Lamb Weston Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:LW) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Peter Galbo : Got it. Thanks very much, guys.

Bernadette Madarieta : Yep, thank you.

Operator: And our next question is going to come from Chris Growe from Stifel.

Chris Growe : Thank you. Good morning.

Tom Werner : Good morning, Chris.

Chris Growe : Hi. Happy New Year. Hi. Just a bit of a follow-on to that Peter’s question and some of your response there. I guess just to understand the gross margin this quarter. I just want to get a sense of how unique the performance was this quarter. And I was sticking around the areas of like mix and perhaps even like limited time offerings to what degree that’s influencing the gross margin this quarter that may not be sustainable? And then to what degree you’re walking away from lower-margin business, and to what degree that’s influencing your margin as well, perhaps there’s other issues, too. But those are a couple of things I was thinking about just to get a little sense around and how that could affect the gross margin going forward.

Bernadette Madarieta : Yeah. No, thank you for that question. And as it relates to the gross margin going forward, LTOs, there isn’t anything unusual that we would have experienced this quarter relative to prior quarters or going forward. Really, what you’re seeing is that we were able to pull forward a lot of the pricing actions in Global earlier than expected. And then we’re going to be lapping some of the Foodservice and Retail price increases in the back half of the year. So there’ll be more of a muted effect related to that. So a combination of the higher potato costs, the inflation and then the deceleration of that price/mix growth, that’s what you’re going to see have an effect on those margins in the back half of the year.

Chris Growe : Okay. Thank you for that. And actually, I have a follow-on to that, which just be that you talked about pulling forward some of those global contract renewal discussions. So it sounds like you had a good renewal from this past summer, and that should start to kick in now. But it sounds like you also then pulled forward some — maybe some from next summer. — or even summers ahead. I guess just to get a sense of where you are then on contract renewals normally. It’s like a third every year. Did you — were you able to get more of that done is the question?

Bernadette Madarieta : Yeah. We were able to go out and have conversations with our customers and pull more of that forward than had been anticipated, more than what we would have typically seen with our contract renewals. So we expect that the global pricing will remain strong in the back half. It’s just we’ve been able to pull that forward earlier than expected.

Chris Growe : And can you say how much of your contract renewals, how much more you’ve done this year? Or how much less you’ll have for you going forward?

Bernadette Madarieta : No, I can’t really speak to that. I’d say, overall, we’ve got probably about 25% that we’ll need to continue to renegotiate.

Chris Growe : Okay.

Bernadette Madarieta : But again —