Dole plc (NYSE:DOLE) Q3 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Rory Byrne: Yeah. I mean, it’s really just to illustrate to investors the very valuable long-term assets that we do have in this business. We see them as integral to our existing business. So we don’t actually have any plans to separate them or do a sale and leaseback of those assets and they are very important to us. We do — you look around at some of the farm REITs particularly in the U.S. farm REITs. They have very high valuations and people are seeing the value in long-term farming and other assets. And in this slide, we are just — at a macro level, just setting it out for investors, look, this is what you own. You have some good net assets in the long-term asset division and you have got some asset-light, debt-free EBITDA with a significant amount and that it should attract a significantly greater value.

But in the short-term, we are not actually thinking about splitting the company. We like having the two pieces together, but you can actually look at them as two separately valuable businesses, only the one ownership structure.

Adam Samuelson: All right. That’s really helpful. I will pass it on. Thanks.

Rory Byrne: Thanks, Adam.

Operator: Our next question comes from Roland French from Davy. Your line is open.

Roland French: Thank you. Hi, everybody. I hope you are doing well. And I have a couple of questions as well, if I could. And maybe just starting on the banana business and maybe an update on, in terms of color around contracting since we last spoke, i.e., I guess, how have interactions gone across Europe and North America, as well as maybe just some color around the supply situation, has it gotten better, worse, remained the same? So that’s the first question on banana contracting. And then maybe just on the cost environment, I know in the outlook, you talked about currently seeing some positive trends, and I guess, your caveat that with some further challenges. Just maybe kind of breaking that out in context of some of your key cost buckets?

And then, finally, and somewhat related, just on the supply chain, I know it’s clearly been friction in the last 12 months, 18 months, 24 months to generally how the supply chain has improved or has disproved since we last talked?

Rory Byrne: Maybe, Johan, you take the first and I will pick up the other two.

Johan Linden: All right. So when it comes to bananas, it’s been an absolutely interesting year. We started out having one view on how the year would develop and everything changed when Russia decided to invade Ukraine. And what happened then is that, we had a lot of demand destructions, so demand fell off. We had to readjust supply. Cost for important input materials went up, fertilizers, but actually, also paper, the box that we are using and FX collapsed, the euro collapsed. We have been able to perform well under, although, taking this backdrop we have performed very well within the division. We are now entering in the most intense negotiation period where we are negotiating with the customers. And as we did on the last call — as we said on the last call, we expect the supply situation to become tight and it has become tight.

Supply has come down, probably, even a little bit further than we have expected. So right now we are in a situation when we are going out to meet customers where we feel relatively comfortable that we will be able to pass on the cost increases that we have, just because of the tight supply situation. Of course, this is also, to a certain extent, complicating the negotiations that we have with our suppliers, but I think, if you put them all together, we are ending up in a good position here looking into the next year.