SunOpta Inc. (NASDAQ:STKL) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Andrew Strelzik: Hey, good afternoon. Thanks for taking the questions. My first one is kind of at a high level on competitive dynamics and how you’re thinking about that. Through 2023 and into the future, I know there’s only so much that you can say with respect to customers or competitors, et cetera. But just as we think about some of the other publicly traded peers in the space, evolving their production capabilities, do you think that, that impacts you at all with any of your key customers and anything we should be aware of?

Joe Ennen: Yes, Andrew, what I would say is every business and every industry have competitors, and we do as well. And we are very confident in our competitive advantages in the service model that we provide our customers. And the proof is in the pudding, right? And you look at just our growth rates in EBITDA, our revenue growth rates, our growth by channel, et cetera, that is the strongest indicator possible that we have real broad and sustainable competitive advantages. And we certainly have competitors. We respect them. We monitor them as closely as possible. But we’re confident in the playbook we’re running. And we’re demonstrating that the business model that we have assembled and the customer service and value equation that we offer customers is proving itself in the marketplace to be incredibly valuable.

Andrew Strelzik: Okay, great. That makes sense. Also a question on kind of broadly the margin progression through the year. And in particular, I’m curious, just as you talked about commissioning that 330-milliliter piece of the business and that coming online. Does that have any material impact on just broader comments on the shape of the margin progression through the year, please?

Scott Huckins: Yes, Andrew. Hi, it’s Scott. I think what we’re trying to outline in my prepared remarks was exactly that, that all other factors being equal, you would expect to see positive sequential margin development because I tried to lay out each quarter’s estimated start-up costs, for example, so for modeling purposes, you’d have a feel for that. And then the second one is I think I laid out the amount of incremental depreciation. So, just conceptually, go back to the basics is we’re bringing up Texas, as an example, selling that through, you’d expect positive margin development sequentially through the year.

Andrew Strelzik: Okay, great. And then just a last quick one for me. Just as it relates to the strategy around being the low-cost producer in fruit, what’s on the agenda for 2023? And anything new that is on the productivity agenda there that we should be mindful of as we see the year play out? Thanks.

Scott Huckins: Good question. I think 2022 really demonstrated what we’re capable of. I think — if you go back in time, we’ve talked about — we got to send three plants out of six in that frozen business. And I think what’s happened is you’ve seen the flow-through to profit from a better absorbed operating business. And then I think the second piece is, I think you’ll recall, we resigned a fair amount of SKUs that were lower de minimis margin. So, from a productivity standpoint, I think we’re running the business in frozen exactly as we had expected to, and it shows up in the P&L. I would say turning to fruit snacks we’re very excited about really the second half of 2023. I think we’ve mentioned a few times, we’ve got a large expansion project in that business that we expect to come online in the third quarter.

And that’s important because that will deliver another material leg of growth. I wish it we heard sooner, but I think that’s the recap that we’ve talked about in the past.

Andrew Strelzik: Great. Thank you very much.

Operator: We’ll go next now to Alex Fuhrman of Craig-Hallum.