Keurig Dr Pepper Inc. (NASDAQ:KDP) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Keurig Dr Pepper Inc. (NASDAQ:KDP) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript July 27, 2023

Keurig Dr Pepper Inc. misses on earnings expectations. Reported EPS is $0.39 EPS, expectations were $0.4.

Operator: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Keurig Dr Pepper’s Earnings Call for the Second Quarter of 2023. This conference call is being recorded, and there will be a question-and-answer session at the end of the call. I would now like to introduce Keurig Dr Pepper’s Vice President of Investor Relations and Strategic Initiatives, Jane Gelfand. Ms. Gelfand, please go ahead.

Jane Gelfand: Thank you, and hello, everyone. Earlier this morning, we issued a press release detailing our second quarter results. Consistent with previous quarters, we will be discussing our performance on an adjusted basis, which reflects constant currency growth rates and excludes items affecting comparability. The company believes that the adjusted basis provides investors with additional insight into our business and operating performance trends. While the exclusion of items affecting comparability and the use of constant currency growth rates are not in accordance with GAAP, we believe that the adjusted basis provides meaningful comparisons and an appropriate basis for discussion of our performance. Details of the excluded items are provided in the reconciliation tables included in our press release and our 10-Q, which will be filed later today.

Due to the inability to predict the amount and timing of certain impacts outside of the company’s control, we do not reconcile our guidance. We will also speak about the concept of underlying performance, which removes the impact of non-operational items in the current and prior years. These items include gains on asset sale leaseback transactions, reimbursement of litigation expenses related to the successful resolution of our BODYARMOR lawsuit, a business interruption insurance recovery and a change in accounting policy for stock compensation. Finally, our discussion this morning may include forward-looking statements, which are subject to the Safe Harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially, and the company undertakes no obligation to update these statements based upon subsequent events.

A detailed discussion of these risks and uncertainties is contained in the company’s filings with the SEC. Here with us today to discuss our results are KDP Chairman and CEO, Bob Gamgort; Chief Financial Officer, Sudhanshu Priyadarshi; and our Chief Corporate Affairs Officer, Maria Sceppaguercio. I’ll now turn it over to Bob.

Robert Gamgort: Thanks, Jane, and good morning, everyone. KDP’s second quarter once again demonstrated our portfolio’s resilience and ability to consistently deliver on our total company commitments. Our solid performance was driven by strength in U.S. refreshment beverages, encouraging developments in U.S. coffee and continued momentum in international. Consolidated Q2 results were healthy with strong revenue momentum and sequentially accelerating operating income and EPS growth. Net sales advanced more than 6% supported by net price realization, modest category elasticities and good share performance across much of our portfolio. For the first time since Q3 2021, reported gross margins expanded as an improving balance between pricing, inflation and productivity began to emerge.

Gross profit dollar growth funded marketing increases across all segments, and help to offset continued cost pressures in transportation, warehousing, and labor. As we forecasted, we’re in the early stages of a margin recovery that we expect become more visible in the back half. Looking ahead to the balance of the year, we are raising our 2023 net sales growth outlook to 5% to 6%, while our full year EPS Outlook is optically unchanged, it in fact represents greater than originally anticipated underlying rule with an enhanced composition to our earnings profile. As Sudhanshu will discuss in more detail, we now expect minimal non-operational items in 2023 setting KDP up for strong and sustainable earnings base from which to grow in 2024 and beyond.

U.S. refreshment beverage’s performance in Q2 was outstanding double-digit revenue growth and strong operating margin expansion. Similar to last quarter, category growth and our own momentum remained pricing-le. Limited volume elasticities across the portfolio. Though demand is resilient, we are mindful of the various pressures facing our consumers, and are proactively meeting our needs to product, and package innovation along with strong in-market execution. These elements come together, we see market share gains. Q2 these were most notable across our CSDs sparkling water, coconut water and juice portfolios. Even as price realization begins to moderate in the back half, we remain confident in our ability to drive attractive organic growth by creating value among three key dimensions.

First, by driving growth in core brands through marketing and brand renovation. Second by filling portfolio white spaces via innovation and external partnerships; and third, by enhancing the effectiveness of our omni-channel selling and distribution system. We delivered on each of these dimensions in Q2. Focusing first on our core brands. For the second consecutive quarter, Dr. Pepper was the largest share gainer in the CSD category, bolstered by the success of Strawberries & Cream, and the continued strong momentum of Dr. Pepper Zero Sugar, which was once again maybe top two food and beverage product in IRI Circana’s New Product Pacesetter Innovation Ranking. Keurig also continue to outperform driven by its multicultural appeal and unsweetened sparkling waters, our partnership with Polar have now boosted the brand to the #2 volume share position nationally.

We also brought significant excitement or choose categories were mocked in a wine puncher driving innovation and gaining share. When it comes to the partnerships our C4 distribution transition is proceeding well. 2023 is a year of transition and investment and though it is still early days in our distribution rollout we are driving gains across multiple metrics and remain confident in the growth potential of C4. KDP distributed geographies, total points of distribution increased nearly 60% versus prior year and waited weeks on display across large format food outlets are up nearly 50% relative to the beginning of 2023. These gains translated into continued velocity and share momentum for C4, and accelerated the brand’s already strong revenue growth even further.

Clearly, our partnership approach continues to create win-win outcomes, making this model increasingly attractive to other high potential companies including La Colombe, which I’ll speak more about shortly. The effectiveness of our selling and distribution engine underpins our success across all the examples I cited. One would acknowledge the hard work our teams have done to drive improvement across the system where it shows signs of strain during the pandemic. Customer service levels have now significantly improved relative to where we were during the COVID period, and in some cases exceed pre-pandemic comparisons. But our work here is never complete. These strides are leading to even tighter in-store and on-shelf execution as our market share momentum demonstrates.

Turning now to US Coffee, we’re exiting Q2, we saw several encouraging developments that are expected to benefit segment performance over the coming quarters. On our last earnings call I identified three key tenets underpinning our expectations in this segment. First, an at-home coffee category momentum would begin to recover in the back half, as mobility comparison ease. Second that we would add approximately two million new households to Keurig’s ecosystem in 2023, aided by BrewID & Pod innovation and the addition of new brands. And third, that segment operating margins would improve meaningfully in the back half supported by a better balance between pricing, inflation and productivity. We had even more visibility to these elements playing out today with Q2 marking an expected trough in both top-line growth and margins.

Let’s address each point in turn. First, as anticipated, at home coffee category momentum began to improve toward the end of the second quarter. This continue to do so in July. Lot of time our consumers are spending at home this year versus last is continuing to normalize. Since we believe time spent at home is the single largest variable driving at home coffee consumption, it follows that volume trends are recovering too. We are observing this across broader at-home coffee within which single-serve continues to gain share. Category recovery is very clear when looking at publicly syndicated data. In Q1, Keurig compatible Pod volumes good proxy for the total single-serve category declined nearly 4% across measured channels. Q2 these declines moderated to less than 2% with improvement particularly notable towards the end of the quarter.

For the last four weeks, category volumes are flat to up slightly. Notably, category and KDP volume performance has been even stronger in non-track channels such as e-commerce and Unmeasured Club. Category trend is a positive leading indicator for our business and we would expect sequential improvement in net sales growth in the back half. That said, we are prepared for our volume growth to lag the single-serve category in the shorter term, as we focus on optimizing profitability. Pricing across all sub- segments of our K-Cup K- portfolio Is now more fully flowing through our financials including from our partner breadth consistent with our previous expectation that pricing would catch up to inflation, but a delay We also exited some of our lowest margin private-label contracts.

Both of these elements are now filtering through our results and the syndicated data. Longer-term, our growth in U.S. coffee will remain underpinned by driving incremental household penetration for the Keurig system and increasing revenues from our existing 38 million active households, which brings me to the second tenet of our coffee outlook, driving incremental household penetration. In Q2, we furthered this growth strategy by elevating our presence in cold coffee, which is an important trend among younger consumers. This spring, we nationally expanded the K-Iced Brewer platform, especially formulated Ice K-Cup pods. Strong marketing and activation activities across all media and digital channels, including a special limited edition Rolling Stone’s K-Iced brewer that sold out in less than 24 hours.

These Innovations are off to a very strong start with the K-Iced Brewer family performing extremely well and our ice pods proving highly incremental to our base business. Just last week, we announced a strategic partnership with La Colombe, super premium and award-winning coffee brand with wide appeal and untapped potential. Partnership which includes an equity investment, a sales and distribution agreement for RTD Coffee and a K-Cup pod licensing agreement is a compelling example of our ability to add value to a single partner across both hot and cold beverages, which KDP is uniquely positioned to deliver. Our collaboration with La Colombe will encompass several exciting strategic avenues. We will leverage our sales and distribution capabilities to scale La Colombe across major retail classes of trade.

Along with the Pete’s brand, we’re creating a ready to drink coffee platform, which will enable us to better serve the needs of our consumers and retail customers in this important category. We will also work closely with La Colombe to formulate and introduce the brand into the Keurig ecosystem in a K-Cup format. Here too, we are building a super premium platform as La Colombe joined several recently added brands like Intelligentsia, BLK & Bold, and Philz. Additionally, La Colombe is a vertically integrated model and specialized manufacturing knowledge are other differentiated elements that could enhance our collaboration over time. In short, this partnership has strong value creation potential that when unlocked will benefit both KDP and LA Colombe to our joint ownership model.

Now moving to the third element, driving our coffee outlook. We continue to expect segment margins for the U.S. coffee segment to meaningfully improve both sequentially and year-over-year in Q3 and Q4. Multiple factors led the segment margin contraction over the last few years and several elements including sequential favorability in pricing, commodity costs and productivity are now starting to come together to facilitate a margin rebuild. Pricing to offset cumulative inflation across our K-Cup portfolio including for partner and private-label brands will now more fully flow through starting in Q3. Commodity cost pressures including in green coffee and packaging are also projected to ease. Efficiency benefits should ramp up throughout the year as we have redoubled our productivity efforts following a period focus on mitigating supply chain disruptions.

We will work to further enhance these elements going forward with the expected back half margin inflection and important marker for future profit growth. Our International segment continues to perform well, even as it begins to lapse double-digit growth in the year ago period. In Q2, Canadian volume momentum was fueled by non-alcoholic and low alcohol beverages where we have multiple brands like Atypique and Labatt’s is gaining share. This is an exciting set of emerging categories where we plan to leverage our learnings across markets. Execution also remains strong in our Canadian coffee business where KDP manufactured Pod’s grew consumption dollars in gained market share during the period. In Mexico, our DSD network continues to strengthen, which is supporting broad based share momentum across our LRB portfolio and the ongoing rollout of our partnership with Red Bull.

Across the portfolio, Pen UCL and its aide extensions into flavored sparkling waters, as well as our CSD brands continue to perform very well. Wrapping up, our consolidated Q2 results are yet another illustration of our modern beverage company working to deliver strong, consistent and predictable company performance. We continue to develop our business for the long term to investments in innovation, partnerships and capabilities, while demonstrating our ability to work through shorter-term normalization in coffee. We also continue to deploy our cash to create value for shareholders. It’s all this via the equity investment in La Colombe and through the opportunistic repurchase of KDP’s shares, which continued through Q2 as our share price remain dislocated.

We are raising our 2023 outlook for constant currency net sales growth, do 5% to 6% and reaffirming our guidance for adjusted EPS growth of 6% to 7% with an improving composition of our earnings profile. We now expect only minimal non-operational benefits within the frameworks of this guidance implying double-digit adjusted EPS growth on an underlying basis. I’ll now turn it over to Sudhanshu to discuss Q2 results and our balance of year outlook in greater detail.

Sudhanshu Priyadarshi : Thanks, Bob, and good morning, everyone. We are pleased with our concentrated quarter two results which represented another quarter of strong sales growth with reported gross margin expansion both sequentially and year-over-year and significant reinvestment in marketing. Reported sales advanced 6.6%, to $3.8 billion with 6.1% organic growth, reflecting strong pricing and a modest decline in volume mix. Consolidated top-line momentum, was driven by U.S. refreshment beverages and international segments, partially offset by a trough quarter in U.S. coffee which we anticipated. Reported gross margin expanded slightly year-over-year to 54.8% as we made progress in offsetting ongoing inflection. This is an important change in trend past in the nearly two years.

Even with continued cost pressures across transportation, warehousing and labor, we reinvested significantly in marketing, with increases across each segment. As a result, total SG&A as a percentage of sales deleveraged 40 basis points year-over-year. Adjusted operating income grew 4.4%, and additional below the line leverage helped drive adjusted EPS of $0.42, 7.7% above prior year. We continued to deploy our cash in accordance with our evolved capital allocation priorities. Over the past four quarters, we have opportunistically repurchased nearly 22 million KDP shares, including 7 million shares in quarter two in recognition of a significant long-term opportunity in our stock. Combined with our quarterly dividend, we have returned approximately $1.9 billion of cash to shareholders over this timeframe.

In addition, since the merger, we have evolved our ownership structure to that of the modern beverage company we are today, increasing KDP’s public float from 13% in 2018 to 73% today. This includes the exit of Mondelēz which earlier this month completed its final sale of the long-term strategic equity stake it took as part of the KGM Tech private in 2016. During the quarter, we continued to persistently invest in promising partnership and M&A opportunities, namely the $300 million investment we made in La Colombe announced last week. KDP’s successful track record in the scaling beverage brands and strengthening our leadership positions across our key categories make us a sought-after partner for high potential companies and brand owners.

We remain discerning and disciplined at all such opportunities seeking out only those that has compelling the strategic merit create win-win outcomes for both parties and provide significant value creation potential. Turning now to segment performance. U.S. refreshment beverages sales grew an impressive 11.8%, led by 12 percentage points from pricing with virtually no volume mix impact. This resilient volume mix performance continue to reflect the strength of our portfolio, ongoing market share gains, manageable. category elasticities in the face of significant pricing and the contribution from C4 energy. Segment operating income increased 18.1% and segment margins expanded 150 basis points as pricing and productivity benefits more than offset commodity, manufacturing and labor inflation and an increase in marketing investments.

In US coffee, sales declined by 0.7%, with positive pricing more than offset by anticipated volume expression which I will further explain now. Focusing first on the consumable parts business, as Bob indicated, we are encouraged by the improving consumption volume trends in the single subcategory exiting the first half. We see this category trend as the leading indicator for the direction of our business. Further, in quarter two, our reported Pod shipment declines had yet to reflect any improvement due to three primary factors. First, a category volume recovery began later in the period and therefore had a limited impact on quarterly results. Second , we lapped a period last year when we were replenishing retailer and partner inventories after supplying to disruptions creating a difficult shipment compression; and third, our conjunction and shipment volume were impacted by our decision to exit some low value private-label contracts.

We expect some lingering impact to our shipment volume from factors two entry as we move into quarter three. Even so revenue trends are projected to sequentially strengthen driven by positive pricing and moderating volume declines. On a trailing 12 month basis, brewer shipments declined 11% year-over-year. For perspective, our brewer volume is still 18% higher than the comparable 12-month period ending quarter two 2019, which represents a clean pre-pandemic compression. The point here is that, despite all the volatility of the last several years, the surging demand during the height of COVID and the later stages of normalization we are working through, demand for Keurig ecosystem is greater today than it was four years ago among both consumers and retail partners.

Our Q2 brewer shipment declined 10.9%, a sequential improvement relative to quarter one and were impacted by the same factors we discussed last quarter. With improved softer discretionary demand for smaller appliances, including brewers which saw mid-single-digit consumption declines and additional, albeit moderating pressures from trade inventory rebalancing. After two quarters of inventory adjustments, we believe these are that largely behind us looking out to the back half. Importantly, Keurig branded brewers gained share of all of coffee makers sold in quarter two, which recently launched KI brewers seen good traction in the market. We will further support these new brewers and highly incremental ice bars in the back half as we continue to expand our cold coffee platform and offerings.

US coffee operating income contracted 14.6% at 30.1% segment margins were similar to quarter one level, but 310 basis points lower year-over-year. Versus the prior year, this performance reflected a continued unfavorable relationship between pricing and inflation, as well a significant investment in higher marketing in part to support our ice innovation launches. Looking to the back half of the year in U.S. coffee, we forecast a gradual recovery in revenue growth, coupled with significantly improved margins. This combination underpins our outlook or a strong rebound in segment, operating income with positive growth in quarter three to be followed by very attractive gains in quarter four. Our international segment performance in quarter two remains strong even as we lapped tougher years ago completions.

Net sales increased 10.9% on a reported basis with constant currency growth up 7%. Net price realization contributed 6.1% and volume mix was up 0.9% year-over-year. Segment operating income grew 11.5% on a reported basis and 7.7% in constant currency, reflecting the benefit of the growth in net sales and increase productivity, partially offset by inflationary pressures and a significant increase in marketing investment. Turning briefly to cash flow. Free cash flow totaled almost $300 million in the second quarter. As we enter the seasonally more cash generative back half, we would expect our absolute levels of free cash flow as well as free cash conversion to meaningfully improve from here. This brings me to our consolidated outlook for 2023, which we updated in our press release this morning.

Our outlook for constant currency net sales growth is now higher at 5% to 6% and we continue to expect adjusted EPS to grow 6% to 7%. While our EPS outlook is unchanged on the surface, expected profile of our earnings is now further improved relative to our guidance earlier this year. Specifically, you’ll recall that 2022 benefited from several non-operational items and at the start of this year we expected to reduce the use of these items by approximately 50% in 2023. I am pleased to share that our EPS forecast now includes only minimal such benefits. As a result, on an underlying basis, I our EPS growth is now projected to be in the double-digits versus our prior expectations for a high-single-digit gain. This very strong underlying performance demonstrates the earnings power inherent in KDP’s model.

It is also effectively and increase to our 2023 growth outlook and will preclude any further upside to EPS expectations for this year while setting us up for a strong and sustainable base from which KDP can grow earnings in 2024. Our full year guidance includes the following expectations for below the line items. Interest expense in a $470 million to $475 million range; equity method earnings from Nutrabolt of approximately $40 million to $45 million; an effective tax rate of 22% for the year and approximately $1.4 1 billion diluted, which is average shares outstanding. We have covered a lot of ground today. So I would just finish by remarking on the projected cadence of earnings for the balance of the year. Given the evolution of pricing, inflation and productivity, along with the timing of planned reinvestments over the back half, we expect only modest EPS growth in quarter three, followed by very strong results in quarter four.

With the good first half in the books and the enhanced visibility to the balance of the year, we are confident in our robust finish to 2023. With that, I will now turn the call back to Bob for closing comments. Robert Gamgort Thanks, Sudhanshu. If you haven’t done so already, I encourage all of you to read our 2020 corporate responsibility report, which was published last month. Highlighted within its pages is the significant work KDP is doing to further our sustainability agenda. We’re very proud of our progress across multiple focus areas including in renewable energy, water stewardship, and diversity and inclusion. To close, Q2 was a very good quarter for KDP across multiple dimensions. Performance in U.S. refreshment beverages was once again exceptional and international posted another great quarter.

US coffee is approaching an important inflection with improved visibility to a significant margin recovery, which we expect to lead to strong operating income growth as we close out this transitional year for the segment. On a consolidated basis our efforts to offset inflation are increasingly evident in gross margin stability, and marketing reinvestment across all segments. And as we discussed today, full year guidance implies double-digit underlying EPS growth with an even stronger top-line outlook. These are all key elements to set us up for ongoing momentum in the back half and ultimately into next year. I will now turn the call over to the operator for questions.

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Q&A Session

Operator: [Operator Instructions] Our first question will come from Chris Carey with Wells Fargo Securities. You may now go ahead.

Chris Carey: Hi, good morning, everyone.

Robert Gamgort: Hi, Chris.

Chris Carey : So, clearly, tall results on a total company level, but at the same time so much of the day to be has been around coffee. And I think there’s been a bit of a misunderstanding that the underlying assumption of the category has actually been improving through the year. And I think, what I hear today is that that improvement has continued to accelerate through the quarter and into the quarter-to-date. And so, I just have a couple specific questions around that. So first, you why do you think that underlying improvement has been occurring? And really I’m trying to get to the context of sustainability. It is as simple as the away-from-home channel was recovering in the front half of the year, that’s normalized. Now, the at home channel has normalized, as well.

And secondly, it sounds like you expect to remain below consumption in coffee into the second half of the year. Is that a Pod and Brewer comment? And just given the tough comps and you’re making some changes to the portfolio, would you expect that dynamic to carry into 2024? Or this predominantly in Q3, is this Q4 and then you’ve normalized from there? So, thanks for any perspective on just underlying durability of this improvement. We’ve seen in the at-home coffee channel and also this dynamic of shifting to consumption and when you think you can start to close that gap over the next two to four quarters? Thanks so much.

Robert Gamgort : Okay, Chris. Let me start it at a very high level with the total category, because I think that is most important. We’ve clearly weathered a storm over the past year or so that’s impacted our category and our profitability within the negative impacts were on at home coffee. We saw this category decline in all forms globally. And to answer your question, we have seen that as primarily driven by mobility changes. This is the post-COVID recovery mobility impact. That’s largely played out. I think, by the end of the third quarter for sure that will be played out. We also had some issues in terms of supply chain recovery coming out of COVID where it was a service at all cost mindset and we were also not focused on productivity and of course inflation.

And that was combined with the lag in our pricing realization. And that’s when you add that all up, that’s quite a list of challenges in our coffee business over the past year. If you look at what the setup is right now, it’s much more constructive. We’re seeing a rebound in category and that’s largely driven by normalized mobility. To your specific question about away-from-home versus at home, wait from that hasn’t change that much, right. If you look at office occupancy, it’s pretty stable. It’s improving very, very gradually. Over time, if that improves, then we’ll get the benefit of from that on our way from home coffee business. But that’s not something that we’re banking on. It’s really been an at-home coffee consumption story driven by changes in mobility.

So we’re seeing is rebound in category. As we talked about in our prepared remarks, we’re seeing that pricing that we talked about that was lagged now flowing through the P&L and of course we’re seeing a moderation in inflation and the combination of that is very constructive going forward. And one thing I would point out is that single-serve coffee has had and continues to gain share of all forms of coffee over this time period In terms of our shipments below consumption, the best way to look at us over the long term, I am not going to talk about 2024 specifically, but our shipments share approximate category consumption over time. Our focus is on category growth. We have about an 80% share of all Pods that go through the system. Mix can change over time, but again we’re focused on category.