Freshpet, Inc. (NASDAQ:FRPT) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Brian Holland: Thanks. Good morning. If I could just tack on two Anoori’s question about the media investment. Just thinking kind of near term here as we contemplate the volume bridge in 2023, which I think assumes about 18%. First things first, when we turn off the media spend and we turn back on the media spend, just help us think about the lag that you anticipate between actually being on air spending those dollars and seeing the consumer receptivity? And then the second part of the volume question would be, is there any way you can quantify or contextualize how you think about the contribution from accelerated distribution and, maybe to a lesser extent, innovation contribution over the next 12 months?

Billy Cyr: Well, let me take this in a couple of part or take that. So the first one is when you’re at – so Q4, we really had no advertising whatsoever. And I think it was probably the most significant period where we didn’t have anything for that long time, really almost anything for all of Q4. So I mean, the best analogy, Brian, is it’s a little like a flywheel. And we have seen it in the past when we have less or very little in Q4, it takes four to six weeks at least to kind of start seeing that flywheel move and gain momentum. We’re – now we saw a nice kind of pickup over the literally the past couple of weeks and pounds I think I mentioned that earlier. We like that. It’s a great early indicator. It demonstrates that the advertising is directionally working.

Obviously, we need to get some of the dynamics underneath that to work a lot harder and a lot better. I guess the second part of your question is in a typical year where we didn’t have some of the pricing dynamics in place, we could probably give you a pretty clear kind of guidance or directional information on how the additional fridges and the innovation would help. I think because there are so many puts and takes, I don’t think we have that perfect clarity right now, quite honestly. I think we’ve tried to budget it and it’s reflected in our net sales guidance for the year. What we’ve tried to budget it that way, where we said these are the kind of those puts and takes altogether. And there have been lots and lots of work done around it. And we’ve put out a number that we feel good about.

But – so I wish I could tell you exactly on the advertising. But I think we have to kind of wait and watch it play through. And I think it’s going to be a period over the next kind of 60 to 90 days where we get the second price increase reflected as shelf where we’ll start to kind of understand what that impact is. Typically, after that price increase, it’s a shelf, you see a kind of a four week kind of flattening and then you kind of go back on to the kind of trajectory that you would like to be at and see for the year.

Brian Holland: Okay. Great, thanks. And then, Todd, if I could, both near-term and long-term thinking about the balance sheet. Just looking at the cadence that you put together for EBITDA. Just wondering any updates on credit agreement? Any risk of the covenant sort of in the near term? And do you have flexibility to adjust that as we think about that expiring, I think, around mid-year? And then secondly, $1.1 billion of CapEx, four times $50 million is $200 million of balance sheet capacity if you go up to four times. I know there’s some cash on there as well. So just remind us, as we think beyond the next 12 months, do we have more flexibility on the CapEx plan, if needed? Or is the assumption that we would have to raise equity at some point. It’s just you think you can get through the next 12 months without that?

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