Oil-Dri Corporation of America. (NYSE:ODC) Q4 2022 Earnings Conference Call October 14, 2022 11:00 AM ET
Company Participants
Dan Jaffee - President and CEO
Susan Kreh - CFO
Aaron Christiansen - VP, Operations
Jessica Moskowitz - VP and General Manager of Consumer Products Division
Laura Scheland - Vice President of Strategic Partnerships and General Counsel
Chris Lamson - Group VP, Retail and Wholesale
Wade Robey - VP, Agriculture & Amlin Marketing
David Atkinson - VP and Controller
Leslie Garber - Manager, IR
Conference Call Participants
Dan Jaffee
Hello everyone. Welcome to Oil-Dri’s Fourth Quarter and Fiscal 2022 Year-End Teleconference. We are doing this virtually, so I want to introduce the group to you. Susan Kreh is on hand today. She’s our CFO. Aaron Christiansen, Vice President of Operations, Chris Lamson, Group VP of Retail and Wholesale, Jessica Moskowitz, VP and General Manager of Consumer Products Division, Wade Robey, VP of Agriculture & Amlin Marketing, Laura Scheland, Vice President of Strategic Partnerships and General Counsel, David Atkinson, VP Controller and last but not the least Leslie Garber, our Manager of Investor Relations. And Leslie, if you would walk us through our Safe Harbor.
Leslie Garber
Thank you Dan. Welcome everyone. On today's call, comments may contain forward-looking statements regarding the Company's performance in future periods. Actual results in those periods may materially differ. In our press release and in our SEC filings, we highlight a number of important risk factors, trends and uncertainties that may affect our future performance. We ask that you review and consider those factors in evaluating the Company's comments and in evaluating any investment in Oil-Dri stock. Thank you for joining us. Dan?
Dan Jaffee
Yes, thank you. And before I turn it over to Susan for a financial review of the highlights of the quarter, I’d just like to say you’re seeing a good – we delivered a good quarter. We were happy with it. We still have a long way to go, given the pandemic, the war, supply chain disruption, high inflation, and everything else that's going on in the world, we felt good that we finally got our prices, not where they need to be, but at least strong enough to return us to profitability and earnings.
As I see our gross profit trend going back, four or five years, we were making 29 points, 28 points, 27 points? Well, we only made just under 19 points in the quarter. So well, we clearly feel good about the income we made. Trust me, we are not done, we still have to get the business back to where it was. And it's really in everyone's best interest, not just our shareholders and our teammates, but our customers, because we need to have the financial health to continue to invest in our business, you can see almost every segment is growing rapidly. And that growth not only requires more working capital, but also a greater capital expenditure focus on our plants. So sort of a long winded way to say we're happy that we've made a lot of progress. But we clearly recognize we're not done yet. And as I mentioned in the release, very hopeful, cautiously optimistic that the momentum will carry off over into the first quarter of what is fiscal 2023.