Farmer Bros Co (FARM) 2022 Q4 法說會逐字稿

Good day, and welcome to the Farmer Brothers Fiscal Fourth Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call. (Operator Instructions) Please note this event is being recorded.

美好的一天，歡迎參加 Farmer Brothers 2022 年第四季度財報電話會議。 （操作員說明）請注意正在記錄此事件。

I would now like to turn the conference over to Jeff Majtyka with Ellipsis IR. Please go ahead.

我現在想把會議交給 Ellipsis IR 的 Jeff Majtyka。請繼續。

Joining me today are Deverl Maserang, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Scott Drake, Chief Financial Officer. Earlier today, the company issued its earnings press release, which is available on the Investor Relations section of Farmer Brothers' website at www.farmerbros.com. The press release is also included as an exhibit to the company's Form 10-K and is available on the company's website and on the Securities and Exchange Commission's website at www.sec.gov. A replay of this audio-only webcast will be available approximately 2 hours after the conclusion of this call. The link to the audio replay will also be available on the company's website.

今天加入我的是總裁兼首席執行官 Deverl Maserang；和首席財務官 Scott Drake。今天早些時候，該公司發布了收益新聞稿，該新聞稿可在 Farmer Brothers 網站 www.farmerbros.com 的投資者關係部分查閱。該新聞稿還包含在公司的 10-K 表格中，可在公司網站和美國證券交易委員會網站 www.sec.gov 上查閱。本次電話會議結束後大約 2 小時將提供此純音頻網絡廣播的重播。音頻重播的鏈接也將在該公司的網站上提供。

Before we begin the call, please note that all of the financial information presented is unaudited and the various remarks made by management during this call about the company's future expectations, plans and prospects may constitute forward-looking statements for purposes of the safe harbor provisions under the federal securities laws and regulations. These forward-looking statements represent the company's views only as of today and should not be relied upon as representing the company's views as of any subsequent date. Results could differ materially from those forward-looking statements. Additional information on factors that could cause actual results and other events to differ materially from those forward-looking statements is available in the company's press release and public filings.

在我們開始電話會議之前，請注意，所提供的所有財務信息均未經審計，管理層在本次電話會議期間就公司的未來預期、計劃和前景發表的各種言論可能構成前瞻性陳述，就安全港條款而言聯邦證券法律法規。這些前瞻性陳述僅代表公司截至今天的觀點，不應被視為代表公司在任何後續日期的觀點。結果可能與這些前瞻性陳述大不相同。有關可能導致實際結果和其他事件與這些前瞻性陳述產生重大差異的因素的更多信息，請參閱公司的新聞稿和公開文件。

On today's call, management will also use certain non-GAAP financial measures, including adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA margin in assessing the company's operating performance. Reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to their most directly comparable GAAP measures is also included in the company's press release.

在今天的電話會議上，管理層還將使用某些非公認會計原則財務指標，包括調整後的 EBITDA 和調整後的 EBITDA 利潤率來評估公司的經營業績。這些非公認會計原則財務指標與其最直接可比的公認會計原則指標的對賬也包含在公司的新聞稿中。

I will now turn the call over to Deverl. Deverl, please go ahead.

我現在將把電話轉給 Deverl。德維爾，請繼續。

Thank you, Jeff, and good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for joining us today. Our fourth quarter and fiscal 2022 year-end results were highlighted by continued recovery across our business. The fourth quarter is the first quarter without any significant impact from COVID-related mandates or shutdowns, which have been impacting our business since February 2020. We are excited about the results we have achieved this quarter, and we believe we are positioning the company for future success.

謝謝你，傑夫，大家下午好。感謝您今天加入我們。我們的業務持續復甦突顯了我們第四季度和 2022 財年的年終業績。第四季度是第一季度，沒有受到與 COVID 相關的授權或關閉的任何重大影響，自 2020 年 2 月以來一直影響我們的業務。我們對本季度取得的成果感到興奮，我們相信我們正在為公司定位未來的成功。

While we are keeping a close eye on the current economic and inflationary pressures, we believe that we are starting to see our business' true potential power and leverage in a more normal environment. As we continue to recover from the impact of COVID and shift our focus from fixing and optimizing our operations, we anticipate pursuing a more aggressive growth-oriented approach. We recently brought on board a full-time seasoned IT executive, [Dilip Lalani], to lead our IT function. He and his team have laid out a very robust IT road map, infrastructure architecture and business operating model that is affordable and can be paced against our current projected capital plan. In addition, we will continuously optimize the business as we react to the ever-changing challenges in the new normal we now live in.

雖然我們密切關注當前的經濟和通脹壓力，但我們相信我們開始在更正常的環境中看到我們業務的真正潛在力量和槓桿作用。隨著我們繼續從 COVID 的影響中恢復過來，並將我們的重點從修復和優化我們的運營轉移，我們預計將採用更積極的以增長為導向的方法。我們最近聘請了一位經驗豐富的全職 IT 主管 [Dilip Lalani] 來領導我們的 IT 職能部門。他和他的團隊制定了一個非常強大的 IT 路線圖、基礎設施架構和業務運營模型，這些模型價格合理，可以根據我們當前的預計資本計劃進行調整。此外，我們將不斷優化業務，以應對我們現在生活的新常態中不斷變化的挑戰。

As always, I'll let Scott provide more detail on our financials, including thoughts on our medium-term outlook for Farmer Brothers. While my comments will primarily focus on strategy and operations, still, I'd like to highlight a few figures.

與往常一樣，我會讓斯科特提供更多關於我們財務狀況的詳細信息，包括對 Farmer Brothers 中期前景的看法。雖然我的評論將主要集中在戰略和運營上，但我還是想強調一些數字。

Our top line sales for the fiscal year 2022 were up 18% to approximately $470 million, primarily driven by the sales growth we experienced in our DSD and Direct Ship channels throughout the fiscal year. Similarly, on a quarter-over-quarter basis, our net sales grew 20% from the prior year period to $123 million in the fiscal fourth quarter. Sales within our DSD channel were up year-over-year and were highlighted by several substantial customer wins, which led to strong customer net gain for the fiscal year, which increased drop sizes.

我們在 2022 財年的收入增長了 18%，達到約 4.7 億美元，這主要是由於我們在整個財年的 DSD 和 Direct Ship 渠道所經歷的銷售增長。同樣，在第四財季，我們的淨銷售額環比增長 20%，達到 1.23 億美元。我們 DSD 渠道內的銷售額同比增長，其中幾項重大客戶贏得突出，這導致本財年客戶淨收益強勁，從而增加了降幅。

Notably, we recently secured sizable national chain wins in the convenience and QSR channels that have the potential to add thousands of stops to our DSD business annually. To give you an idea of the impact of these wins, the QSR chain alone increased our revenue by over $1 million in the fiscal fourth quarter and is estimated to add an additional $6 million of annualized revenue to our top line. We believe these wins are just an early indication of our potential sales growth runway, and we feel good about our opportunity pipeline as we head into the fiscal year 2023.

值得注意的是，我們最近在便利和 QSR 渠道中獲得了相當大的全國連鎖勝利，這些渠道有可能每年為我們的 DSD 業務增加數千個站點。為了讓您了解這些勝利的影響，僅 QSR 連鎖店在第四財季的收入就增加了超過 100 萬美元，估計為我們的收入增加了 600 萬美元的年化收入。我們認為，這些勝利只是我們潛在銷售增長跑道的早期跡象，我們對進入 2023 財年的機會管道感到滿意。

Of course, a big part of our operational focus over the past 2-plus years has been to improve the company's margin structure to drive profitable growth as a favorable sales climate return. We've seen early evidence of that with a 7-quarter run of sequential gross margin improvement. While emerging economic pressures have temporarily halted that run in Q4, we still delivered a 3.8% expansion of our gross margin year-over-year, leading to a full year fiscal '22 margin of 29.2%. On a quarterly basis, gross margin increased to 28.4% from 27.6% in the prior year's fiscal fourth quarter period.

當然，在過去兩年多的時間裡，我們運營重點的很大一部分是改善公司的利潤率結構，以推動盈利增長，作為有利的銷售環境回報。我們已經看到了這方面的早期證據，連續 7 個季度的毛利率都有所提高。儘管新興的經濟壓力在第四季度暫時停止，但我們的毛利率仍同比增長 3.8%，導致 22 財年全年利潤率為 29.2%。按季度計算，毛利率從去年第四財季的 27.6% 增至 28.4%。

Ultimately, the economic and inflationary pressures that developed in Q4 are outside our control. They included reduced hours at certain customer locations, labor shortages that disproportionately hit services businesses and continued supply chain impact that forced us to be creative in addressing solutions to avoid cost or deliver dollar-for-dollar cost savings. The team did excellent work reacting to these challenges.

最終，第四季度出現的經濟和通脹壓力超出了我們的控制範圍。其中包括減少某些客戶地點的工作時間、嚴重打擊服務業務的勞動力短缺以及持續的供應鏈影響，迫使我們在解決解決方案方面具有創造性，以避免成本或節省成本。該團隊在應對這些挑戰方面做得非常出色。

Further, while nautical freight costs have come down, the differential in inventory volumes to sales has gone up. In other words, costs are rising with volumes, but our customers' inventories are a bit stagnant as the reduced hours led to lower sales in our higher-margin DSD business. To combat inflationary and economic pressures, we must take pricing actions across our business and closely manage our cost structure. These actions allowed us to remain broadly in line with the inflationary pressures thus far.

此外，雖然海運成本已經下降，但庫存量與銷售額的差異卻在上升。換句話說，成本隨著數量的增加而上升，但我們客戶的庫存有點停滯，因為減少的工作時間導致我們利潤率較高的 DSD 業務的銷售額下降。為了應對通貨膨脹和經濟壓力，我們必須在我們的業務範圍內採取定價行動，並密切管理我們的成本結構。這些行動使我們能夠與迄今為止的通脹壓力大體保持一致。

Our hedging programs have been an effective defense against coffee price inflation, but there's still a lag before we fully catch up, and future prices are unknown. Much of the impact of this lag is due to 2 factors. First, our normal process for passing through cost updates to our Direct Ship customers includes a lag between when we incur the cost and when they are passed through to the customer. Secondly, the speed and magnitude of inflationary pressures that we are experiencing make it challenging to continue expanding margins as we have in the past.

我們的套期保值計劃有效地抵禦了咖啡價格的上漲，但在我們完全趕上之前還有一段延遲，而且未來的價格也不得而知。這種滯後的大部分影響是由於兩個因素造成的。首先，我們將成本更新傳遞給我們的 Direct Ship 客戶的正常流程包括我們產生成本和將成本傳遞給客戶之間的延遲。其次，我們正在經歷的通脹壓力的速度和幅度使我們難以像過去那樣繼續擴大利潤率。

To put a final point on our Q4 performance, I'm excited to see Farmer Brothers winning in the market again, evidenced by the progress of our solid sales. Due to the current economic environment, the company is continuing to focus on its growth initiatives to improve operational and financial performance.

最後一點是我們第四季度的表現，我很高興看到 Farmer Brothers 再次贏得市場，我們穩健的銷售進展證明了這一點。由於當前的經濟環境，該公司將繼續專注於其增長計劃，以改善運營和財務業績。

As noted earlier, we now accelerated activities around the third pillar of our strategic plan, which we laid out nearly 3 years ago. If you recall, when we came into this business, the first thing on our agenda was to fix the most glaring inefficiencies, which included winning the hearts and minds of each team member, getting the right team in place and system upgrades to help drive improved customer service execution. We then looked to optimize our operations and footprint by maximizing asset utilization, investing in operations reliability and overhauling our quality management processes. With our focus turning now to our third pillar, we have 2 main legs of growth heading into the fiscal 2023. The first we call recovery-based growth and the second is catalytic growth.

如前所述，我們現在圍繞我們近 3 年前製定的戰略計劃的第三個支柱加快了活動。如果您還記得，當我們進入這項業務時，我們議程上的第一件事就是解決最明顯的低效率問題，其中包括贏得每個團隊成員的心，組建合適的團隊和系統升級以幫助推動改進客戶服務執行。然後，我們希望通過最大限度地提高資產利用率、投資於運營可靠性和徹底改革我們的質量管理流程來優化我們的運營和足跡。隨著我們現在的重點轉向我們的第三個支柱，進入 2023 財年，我們有兩個主要的增長支柱。第一個我們稱為基於復甦的增長，第二個是催化增長。

Our recovery-based focus is on partnerships and other initiatives that create new opportunities while strengthening our ability to meet consumer demand, especially in more pressured economic environment. While we are not immune to recessionary pressures, we are fortunate to provide a product that many folks are unwilling to sacrifice, coffee. And furthermore, within this business, we believe we have ample flexibility to provide our customers and consumers with value for their dollar. In addition to partnerships, one initiative we're focusing on is offering lower-cost coffee blends without sacrificing quality. It's worth noting that many of these lower-cost options are SKUs we already provide where other premium coffee businesses do not.

我們基於復甦的重點是建立新機會的伙伴關係和其他舉措，同時加強我們滿足消費者需求的能力，尤其是在壓力更大的經濟環境中。雖然我們不能倖免於經濟衰退的壓力，但我們很幸運能夠提供一種許多人不願意犧牲的產品，咖啡。此外，在這項業務中，我們相信我們有足夠的靈活性為我們的客戶和消費者提供物有所值的服務。除了合作夥伴關係，我們關注的一項舉措是在不犧牲質量的情況下提供低成本的咖啡混合物。值得注意的是，這些低成本選項中有許多是我們已經提供的 SKU，而其他優質咖啡企業沒有。

In terms of catalytic growth, we are actively working on opportunities in higher growth extensions and adjacencies that leverage our platform and delivery network. In one example, we just signed an agreement with a global multinational base flavoring and extract company that is the newest coffee supplier to a large club store chain. This is an exciting, unique opportunity to help them grow their U.S. business, and we're expecting it will lead to many more similar options. We also have our High Brew partnership, which continue to see targeted wins in various channels. Overall, we will continue to drive sales penetration in our DSD network as more and more customers look for premium RTD solutions to meet consumer demand.

在催化增長方面，我們正在積極尋找利用我們的平台和交付網絡的更高增長擴展和鄰接的機會。在一個例子中，我們剛剛與一家全球跨國基地調味和提取公司簽署了一項協議，該公司是一家大型俱樂部連鎖店的最新咖啡供應商。這是一個令人興奮的獨特機會，可以幫助他們發展美國業務，我們預計它將帶來更多類似的選擇。我們還擁有 High Brew 合作夥伴關係，繼續在各種渠道中看到有針對性的勝利。總體而言，隨著越來越多的客戶尋求優質的 RTD 解決方案來滿足消費者的需求，我們將繼續推動我們 DSD 網絡的銷售滲透。

Another piece of our catalytic growth strategy is Revive, our coffee brewing equipment business, a business that is now fully turned on and ready to expand. Our Revive business has 2 aspects. One is tied closely into our espresso program through equipment upsells, coffee upgrades, beverage inclusions and working with customers to build their espresso programs at restaurants and other consumer-facing locations. We see a significant opportunity to drive the penetration of Revive into more of the 45,000 outlets nationwide that we serve today.

我們催化增長戰略的另一部分是 Revive，我們的咖啡釀造設備業務，該業務現已全面啟動並準備擴展。我們的複興業務有兩個方面。其中之一是通過設備追加銷售、咖啡升級、飲料內含物以及與客戶合作在餐廳和其他面向消費者的地點建立他們的濃縮咖啡計劃，與我們的濃縮咖啡計劃密切相關。我們看到了一個重要的機會，可以推動 Revive 滲透到我們今天服務的全國 45,000 家網點中的更多網點。

The other side of Revive is our standard white glove equipment maintenance and servicing business where sales growth has started to pick up in a meaningful way. If you recall, our Revive team is one of the U.S.'s largest fleets of certified coffee equipment experts. So while we are running our routes and delivering products, our team is also trained in equipment repair and maintenance, allowing us to remain sticky and close to our customers and removing the hassle of having to call elsewhere to keep their equipment functioning at optimal levels.

Revive 的另一面是我們的標準白手套設備維護和服務業務，銷售增長已經開始以有意義的方式回升。如果您還記得，我們的 Revive 團隊是美國最大的認證咖啡設備專家團隊之一。因此，在我們運營路線和交付產品的同時，我們的團隊還接受了設備維修和維護方面的培訓，這使我們能夠與客戶保持密切聯繫並與客戶保持密切聯繫，並消除了不得不打電話到其他地方以使他們的設備保持在最佳水平運行的麻煩。

We continue to add certifications to the service large coffee equipment manufacturers that see our support as critical and strategic to servicing their customers. We anticipate that a major portion of our future growth will come through providing service to this growing list of manufacturers. In fact, our Revive business achieved a mid-7-figure run rate in the fiscal fourth quarter and has since shown signs of further acceleration. We believe that Revive has the opportunity to grow into a multimillion dollar revenue business for Farmer Brothers.

我們繼續為服務型大型咖啡設備製造商增加認證，這些製造商認為我們的支持對於為客戶提供服務至關重要且具有戰略意義。我們預計，我們未來增長的主要部分將來自為這個不斷增長的製造商提供服務。事實上，我們的 Revive 業務在第四財季實現了 7 位數的中位數運行率，此後顯示出進一步加速的跡象。我們相信 Revive 有機會成長為 Farmer Brothers 的數百萬美元收入業務。

Wrapping up on financial performance and strategy, there are 3 key headlines from today. First, we believe we're nearing a return to fully normalized business conditions, and the early signs we see across the business are paving the way for significant growth runway. Second, we're managing carefully through economic pressures that somewhat restrain sales growth and margin expansion existing the fiscal year. While we expect those pressures to continue near term, it's worth noting that the fourth calendar quarter typically brings seasonal benefits. So as we see improvement ahead from this and the recent wins mentioned early, we'll be accretive to sales in upcoming quarters. The third headline is our growth focus with multiple exciting opportunities in front of us that I've just outlined for you.

總結財務業績和戰略，今天有 3 個重要的頭條新聞。首先，我們相信我們正接近完全恢復正常的業務狀況，我們在整個業務中看到的早期跡象正在為顯著增長鋪平道路。其次，我們正在謹慎應對經濟壓力，這些壓力在一定程度上限制了本財年現有的銷售增長和利潤率擴張。雖然我們預計這些壓力將在短期內繼續存在，但值得注意的是，第四季度通常會帶來季節性收益。因此，隨著我們看到這方面的進步以及前面提到的最近的勝利，我們將在接下來的幾個季度增加銷售額。第三個標題是我們的增長重點，我們面前有多個令人興奮的機會，我剛剛為您概述了這些機會。

Before turning over the call to Scott to walk through our financials in more detail, I want to quickly mention our ESG program, which has always been a critical priority. Sustainability remains a priority for us as it has been for over 10 years now, and we're incredibly proud of our work there. We believe sustainability has no finish line. Each success and shortfall we encounter today serves as an additional motivation to bring a more sustainable cup of coffee to our valued customers tomorrow.

在將電話轉給斯科特更詳細地介紹我們的財務狀況之前，我想快速提及我們的 ESG 計劃，這一直是至關重要的優先事項。 10 多年來，可持續發展仍然是我們的首要任務，我們為我們在那裡的工作感到無比自豪。我們相信可持續發展沒有終點。我們今天遇到的每一次成功和不足都為我們明天為尊貴的客戶帶來一杯更可持續的咖啡提供了額外的動力。

In 2017, Farmer Brothers was the first coffee-focused company to adopt Science Based Targets to reduce greenhouse gases. In 2018, we committed to an even more ambitious goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees C, and we're working hard to meet those goals by 2025. I want to note a few milestones we hit this year. We made significant progress in one of our boldest initiatives, reducing our carbon footprint by operating our Rialto, California distribution center. Since beginning operations last year, we helped reduce product delivery miles by 42% while serving our largest client base more efficiently. Further, we have reduced our electricity-related emissions by 41% since 2018. But we didn't stop there. We want to reduce emissions created up and down our supply line from harvest to delivery, even if we don't directly control them. This includes coffee from mills that operate with renewable energy.

2017 年，Farmer Brothers 是第一家以咖啡為重點的公司，採用基於科學的目標來減少溫室氣體。 2018 年，我們承諾實現一個更加雄心勃勃的目標，將升溫限制在 1.5 攝氏度，我們正在努力在 2025 年之前實現這些目標。我想指出我們今年達到的幾個里程碑。我們在一項最大膽的舉措中取得了重大進展，即通過運營加利福尼亞州里亞託的配送中心來減少我們的碳足跡。自去年開始運營以來，我們幫助將產品交付里程減少了 42%，同時更有效地為我們最大的客戶群提供服務。此外，自 2018 年以來，我們已將與電力相關的排放量減少了 41%。但我們並沒有就此止步。我們希望減少從收穫到交付的供應線上下產生的排放，即使我們不直接控制它們。這包括來自使用可再生能源的工廠生產的咖啡。

Coocafisa, one of the co-ops from where we source Project D.I.R.E.C.T. Colombia, will install solar panels onto their coffee mill. So with the Piedra Grande mill in El Salvador where our direct trade coffee comes from, we've also created a pilot program for producers in Colombia to calculate their emissions from their farms. These initiatives, among others, have reduced our supply line emission expenditures by 26% since 2018.

Coocafisa，我們採購 D.I.R.E.C.T. 項目的合作社之一。哥倫比亞將在他們的咖啡廠安裝太陽能電池板。因此，對於我們直接貿易咖啡的產地薩爾瓦多的彼德拉格蘭德磨坊，我們還為哥倫比亞的生產商創建了一個試點計劃，以計算他們農場的排放量。自 2018 年以來，這些舉措使我們的供應線排放支出減少了 26%。

The fiscal year 2022 marks our 110th year in business. We're confident that our foundation of sustainability programs, goals and initiatives, combined with the rock-solid relationships we've built over the decades, has set us up to thrive for the next 110 years.

2022 財年是我們開展業務的第 110 年。我們相信，我們的可持續發展計劃、目標和倡議的基礎，加上我們幾十年來建立的堅如磐石的關係，使我們能夠在未來 110 年蓬勃發展。

With that, I'll turn the call over to Scott to walk through our financials.

有了這個，我將把電話轉給斯科特，讓我們了解一下我們的財務狀況。

Thanks, Deverl. Overall, net sales in fiscal 2022 increased by $71.3 million or 18% to $469.2 million from $397.9 million in fiscal 2021. The increase in net sales was primarily due to the significant recovery from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on our DSD sales channel, along with price increases and delivery surcharges implemented during fiscal 2022.

謝謝，德維爾。總體而言，2022 財年的淨銷售額從 2021 財年的 3.979 億美元增長 7130 萬美元或 18% 至 4.692 億美元。淨銷售額的增長主要是由於 COVID-19 大流行對我們的 DSD 銷售渠道的影響顯著恢復，以及 2022 財年實施的價格上漲和交付附加費。

We previously noted the volume declines from exited customers that impacted our Direct Ship business early in the fiscal year. However, these businesses still experienced sales growth for the year, primarily from higher C market coffee prices.

我們之前註意到退出客戶的數量下降影響了我們在本財年初的 Direct Ship 業務。然而，這些業務今年的銷售額仍保持增長，主要來自 C 市場咖啡價格的上漲。

Net sales in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2022 were $123 million, an increase of $20.1 million or almost 20% from the prior year period, driven primarily by continued recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.

2022 財年第四季度的淨銷售額為 1.23 億美元，比上年同期增長 2010 萬美元或近 20%，主要受 COVID-19 大流行持續復甦的推動。

In addition to detailing the financial performance, I'll focus my comments today around our margin progression and how we're managing the balance sheet. With respect to margins, as the numbers show, we've been able to outpace inflation, both on the gross and operating margin levels, year-over-year.

除了詳細介紹財務業績外，我今天的評論還將集中在我們的利潤率進展以及我們如何管理資產負債表上。就利潤率而言，正如數據所示，我們在毛利率和營業利潤率水平上都超過了通貨膨脹，同比增長。

In our DSD sales channel, the increase was driven by an improved volume of green coffee processed and sold, along with an improved volume of other beverages, culinary, spice and tea products sold as we continue to experience higher weekly sales volumes compared to prior periods and our strongest weekly sales performance since the start of the pandemic over 2 years ago.

在我們的 DSD 銷售渠道中，增長的原因是生咖啡加工和銷售量的增加，以及其他飲料、烹飪、香料和茶產品的銷售量增加，因為我們的每週銷量繼續高於前期以及自 2 年前大流行開始以來我們最強勁的每週銷售業績。

While we saw another quarter of increased drop sizes and new customer sales growth within DSD that outpaced our lost customers, we needed to make a few changes to combat the inflationary challenges. You'll recall that 50% of our DSD revenue is generated from non-coffee or allied products. During the quarter, we noticed that we fell slightly behind inflation within our DSD channel which, once traced back to the source, ended up being primarily related to these allied products.

雖然我們看到 DSD 內又增加了四分之一的液滴尺寸和新客戶銷售增長，超過了我們失去的客戶，但我們需要做出一些改變來應對通脹挑戰。您會記得我們 50% 的 DSD 收入來自非咖啡或相關產品。在本季度，我們注意到我們的 DSD 渠道內的通脹略微落後於通脹，一旦追溯到源頭，最終主要與這些相關產品有關。

Our sales folks running our DSD routes have always been given the flexibility to flex prices with our customers to a degree. And while we introduce price hikes universally across our coffee and allied products, there were varying degrees of adoption on a site-by-site and SKU-by-SKU basis. To address this issue, we've adjusted the price floor on our products, which has been implemented at the SKU level to ensure that our DSD margin continues to outpace any pricing challenges on a long-term basis. Still, our DSD channel continued to perform well as previous price hikes and other initiatives, such as the delivery and fuel surcharges we've implemented, helped us mitigate the higher product costs.

我們運營 DSD 路線的銷售人員始終可以在一定程度上靈活地與我們的客戶一起調整價格。雖然我們在咖啡和相關產品中普遍引入價格上漲，但在逐個站點和逐個 SKU 的基礎上，採用程度不同。為了解決這個問題，我們調整了產品的價格下限，該價格已在 SKU 級別實施，以確保我們的 DSD 利潤率在長期基礎上繼續超過任何定價挑戰。儘管如此，我們的 DSD 渠道繼續表現良好，因為之前的價格上漲和其他舉措，例如我們實施的交付和燃油附加費，幫助我們減輕了較高的產品成本。

Turning to our Direct Ship channel where we continue to operate with pricing discipline. The year-over-year increase in net sales resulted from slightly lower volumes from Direct Ship customers which were offset by price changes to those customers utilizing commodity-based pricing arrangements where the changes in the green coffee commodity costs and other direct costs are passed on to the customer. As noted earlier, the slight volume decline was due to the recently optimized customer base and recovery from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic by some of our larger Direct Ship customers.

轉向我們的 Direct Ship 渠道，我們將繼續以定價規則運作。淨銷售額同比增長的原因是 Direct Ship 客戶的銷量略有下降，這被那些使用基於商品的定價安排的客戶的價格變化所抵消，其中生咖啡商品成本和其他直接成本的變化被傳遞給客戶。如前所述，銷量小幅下降是由於最近優化的客戶群以及我們一些較大的 Direct Ship 客戶從 COVID-19 大流行的影響中恢復過來。

On a quarterly basis, our Direct Ship channel sales improved 19.3% during the fourth quarter of fiscal 2022 compared to the prior year period. While our Direct Ship business operates under a cost-plus model and the pricing pressures flow through to our customers per the terms of our various agreements, we are seeing increased pressures to our margins in the near term that we expect to continue for at least a few more months. This is because of the contractual lag in our hedging programs with various customers that successfully delayed inflationary pressures from the coffee market increases for some time.

按季度計算，我們的 Direct Ship 渠道銷售額在 2022 財年第四季度與去年同期相比增長了 19.3%。雖然我們的直運業務在成本加成模式下運營，並且根據我們各種協議的條款，定價壓力流向我們的客戶，但我們看到短期內我們的利潤率面臨越來越大的壓力，我們預計至少會持續一段時間再過幾個月。這是因為我們與各種客戶的對沖計劃中的合同滯後成功地推遲了咖啡市場增加的通脹壓力一段時間。

While ongoing changes in coffee and other direct costs will continue to fluctuate as we move forward, we should fully overcome the primary margin pressures in our Direct Ship business by the end of this calendar year, barring any significant C market price movements. We remain committed to profitably growing our business, and some of the recent wins in both DSD and Direct Ship will certainly provide momentum and aid our continued recovery.

雖然隨著我們的前進，咖啡和其他直接成本的持續變化將繼續波動，但我們應該在本日曆年年底之前完全克服直運業務的主要利潤率壓力，除非 C 市場價格出現任何重大變動。我們仍然致力於以盈利的方式發展我們的業務，最近在 DSD 和 Direct Ship 方面取得的一些勝利肯定會提供動力並幫助我們持續復甦。

Gross profit in fiscal 2022 increased by $36 million or 36% to $136.9 million from $100.9 million in fiscal 2021. Gross margin increased 3.8% to 29.2% in fiscal 2022 from 25.4% in fiscal 2021. The increase in gross profit in fiscal 2022 was primarily driven by higher net sales on both the DSD and Direct Ship sales channels, partially offset by higher freight costs due to global supply chain challenges and higher product costs, both direct and indirect. Gross margin improved due to the continued recovery in both our sales channels, especially DSD, as that channel has higher margins.

2022財年毛利潤從2021財年的1.009億美元增長3600萬美元或36%至1.369億美元。毛利率從2021財年的25.4%增長3.8%至2022財年的29.2%。2022財年毛利潤的增長主要是受 DSD 和 Direct Ship 銷售渠道淨銷售額增加的推動，部分被全球供應鏈挑戰導致的運費成本增加和直接和間接的產品成本增加所抵消。由於我們的兩個銷售渠道，尤其是 DSD 的持續復甦，毛利率有所提高，因為該渠道的利潤率更高。

The increase was also attributable to a decline in our unfavorable production variances and inventory scrap write-downs due to the closure of our aged Houston, Texas plant during fiscal 2021. The price increases and delivery surcharges we implemented across our DSD network during fiscal 2022 helped to mitigate the impact of higher supply chain and product costs.

這一增長還歸因於由於我們在 2021 財年關閉德克薩斯州休斯頓老工廠而導致的不利生產差異和庫存報廢減記減少。我們在 2022 財年在 DSD 網絡中實施的價格上漲和交付附加費有助於以減輕更高的供應鍊和產品成本的影響。

Overall, the key initiatives we implemented throughout our optimization stage, such as distribution efficiencies now in play across our DSD network, the increased production and packing capacity at our state-of-the-art Northlake, Texas facility and the efficiency boost in the West Coast region due to our newly opened Rialto, California distribution center, have all added material leverage to our business, which is now flowing through our income statement.

總體而言，我們在整個優化階段實施的關鍵舉措，例如現在在我們的 DSD 網絡中發揮作用的分銷效率、在我們最先進的德克薩斯州北湖工廠提高生產和包裝能力以及在西部提高效率沿海地區由於我們新開設的加利福尼亞州里亞托配送中心，都為我們的業務增加了物質槓桿，這些槓桿現在正在我們的損益表中流動。

For the fiscal 2022 fourth quarter, gross profit was $34.9 million, an increase of $6.5 million or 23% from the prior year period, and gross margin increased to 28.4% from 27.6%.

2022財年第四季度，毛利潤為3490萬美元，比上年同期增長650萬美元或23%，毛利率從27.6%增長至28.4%。

Adjusted EBITDA for the fiscal 2022 year was $19.1 million compared to $16.6 million in the prior fiscal period. Adjusted EBITDA was $6.1 million in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2022 compared to $3.4 million in the prior year period, again driven by our newly improved footprint and significant recovery in our sales channels.

2022財年調整後的EBITDA為1910萬美元，而上一財期為1660萬美元。 2022 財年第四季度調整後的 EBITDA 為 610 萬美元，而去年同期為 340 萬美元，這再次受到我們新改善的足跡和銷售渠道顯著復甦的推動。

I would also like to remind listeners of the fiscal year 2021 gains of $14.4 million from the sunsetting of our retiree medical program that was part of that year's adjusted EBITDA total. I think this helps accentuate our real performance improvement year-over-year.

我還想提醒聽眾，2021 財年從我們的退休人員醫療計劃的終止中獲得了 1440 萬美元的收益，該計劃是當年調整後 EBITDA 總額的一部分。我認為這有助於突出我們的實際績效逐年改善。

Turning now to our operating expenses, which increased by $12.4 million in fiscal 2022 over the prior year period due to an $11.8 million increase in selling expenses and a $4.2 million increase in general and administrative expenses, partially offset by a $2.3 million gain on the sale of assets. The increase in expenses was primarily due to variable costs, including payroll associated with the higher sales volumes and operating costs related to our distribution center in Rialto, California, which was opened in the latter half of fiscal 2021.

現在轉向我們的運營費用，由於銷售費用增加了 1180 萬美元以及一般和管理費用增加了 420 萬美元，2022 財年的營業費用比上年同期增加了 1240 萬美元，部分被銷售收益 230 萬美元所抵消的資產。費用的增加主要是由於可變成本，包括與銷量增加相關的工資單以及與我們在加利福尼亞州里亞託的配送中心相關的運營成本，該配送中心於 2021 財年下半年開業。

As we committed to everyone, we have continued to leverage the business by reducing our operating expenses as a percentage of net sales from 35% in the fiscal year 2021 to 32.3% this year. Operating expenses in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2022 increased $4.7 million or 13.6% to $39.2 million from $34.5 million in the prior year period but decreased as a percentage of net sales to 31.9% compared to 33.6% of net sales in the prior year period.

正如我們向所有人承諾的那樣，我們通過將運營費用占淨銷售額的百分比從 2021 財年的 35% 降低到今年的 32.3% 來繼續利用業務。 2022 財年第四季度的運營費用從去年同期的 3450 萬美元增加 470 萬美元或 13.6% 至 3920 萬美元，但占淨銷售額的百分比從去年同期的 33.6% 下降至淨銷售額的 31.9%。

Our capital expenditures for fiscal 2022 were $15.2 million compared to $15.1 million in the prior fiscal year, representing a minimal increase. This was driven by a lower expansionary capital spend in fiscal 2022 compared to fiscal 2021, and was partially offset by an increase in maintenance capital spending in fiscal 2022. Given the ramp-up of our Revive business, the implementation of our IT roadmap and our focus on growth and recovery, we expect our capital spend to increase slightly to the $18 million to $20 million range.

我們在 2022 財年的資本支出為 1520 萬美元，而上一財年為 1510 萬美元，增幅很小。這是由於 2022 財年的擴張性資本支出低於 2021 財年，並被 2022 財年維護資本支出的增加部分抵消。鑑於我們 Revive 業務的增長、我們 IT 路線圖的實施和我們的專注於增長和復蘇，我們預計我們的資本支出將小幅增加至 1800 萬至 2000 萬美元。

Our capital expenditures for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2022 were $6.3 million compared to $2.3 million for the same period a year ago. The increase was due to higher maintenance capital spend on coffee brewing equipment purchased for our DSD customers as volumes have improved since last year. Several key initiatives put in place, including a focus on refurbished CBE to drive cost savings, have helped reduce our coffee brewing equipment purchases as DSD sales have improved.

我們在 2022 財年第四季度的資本支出為 630 萬美元，而去年同期為 230 萬美元。這一增長是由於自去年以來數量有所增加，為我們的 DSD 客戶購買的咖啡沖泡設備的維護資本支出增加。隨著 DSD 銷售的改善，實施了幾項關鍵舉措，包括專注於翻新 CBE 以節省成本，這有助於減少我們購買咖啡沖泡設備。

Now turning to the balance sheet. Since the end of the recent fiscal fourth quarter, we have had some developments related to debt restructuring that was announced publicly, so I would like to mention them here as well. First, we amended our ABL credit facility. Among other things, the agreement increased our maximum revolver amount by $10 million to an aggregate maximum revolver commitment of $90 million. It also reduced the interest rate by replacing the LIBOR benchmark with SOFR, which lowered the applicable margin from 2.25% for LIBOR rate loans to a more appropriate margin of 1.75% for SOFR rate loans.

現在轉向資產負債表。自最近的第四財季末以來，我們已經公開宣布了一些與債務重組相關的進展，因此我也想在這裡提及它們。首先，我們修改了 ABL 信貸額度。除其他事項外，該協議將我們的左輪手槍最高金額增加了 1000 萬美元，使左輪手槍的最高承諾總額達到了 9000 萬美元。它還通過用 SOFR 取代 LIBOR 基準來降低利率，這將適用的利率從 LIBOR 利率貸款的 2.25% 降低到 SOFR 利率貸款的更合適的 1.75%。

Next, we refinanced our term loan through a low-cost transactional amendment to our existing ABL credit facility. In addition to lowering the interest rate and extending the maturity, the refinancing also eliminated our minimum adjusted EBITDA covenant and now allows for 15-year amortization on principal payments. Overall, the agreement provides more flexibility on our assets as there are fewer direct leans on our assets such as real estate, and it provides more flexibility regarding financial activities, such as stock issuances, acquisitions, et cetera. This new amendment also reduced the interest rate on our previous term loan by replacing the LIBOR benchmark with SOFR, which lowered the applicable margin from 6.5% for LIBOR rate loans to a more appropriate margin of 2.25% for SOFR rate loans.

接下來，我們通過對現有 ABL 信貸工具的低成本交易修改為我們的定期貸款再融資。除了降低利率和延長期限外，再融資還取消了我們的最低調整後 EBITDA 契約，現在允許對本金支付進行 15 年攤銷。總體而言，該協議為我們的資產提供了更大的靈活性，因為對我們的資產（例如房地產）的直接依賴較少，並且它為金融活動（例如股票發行、收購等）提供了更大的靈活性。這項新修訂還通過將 LIBOR 基準替換為 SOFR 來降低我們之前定期貸款的利率，這將適用的利率從 LIBOR 利率貸款的 6.5% 降低到 SOFR 利率貸款的 2.25% 的更合適的利率。

Obviously, we expect to save significant expense dollars on a go-forward basis from these positive changes to our capital structure.

顯然，我們希望從我們資本結構的這些積極變化中節省大量開支。

Turning now to our cash position, which decreased by $400,000 to $10 million as of June 30, 2022, compared to $10.4 million as of June 30, 2021. It's worth noting that we intentionally carry a low cash balance for capital efficiency purposes and to lower our overall interest rates, but we believe we have adequate availability to operate our business.

現在轉向我們的現金頭寸，截至 2022 年 6 月 30 日，現金頭寸減少了 400,000 美元至 1,000 萬美元，而截至 2021 年 6 月 30 日為 1,040 萬美元。值得注意的是，出於資本效率的目的，我們故意持有低現金餘額並降低我們的整體利率，但我們相信我們有足夠的可用性來經營我們的業務。

To provide some context on the relationship between our inventory and our total debt balances, consider that from the end of fiscal year 2021 to the end of fiscal year 2022, our inventory, mostly due to the impact of inflation, rose by $22.8 million, while our total debt increased by $18.1 million. The rising inflation cost of our inventory matched with the delays in recovery from the pandemic are the primary drivers of our higher debt balances.

為了提供有關我們庫存與總債務餘額之間關係的一些背景信息，請考慮從 2021 財年末到 2022 財年末，我們的庫存（主要是由於通貨膨脹的影響）增加了 2280 萬美元，而我們的總債務增加了 1810 萬美元。我們庫存的通貨膨脹成本上升與大流行恢復的延遲相匹配是我們較高的債務餘額的主要驅動力。

While domestic and international supply and transport issues are somewhat hampering our ability to increase the efficiency of our inventories in the near term, our long-range focus will be on optimizing the efficiency of our inventory to improve working capital metrics, which will also aid in lowering our debt leverage. As of June 30, 2022, our net debt, which we define as total outstanding borrowings less cash and cash equivalents, was $98.8 million.

雖然國內和國際供應和運輸問題在一定程度上阻礙了我們在短期內提高庫存效率的能力，但我們的長期重點將是優化我們的庫存效率以改善營運資金指標，這也將有助於降低我們的債務槓桿。截至 2022 年 6 月 30 日，我們定義為未償借款總額減去現金和現金等價物的淨債務為 9880 萬美元。

Since we did have some recent changes to the makeup of the company's shares that were detailed in a recent 8-K, I wanted to call out that as of August 25, all of the outstanding preferred shares in the company were converted to common shares per the terms of our existing certificate of designation for our preferred stock. With this conversion, Farmer Brothers will now only have 1 class of common shares with no cash dividend payouts on preferred shares in the past or future to be considered as related to our past preferred shares.

由於我們在最近的 8-K 中詳細說明了公司股票的構成最近發生了一些變化，我想指出，截至 8 月 25 日，公司所有已發行的優先股均已轉換為普通股。我們現有的優先股指定證書的條款。通過這種轉換，Farmer Brothers 現在將只有一類普通股，過去或未來優先股沒有現金股息支付，被視為與我們過去的優先股相關。

With that, I'll now turn the call back over to Deverl.

有了這個，我現在將把電話轉回給 Deverl。

Thanks, Scott, and thanks to everyone who tuned into our call today. We'll now turn it back to the operator for Q&A. Operator?

謝謝，斯科特，也感謝今天收聽我們電話的每一個人。我們現在將其轉回給操作員進行問答。操作員？

(Operator Instructions) And our first question will come from Gerry Sweeney with ROTH Capital.

（操作員說明）我們的第一個問題將來自 ROTH Capital 的 Gerry Sweeney。

I wanted to talk a little bit about revenue and growth. And Deverl, I think you called out 3 sort of highlights at the end of your comments, one was nearing normalized business operations, paraphrasing it a little bit. But how much growth opportunity is out there just as you look at the DSD business, the restaurants, conferences, convention centers, hotels, et cetera? A lot of those is coming back. I also know that you also had routes around 238, I think, was the number in the third quarter. There's an opportunity to bring back routes. What type of growth can we see from the sort of base DSD business and, I guess, not only these base customers that are out there that are coming back or maybe obtaining additional customers?

我想談談收入和增長。 Deverl，我想你在評論的最後提到了 3 個亮點，一個是接近正常化的業務運營，稍微解釋一下。但就 DSD 業務、餐廳、會議、會議中心、酒店等而言，存在多少增長機會？其中很多都回來了。我也知道你們也有 238 條左右的路線，我想這是第三季度的數字。有機會帶迴路線。我們可以從基礎 DSD 業務中看到什麼類型的增長，我猜，不僅僅是這些基礎客戶正在回來或可能獲得更多客戶？

Gerry, thanks for the questions. I'll give a couple of comments and then turn it to Scott for any thoughts he may have. I would just tell you that we're in this unique situation where we're still -- COVID is behind us, I've made that point. We've seen that in our numbers for the last quarter. As you look at where we're headed and what's in front of us, we're still battling certain channels of distribution that they can't get the staffing, they can't stay open the entire week and we wound up seeing that those channels wind up suffering.

格里，謝謝你的提問。我將發表一些評論，然後將其轉給 Scott，以了解他可能有的任何想法。我只想告訴你，我們正處於這種獨特的情況下——COVID 已經落後於我們，我已經說明了這一點。我們已經在上個季度的數據中看到了這一點。當您看到我們的前進方向和擺在我們面前的情況時，我們仍在與某些分銷渠道作鬥爭，他們無法獲得人員配置，他們無法整周保持開放，我們最終看到那些渠道最終受苦。

The good news is, as we mentioned in this call today, we've had several wins added to our DSD network. So we know that growth is there. And if we could get the underlying normalization of pre-COVID levels which, through this quarter, we've watched the core base business still be under pressure and then we gained share from the overall industry like we talked about in the prepared remarks, and that's covering up some of that growth that should be there that's yet to come back in a true post-COVID world. And we didn't have relative impacts of COVID in this last quarter, but we did see impacts related to inflationary pressures and demand destruction and margin pressures that are forcing certain channels to reconsider how much they are buying or how much they bought in the past.

好消息是，正如我們在今天的電話會議中所提到的，我們的 DSD 網絡已經獲得了多項勝利。所以我們知道增長是存在的。如果我們能夠使 COVID 之前的水平基本正常化，到本季度，我們已經看到核心基礎業務仍然面臨壓力，然後我們從整個行業中獲得了份額，就像我們在準備好的評論中談到的那樣，並且這掩蓋了一些應該存在的增長，但在真正的後 COVID 世界中尚未恢復。我們在上個季度沒有受到 COVID 的相對影響，但我們確實看到了與通脹壓力和需求破壞以及利潤率壓力相關的影響，這些影響迫使某些渠道重新考慮他們過去購買了多少或購買了多少.

So that base core demand that we watch very closely has still been under pressure. But we're seeing many of our strategies that we've outlined go forward, whether we look at new beverage inclusion options to go on to our routes, with SERPs and functional inclusions to improving our espresso-based business and premiumizing our coffee offerings, to seeing the growth through Revive that gives us more opportunity to see more customers come in based on the work we're doing through service and repair, those are all growth opportunities. And there's still a large leverageable opportunity within the overall business as it relates to our DSD network. And we're going to do everything we can to fill that network up.

因此，我們密切關注的基本核心需求仍然面臨壓力。但是我們看到我們已經概述的許多戰略都在向前發展，無論我們是否考慮新的飲料包含選項以繼續我們的路線，通過 SERP 和功能包含來改善我們基於濃縮咖啡的業務並優化我們的咖啡產品，通過 Revive 看到增長，這讓我們有更多機會看到更多客戶基於我們通過服務和維修所做的工作進入，這些都是增長機會。與我們的 DSD 網絡相關的整體業務中仍有很大的可利用機會。我們將盡我們所能來填補這個網絡。

And the last point that you made about number of routes, we know that we're working to add routes in various parts of the country where the demand is there, and we have routes running well north of $1 million per route. And we've got to add that in. And I will tell you that the labor market for us is difficult as it is for anyone. And we are recruiting. And I can tell you, in our HR work that we're doing, recruiting is top of the list. And the more we recruit techs and RSRs to the frontline, that will have an impact on leveraging our DSD network.

最後一點你提到的路線數量，我們知道我們正在努力在有需求的國家的各個地區增加路線，我們的路線運行在每條路線超過 100 萬美元。我們必須把它加入進來。我會告訴你，勞動力市場對我們來說很困難，對任何人來說都是如此。我們正在招聘。我可以告訴你，在我們正在進行的人力資源工作中，招聘是最重要的。我們在前線招募的技術人員和 RSR 越多，這將對利用我們的 DSD 網絡產生影響。

So with that, I'll let Scott add anything that he might want to add that I might have missed to add to your question.

因此，我將讓 Scott 添加他可能想要添加的任何內容，而我可能錯過了添加到您的問題中。

Yes. Thanks, Deverl. Just a couple of quick ones, Gerry. When we look deep in the data, and we're looking by geography or by channel or by SKU or customer, we still see these ebbs and flows. And so we know that things are not fully where they could be. Like if all of those areas were -- if all the sectors of geography and channels were at new highs and gaining, I'd feel differently about the business, but we still see ebbs and flows for different reasons.

是的。謝謝，德維爾。只是幾個快速的，格里。當我們深入研究數據時，我們通過地理、渠道、SKU 或客戶來查看，我們仍然會看到這些潮起潮落。所以我們知道事情並沒有完全達到它們可能的水平。就像如果所有這些領域都是——如果地理和渠道的所有領域都處於新高並獲得收益，我會對業務有不同的感覺，但我們仍然會因為不同的原因看到潮起潮落。

July, for example, we had some COVID impact from the latest variant, as others did, but it was far less impactful to the business as I think everyone is learning to live with it. But where you really saw that impact was more on the labor, and it was the labor in restaurants and other facilities because they just couldn't -- they didn't have the people or they were having to do mini shutdowns, et cetera. So we still see that. We just know it's not optimized yet even among the existing customer base.

例如，7 月，與其他人一樣，我們從最新變體中對 COVID 產生了一些影響，但它對業務的影響要小得多，因為我認為每個人都在學習與之共存。但是你真正看到的影響更多的是對勞動力的影響，它是餐館和其他設施的勞動力，因為他們做不到——他們沒有人，或者他們不得不進行小型停工等等。所以我們仍然看到這一點。我們只知道即使在現有客戶群中它也沒有優化。

So when I look to the big 3 things that are going to be tailwinds or the macro tailwinds, one is that I think the core business, the existing customers, will continue to recover in the restaurants and convenience stores and some of those primary channels that we follow. And then the secondary part is, I think, new customers. We're adding new customers. We've talked about some of those wins. I think that will be a nice piece. But then these other big tailwinds to some of the categories and some of the customer segments we have, like large events and conventions, we know there's going to be more of those over the next 12 months. We know that universities and health care, some of these areas that had just been slower to really return to normal, will over the next 12 months, barring any other setbacks. So I just think all of those combined are what kind of let us know we're still gaining, we still have tailwinds and there's still growth to be had.

因此，當我關注將成為順風或宏觀順風的三大因素時，我認為核心業務，即現有客戶，將繼續在餐館和便利店以及一些主要渠道中復蘇我們跟隨。然後，我認為次要部分是新客戶。我們正在增加新客戶。我們已經討論了其中的一些勝利。我認為這將是一個不錯的作品。但是，對於我們擁有的某些類別和某些客戶群，例如大型活動和會議，這些其他大順風，我們知道在接下來的 12 個月內會有更多這樣的事情。我們知道，大學和醫療保健，其中一些領域真正恢復正常的速度較慢，將在接下來的 12 個月內，除非出現任何其他挫折。所以我只是認為所有這些加起來就是讓我們知道我們仍在獲得收益，我們仍然有順風並且仍有增長空間。

Got it. And then even on the, I guess, the espresso side, how much of an opportunity or what's the uptake on some of this premiumization of coffee or some of these services? Just curious as to how that's flowing through.

知道了。然後，我想，即使在濃縮咖啡方面，咖啡的這種優質化或其中一些服務有多少機會或被吸收？只是好奇它是如何流過的。

Well, we believe it's significant and it's one of our top 3 initiatives throughout 2023. And the reason we believe that is because, as you know, we've been a traditional brewed coffee provider for the channels of distribution that we serve in. And we've got some great products on cold brew and RTDs and other extract type products and liquid coffee that we believe is core and is there. But what our customers are asking for is more premium, great tasting arabica coffees. And so when we combine our ability with Revive to install great equipment and working with all these different manufacturers and our ability to service that equipment, we know that the more we can place those machines in those locations where we traditionally have put brewers in predominantly, batch brewers, that we can upscale to our Farmer Brothers artisan coffee lines to our public domain products to other great arabica coffees that are espresso-based.

好吧，我們認為這很重要，它是我們整個 2023 年的三大舉措之一。我們之所以相信這是因為，如您所知，我們一直是我們所服務的分銷渠道的傳統沖泡咖啡供應商。而且我們有一些很棒的產品，涉及冷釀和 RTD 以及其他提取物類型產品和液體咖啡，我們認為這些產品是核心並且存在。但我們的客戶要求的是更優質、口感更好的阿拉比卡咖啡。因此，當我們將我們的能力與 Revive 結合起來安裝出色的設備並與所有這些不同的製造商合作以及我們為這些設備提供服務的能力時，我們知道我們可以將這些機器更多地放置在我們傳統上主要放置釀酒商的地方，批量釀酒商，我們可以升級到我們的 Farmer Brothers 工匠咖啡生產線，再到我們的公共領域產品，再到其他以濃縮咖啡為基礎的優質阿拉比卡咖啡。

And in combination with that, we're running a beverage inclusion option to provide new syrups, new functional beverages added to those products. We recently showed at National Restaurant Association up in Chicago with some partners that we're there with in terms of shot and Lotus. And of course, we've been running Califia Farms on our routes in test markets, and we know that great plant-based beverages going into copies are another way. And we're completing that full espresso experience, and we're going after those outlets that we know could sell those products in a big way. And we think that, that catalyst of growth right there in that area is going to be really big for us. And I think it's really unlimited given our traditional focus.

與此相結合，我們正在運行一個飲料包含選項，以提供新的糖漿，添加到這些產品中的新功能飲料。我們最近與一些合作夥伴一起在芝加哥的國家飯店協會展示了我們在鏡頭和蓮花方面的合作夥伴。當然，我們在測試市場的路線上一直在運營 Califia Farms，我們知道優質的植物性飲料進入副本是另一種方式。我們正在完成完整的濃縮咖啡體驗，我們正在尋找那些我們知道可以大量銷售這些產品的商店。而且我們認為，該領域的增長催化劑對我們來說將非常重要。而且我認為考慮到我們的傳統焦點，它真的是無限的。

We don't believe brewed is going away anytime soon, but there is an absolute shift in consumer demand that says that they want espresso-based beverages, and to be able to do all forms from iced coffees to lattes to cappuccinos versus just a straight-up brew. But we also know with bean-to-cup being on the rise as it has been, and we've put about every type of bean-to-cup machine that's on the market out in the trade, that we know that there's a lot of great machines that can do a lot of different things and provide a lot of opportunity for our customers to serve different types of beverages. We want to be that solution provider, that value service and white glove and has the ability, when that machine is down, to work on it because you don't run a great espresso program without a great equipment service program, which we believe we have one of the best.

我們認為 brewed 不會很快消失，但消費者需求發生了絕對轉變，他們想要以濃縮咖啡為基礎的飲料，並且能夠製作從冰咖啡到拿鐵咖啡再到卡布奇諾咖啡的所有形式，而不僅僅是純咖啡沖泡。但我們也知道 bean-to-cup 一直在上升，我們已經將市場上的每種類型的 bean-to-cup 機器投入市場，我們知道有很多偉大的機器可以做很多不同的事情，並為我們的客戶提供很多機會來提供不同類型的飲料。我們希望成為解決方案提供商，重視服務和白手套，並且有能力在機器停機時繼續工作，因為如果沒有出色的設備服務計劃，您就無法運行出色的濃縮咖啡計劃，我們相信我們擁有最好的之一。

And so that's why we're bullish on all things espresso and are putting a lot of effort around that with these beverage inclusion solutions for both SERPs that are premiumized and inclusions, such as energy and additional caffeine shots, that can go into both coffee and tea.

這就是為什麼我們看好意式濃縮咖啡的所有東西，並在這些飲料包含解決方案方面付出了很多努力，這些飲料包含解決方案適用於優質化的 SERP 和包含物，例如能量和額外的咖啡因注射，可以進入咖啡和茶。

Got it. And I mean, I guess, on the espresso side, the other thing that goes hand-in-hand is Revive, right? So more complicated machinery, potential maintenance contract. Does this sort of fall right in place with Revive? And it sounds as though that business has got a nice little jump out of the gate. I think you said mid-7 figures. Maybe a little bit of detail of the road map for the next 12, 18 months, if you could.

知道了。我的意思是，我想，在濃縮咖啡方面，另一件齊頭並進的事情是 Revive，對吧？所以更複雜的機械，潛在的維修合同。 Revive 是否適合這種情況？聽起來，這家企業似乎有了一個不錯的小躍進。我想你說的是 7 位數。如果可以的話，可能會為未來 12、18 個月的路線圖提供一些細節。

Yes. I will tell you that it goes hand in glove. There's no question that our bullishness around Revive goes hand-in-hand and links to our espresso-based program because you don't do one without the other well. And we believe we do that well and we can penetrate that market at a much deeper level. And so as you're seeing for the first time in our prepared remarks today, we've actually outlined some of the figures relative to Revive and how we're starting to see traction and growth. I will tell you, going forward, we'll start providing more information relative to the growth trajectory as it relates to the kind of numbers we shared today on Revive.

是的。我會告訴你，它是密不可分的。毫無疑問，我們對 Revive 的看好與我們的基於濃縮咖啡的計劃密切相關，因為您不會沒有另一個做得好。我們相信我們做得很好，我們可以更深入地滲透到這個市場。因此，正如您在今天準備好的評論中第一次看到的那樣，我們實際上已經概述了一些與 Revive 相關的數據，以及我們如何開始看到牽引力和增長。我會告訴你，展望未來，我們將開始提供與增長軌跡相關的更多信息，因為它與我們今天在 Revive 上分享的數字類型有關。

But it's not about demand creation for Revive. It's about how fast we can bring in techs, put them on the road, shift third-party volume that we currently have today into servicing it by our own team members of Revive techs and then using that to continue to grow the business, specifically in the espresso area. So as we talked about the growth in the 7-figure numbers that we're reporting, it's good growth. But what will hamper our ability to go fast there is our ability to recruit, retain great techs and guarantee that that's one of the places we're focused on right now is recruiting good techs and creating really robust training programs to bring these techs up to speed quickly and be able to put them on the road in our branches and with an infrastructure that's there already and is leverageable, which is what we've talked to you in the past about. And we feel strongly, in this case, it's a big part of our story relative to Revive.

但這與 Revive 的需求創造無關。這是關於我們能夠以多快的速度引進技術，將它們投入使用，將我們目前擁有的第三方數量轉移到我們自己的 Revive 技術團隊成員為其提供服務，然後利用它來繼續發展業務，特別是在濃縮咖啡區。因此，當我們談到我們報告的 7 位數數字的增長時，這是一個很好的增長。但是，阻礙我們快速發展的能力是我們招募、留住優秀技術人員的能力，並保證這是我們現在關注的領域之一，即招募優秀技術人員並創建真正強大的培訓計劃以使這些技術人員達到速度很快，並且能夠在我們的分支機構中使用它們，並且使用已經存在並且可以利用的基礎設施，這就是我們過去與您討論過的內容。我們強烈地感覺到，在這種情況下，這是我們與 Revive 相關的故事的重要組成部分。

Scott, anything on Revive? You've been very close to Revive all along.

斯科特，Revive 上有什麼嗎？你一直非常接近Revive。

Yes. No, I think you summed it well. It's going to go at the speed with which we can get techs in, get them trained internally, get them certified on the equipment. And again, we're being really creative about the sourcing of those folks. So we think we'll come up with some good ideas to be able to accelerate that.

是的。不，我認為你總結得很好。它將以我們可以讓技術人員進入，讓他們在內部接受培訓，讓他們獲得設備認證的速度發展。再一次，我們對這些人的採購非常有創意。所以我們認為我們會想出一些好主意來加速這一進程。

And lastly, I'd just say, Gerry, this is why we hired a General Manager for this business, [Jazz Khan], who comes from a large, global, multinational company and has a deep pedigree and understanding how to run business. And we put him in, and he is racing with the team that's there and very excited about what he's seeing. And we're getting a lot of structure in place that we've done over the past year. Now we're really starting to operationalize this business and really put it in the growth mode.

最後，我只想說，Gerry，這就是我們為這項業務聘請了一位總經理 [Jazz Khan] 的原因，他來自一家大型、全球性的跨國公司，擁有深厚的血統和了解如何經營業務。我們把他放進去，他正在和那裡的車隊一起比賽，對他所看到的感到非常興奮。我們正在建立很多我們在過去一年中完成的結構。現在我們真的開始運營這項業務並真正將其置於增長模式。

Would it be -- I don't want to put the cart before the horse, especially as you're still building out like the tech back in place, but is there an opportunity to sign some contracts with some larger restaurants or QSR chains even -- I'm not sure how much coffee exactly they do, but I think you understand where I'm going, for the -- provides the maintenance and just be the go-to person on a national footprint or a regional footprint. Is that an opportunity for Revive?

會不會——我不想本末倒置，尤其是當你還在像技術一樣建設的時候，但有機會與一些更大的餐館或 QSR 連鎖店簽訂一些合同嗎？ - 我不確定他們到底做了多少咖啡，但我想你明白我要去哪裡，因為 - 提供維護，只是成為全國或地區足蹟的首選人。這是複興的機會嗎？

It is. It's absolutely an opportunity, Gerry, and I would tell you the way we're doing it, is very planful because, clearly, we know there's more demand than the ability to service. The customers that are coming to us, that are seeing the work that we're doing, want us to do more across multinationals, across regional QSRs, convenience and, most importantly, all the manufacturers. And that includes pretty much everybody, all the big major manufacturers.

這是。這絕對是一個機會，Gerry，我會告訴你我們的做法是非常有計劃的，因為很明顯，我們知道需求多於服務能力。來找我們的客戶，看到我們正在做的工作，希望我們在跨國公司、地區 QSR、便利性以及最重要的所有製造商中做更多的事情。這包括幾乎所有人，所有大型主要製造商。

And so in that context, what we're trying to be mindful of and prudent about is to not get the cart before the horse in terms of having available resources. We had some available capacity given how we serve our DSD, and we've got to make sure that we, first and foremost, serve our existing customers on our DSD routes and then work to third-party customers that are in the fringes of the geographic areas that we serve and converting and putting more equipment techs into that area, and then come behind that with more service contracts that were being offered to do. But we're doing them on a selection basis, region-by-region, city-by-city, where we have the capacity to maintain a high level of service, first and foremost, to maintain that customer base and grow it properly. We could go out tomorrow and sign a bunch of contracts and not be able to service, that's not where we're going to be. We're going to make sure we grow prudently and we're focused and make sure we have the techs in place to leverage the current network and build the business profitably.

因此，在這種情況下，我們要注意和謹慎的是，不要在可用資源方面本末倒置。考慮到我們為 DSD 提供服務的方式，我們有一些可用容量，我們必須確保我們首先為 DSD 路線上的現有客戶提供服務，然後為處於 DSD 邊緣的第三方客戶提供服務。我們服務的地理區域，轉換並將更多的設備技術投入該區域，然後提供更多的服務合同來支持該區域。但我們是在選擇的基礎上，逐個地區，逐個城市進行的，我們有能力保持高水平的服務，首先是維持客戶群並適當增長。我們明天可以出去簽訂一堆合同，但無法提供服務，那不是我們要去的地方。我們將確保我們謹慎增長，我們專注並確保我們擁有適當的技術來利用當前的網絡並以盈利方式建立業務。

One more question, then I'll jump in queue in case there's anyone else in line. This may be a little bit more directed to Scott. But selling expense as a percentage of revenue, that has dropped considerably, I think, on a year-over-year basis. What type of run rate should we expect for that? I'm just trying to sort of fine-tune the model here just as we see some of the revenue growing and some volumes increase, where that number should be. And obviously, there's some moving parts because volumes aren't up tremendously. Some of this revenue is just inflationary costs as well, but I just want to understand what we should be thinking there.

再問一個問題，那我就插隊，以防有其他人排隊。這可能更針對斯科特。但我認為，銷售費用佔收入的百分比同比大幅下降。我們應該期待什麼樣的運行率？我只是想在這裡微調模型，就像我們看到一些收入增長和一些銷量增加一樣，這個數字應該在哪裡。顯然，有一些活動的部分，因為數量並沒有大幅增加。其中一些收入也只是通貨膨脹成本，但我只是想了解我們應該在那裡思考什麼。

Yes, exactly, Gerry. I'd love to give you some great metrics and linear drivers, but it's really going to come down to the mix of DSD, Revive and our Direct Ship customers. We're winning this new business. Obviously, there's different linear kind of equations with each of those types of business. So what I can commit to, though, is that it's clearly a focus for total selling, total operating expense, to be more efficient as a percent of sales. So as sales recover, we absolutely expect that to become more and more efficient.

是的，沒錯，格里。我很樂意為您提供一些出色的指標和線性驅動因素，但這實際上取決於 DSD、Revive 和我們的 Direct Ship 客戶的組合。我們正在贏得這項新業務。顯然，每種類型的業務都有不同的線性方程。所以我可以承諾的是，它顯然是總銷售、總運營費用的重點，以提高銷售額的百分比。因此，隨著銷售復甦，我們絕對希望銷售變得越來越高效。

But most of the selling costs are related to our DSD business. And so as Deverl noted, we're trying to bring on more routes, trying to find certified, qualified folks to do that. But it's only going to be justified if the sales are there. Whereas we can add a lot of Revive, we can add a lot of Direct Ship without a lot of addition to sales. So selling, in particular, will be linked to DSD growth, but it will be more efficient or continue to be more efficient in the future.

但大部分銷售成本與我們的 DSD 業務有關。正如 Deverl 所指出的，我們正在嘗試引入更多路線，試圖找到經過認證的合格人員來做到這一點。但這只有在銷售存在的情況下才合理。雖然我們可以添加很多 Revive，但我們可以添加很多 Direct Ship 而不會增加銷售量。因此，尤其是銷售，將與 DSD 的增長聯繫起來，但它會更有效率，或者在未來繼續更有效率。

This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back to Deverl Maserang for any closing remarks.

我們的問答環節到此結束。我想把會議轉回給 Deverl Maserang 做任何閉幕詞。

Thank you. I just want to again thank everyone for joining our call today. But most importantly, I just want to give a shout-out to all our team members across the U.S. that have worked so hard and so diligently over the last 2.5-plus years as we've navigated the turnaround, navigated COVID and now facing these inflationary pressures. And they are doubling down and working harder than ever. And I just want, again, just say thank you for all your work, each team member that represents Farmer Brothers has produced over the last quarter and as they look into 2023. So thank you, everyone. And again, we look forward to our upcoming quarter. Thank you.

謝謝你。我只想再次感謝大家今天加入我們的電話會議。但最重要的是，我只想向我們在過去 2.5 多年中辛勤工作和勤奮工作的美國所有團隊成員致敬，因為我們已經駕馭了轉變，駕馭了 COVID，現在正面臨這些通脹壓力。他們正在加倍努力，比以往任何時候都更加努力。我只想再次感謝你們所做的所有工作，代表 Farmer Brothers 的每個團隊成員在上個季度以及他們展望 2023 年的工作。所以謝謝大家。再次，我們期待即將到來的季度。謝謝你。

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.

會議現已結束。感謝您參加今天的演講。您現在可以斷開連接。