Post Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:POST) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Jeff Zadoks: Yeah, so first of all, our comment was more focused on EBITDA growth. So not necessarily top and bottom-line growth for those two businesses that you just described. Although for Refrigerated Retail, we do expect the side dish business to have revenue growth. So to repeat part of the response to Michael’s question, in Refrigerated Retail the margin, and frankly this comment applies to both businesses. They were — they are the two businesses where our products respond most favorably to advertising. They are the two businesses where we put most of our incremental spending that we previewed last quarter that we were able to do because of the outperformance of the rest of the business. So in the fourth quarter, both the Refrigerated Retail business and Weetabix had incremental spending on advertising, that was above the normal run-rate level.

In addition within Weetabix, there were projects that we believe will kick-start 2024 that we invested in certain consulting activities for looking at our trade promotion and the effectiveness of our trade promotion and also looking at ways that we can improve the cost structure of that business. So we would not expect those to repeat at the same level in the go forward periods. To your — the last part of your comment about Weetabix, so fourth quarter was artificially low. But you’re right, the margin in that business has suffered more than the rest of our portfolio. We attribute that to the fact that the UK environment is much — has been much tougher than the US environment. So that’s part of the equation. And we are very premium products, the Weetabix brand is a very premium product in the UK market.

If you track that, that market at all, cereal has become 50%, and actually slightly greater than 50% private label. So much more dramatic move to value than we’ve seen here in the US. And what we need to do to get it back to closer to where we were pre-pandemic, is we believe we need to simplify the business. We need to have a renewed focus on cost-reduction and we need to continue investing in the brand so that we maintain the premium price points that enable us to generate the margins from that business. So the combination of those three things are the things that are going to be the focus of our activities in 2024.

Jason English: Okay. I appreciate all that color. And one more real quick tactical question. CapEx, I feel like every year in the fourth quarter, you guys give CapEx guidance for next year and I have to revise my estimate higher, which is probably my own fault for continuously underestimating it. Can you give us a bit more line of sight, can you give us a level for this year? Should we expect that level to be kind of the run-rate as we move forward or could it move higher or lower?

Matt Mainer: Yeah, Jason, we would expect a similar run-rate through ’25. A couple of these investments carryover into next fiscal year as well. So there’s meaningful investment behind those.

Jason English: Understood. Thanks a lot guys. I’ll pass it on.

Jeff Zadoks: Sure. Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. We have reached the end of our question-and-answer session. Thank you for joining us today. You may disconnect.

Jeff Zadoks: Thank you.

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