Our sales volume grew over 3% in the consumer channel, excluding the one-time loss of a private brand grocery customer, compared to the overall decline in the snack nut category.

During the quarter we continued to execute against our Long-Range Plan. First, we paid a $1.00 per share special dividend, reinforcing our goal of creating long-term shareholder value by returning capital to our shareholders.

Second, we completed the acquisition of the Just the Cheese brand, which is part of our strategic initiative to further diversify our product offerings. We are excited to add Just the Cheese to our branded portfolio as it complements our current brand offerings in the snack category. And the acquired production capabilities will help accelerate growth with our private brand and foodservice customers.

Just the Cheese was invented in 1991 and relaunched in 2017. It is manufactured at Specialty Cheese in Reeseville, Wisconsin. Just the Cheese is one of the nation's leading baked cheese snacking brands and offers a hundred percent real cheese snack bars and cheese crisps. The acquisition will provide us with a product that expands our portfolio into new snacking categories.