Whole Earth Brands, Inc. (NASDAQ:FREE) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Also, one of the big focus of the team is growing our distribution internationally and going into other countries. Whether it is Germany, which we sell $200,000, $300,000 today, very few — little bit of business in Belgium. So there is some big expansion opportunities, but the big thing is to get our service levels up to the levels that they should be to ensure that we can service our customers.

Ryan Meyers: Got it. That’s helpful. And then when we think about the sequential margin improvement, I’m just wondering if you guys can quantify how much of that was actually exiting lower-margin businesses or taking overall cost out of the business, whether it’s through supply chain reinvention or whatever you want to call it. Just curious what that kind of mix is and I think that would be helpful to understand. .

Bernardo Fiaux: I’ll take that as well. In terms of the margin improvement in second quarter and in the first quarter, the majority of that is being driven by cost, especially on the transportation side has been one of the areas that has been up. Product mix although helped by the sugar bulk sales decreasing, it was not a major driver for our portfolio.

Operator: Our next question comes from George Kelly with ROTH Capital Partners.

George Kelly: So a couple for you on the Flavors business. Maybe to start, if you could give a little more detail on the PFAS replacement opportunity. You commented just in the prepared remarks about how that’s something you’re looking more into, I was wondering if you could just give more detail on maybe how significant of an opportunity that could be? And what is it that you’re actually like — what target uses do you see your products being helpful for.

Irwin Simon: Jeff?

Jeffrey Robinson: Yes, I’ll take that one. Thank you. So PFAS compounds, they have a lot of different uses across various industries for coatings, for cleaners, firefighting foam and in particular, industrial surfactants, which are basically foaming agent surface tension agents on bodies of water. And there’s thousands of PFAS chemicals out there. They are coming under a lot of environmental scrutiny because they persist in the environment and there’s bioaccumulation. In other words, they accumulate in living organisms. And there’s all kinds of potentially identified risks like risk to metabolism, fertility, cancer, fetal growth, immune systems. So licorice has some historical uses where PFAS compounds have also been used. And it’s funny that maybe licorice started out as an industrial surfactant in certain applications.

And then it was replaced by PFAS compounds. But now with this concern over the environmental impact of using PFAS compounds and what happens if they go into the land and so forth, where the market is really opening up for us mostly in industrial surfactants. And licorice functions extremely well. But now with the change in the environmental attitudes and moving towards just better environmental responsibility, licorice root extracted with water is certainly environmentally friendly.

George Kelly: Okay. I guess is there a way to give any kind of size opportunity? I mean — just trying to.

Irwin Simon: We don’t want to do that for competitive reasons, we don’t break out the subsegments of our sales.

George Kelly: Okay. Fair enough. And then second question for me, still on the Flavors business. But if I — that business has been so strong, both in revenue and the growth number and the margin that you’re reporting — and if I’m looking at more kind of medium, long term from here, I’m just curious, what’s a good sort of high-level financial model to underwrite to. I mean is this kind of — I remember it being a low single-digit grower. I’m not sure if you think maybe now that opportunity is greater. And on the margin side, it’s been that kind of 30% segment operating margin right around there. I’m wondering if you see longer-term opportunity there? Or is that a good place to be for the medium term?