Calavo Growers, Inc. (NASDAQ:CVGW) Q4 2022 Earnings Conference Call December 20, 2022 5:00 PM ET

Company Participants

Julie Kegley - Investor Relations

Brian Kocher - President and CEO

Shawn Munsell - Chief Financial Officer

Conference Call Participants

Ben Bienvenu - Stephens

Eric Larson - Seaport Research Partners

Ben Klieve - Lake Street Capital Markets

Operator

Good afternoon. And welcome to the Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2022 Calavo Growers Earnings Conference Call and Webcast. All participants will be in listen-only mode. [Operator Instructions]

I will now turn the conference over to your host, Julie Kegley, Investor Relations for Calavo. You may begin.

Julie Kegley

Good afternoon. And thank you for joining us today to discuss Calavo Grower’s Financial Results for the fourth quarter and fiscal year 2022. This afternoon, we issued our earnings release and it is available in the Investor Relations section of our website at ir.calavo.com..

With me on today’s call are Brian Kocher, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Shawn Munsell, Chief Financial Officer. We will begin with prepared remarks and then open up the call for your questions.

Before we begin, I would like to remind you that today’s comments will include forward-looking statements under federal securities laws. Forward-looking statements are identified by words such as will, be, intend, believe, expect, anticipate or other comparable words and phrases.

Statements that are not historical facts, such as statements about expected improvement in revenue and operating profit are also forward-looking statements. Our actual results may vary materially from those contemplated by such forward-looking statements.

A discussion of the factors that could cause a material difference in our results compared to these forward-looking statements is contained in our SEC filings, including our reports on Form 10-K and 10-Q.

With that, I will now turn the call over to Brian Kocher.

Brian Kocher

Thank you, Julie, and good afternoon, everyone. We appreciate you joining us for the call. Today we reported fourth quarter earnings that demonstrated continued momentum, as gross profit and EBITDA, both improved sequentially and versus the fourth quarter of last year.

Continued recovery in the Prepared segment, with better performance in both the Fresh Cut and guacamole divisions led our improvement by generating a segment margin of over 9%. Earnings were moderated by a slower than expected recovery in the Grown segment, as the excess Peruvian fruit that pressured market pricing at the end of Q3 remained in the market well until October.