西斯柯 (SYY) 2018 Q3 法說會逐字稿

Good morning, and welcome to Sysco's Third Quarter Fiscal 2018 Conference Call. As a reminder, today's call is being recorded. We will begin today's call with opening remarks and introductions. I would like to turn the call over to Neil Russell, Vice President of Investor Relations and Communications and Treasurer. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Dennis. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Sysco's Third Quarter Fiscal 2018 Earnings Call. Joining me in Houston today are Tom Bené, our President and Chief Executive Officer; and Joel Grade, our Chief Financial Officer.

Before we begin, please note that statements made during this presentation that state the company's or management's intentions, beliefs, expectations or predictions of the future are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act and actual results could differ in a material manner. Additional information about factors that could cause results to differ from those in the forward-looking statements is contained in the company's SEC filings. This includes, but is not limited to, risk factors contained in our annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended July 1, 2017, subsequent SEC filings and in the news release issued earlier this morning. A copy of these materials can be found in the Investors section at sysco.com or via Sysco's IR app.

Non-GAAP financial measures are included in our comments today and in our presentation slides. The reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to the corresponding GAAP measures are included at the end of the presentation slides and can also be found in the Investors section of our website. (Operator Instructions)

At this time, I'd like to turn the call over to our President and Chief Executive Officer, Tom Bené.

Thank you, Neil, and good morning, everyone. I'd like to start this morning with some key themes that drove our results for the quarter, along with some comments on the current macro environment that we are operating in, followed by a discussion of our U.S. Foodservice Operations business and concluding with a discussion of our International and other business segments. Joel will then discuss the financial results in more detail.

This quarter, we were able to deliver solid results that include adjusted operating income growth of 7.1% compared to the prior year and adjusted earnings per share of $0.67. There were a number of key business drivers that impacted the results for the quarter, including strong gross profit dollar growth despite adverse weather in multiple geographies and continued investments that we're making across our business.

Turning to the macro environment. The overall trends continue to be generally favorable in the United States. This led to improved spend for the retail and foodservices sectors and somewhat favorable conditions for foodservice operators as sales at restaurants continue to rise, offsetting somewhat lower traffic counts. We also see continued growth with local customers as they increase their reach through innovative concepts and additional delivery methods. Economic growth in the international markets in which we operate was mostly positive, including modest growth in the foodservice sector.

Looking at our results. Sales grew 6.1% to $14.3 billion, driven by strong performance from our local customers, the addition of new customers accelerating our national customer growth, product cost inflation and in acquisition. As we shared during our Investor Day, we are focused on M&A activity as a part of our strategy and have recently closed 3 acquisitions: HFM in Hawaii, Kent Frozen Foods in the U.K. and Doerle Food Services in Louisiana. We are excited about all 3 companies and the talented associates that we are bringing into the Sysco family. However, only the results of HFM are included in our third quarter results.

Gross profit grew 5.6%, driven by positive case growth and effective ongoing management of product cost inflation. While we continue to face some challenges from inbound freight costs, the trend has been somewhat improving and was less of an impact in the third quarter. Additionally, the growth of Sysco Brand, which now comprises nearly 46% of local cases, resulted in incremental gross profit dollars. Sysco Brand continues to be driven by customers' interest in our growing breadth of products offered across multiple categories and tiers, along with continued progress from our brand revitalization efforts and new innovative products from our cutting-edge solutions process.

From an expense perspective, adjusted operating expense for the quarter grew 5.2%, driven by ongoing strategic investments in the business and a few operational challenges that impacted the quarter. Some of those investments include the supply chain transformation work occurring in Europe, the investment in marketing associates in the U.S. and the continued investment in technology that will ultimately translate into a more enriching experience for our customers. One example is the investment that we are making in Sysco Labs. Our Sysco Labs team, in conjunction with our business technology team, continue to enhance our technology offerings to customers, including further enhancements to both the ordering process and how customers receive products from us, all intended to make it easier for customers to do business with us.

Overall, we delivered adjusted operating income growth of 7.1% to $536 million. And with the addition of tax benefits, EPS growth was meaningfully higher than the prior year as adjusted EPS grew 31% to $0.67. The operational improvement in our business is a direct result of our business strategy that is predicated on disciplined, profitable and sustainable growth with an emphasis on local customers. We have continued to make strides in the execution of our strategic priorities and focusing on satisfying the needs of our customers.

Transitioning to our quarterly results by business segment, beginning with U.S. Foodservice Operations. Sales grew 5.1% for the quarter, gross profit grew 4.1%, adjusted operating expenses grew 5.9% and adjusted operating income grew 1.2%. For the quarter, top line results were strong as local case growth in our U.S. Broadline business was 2.6%, including the acquisition of HFM, and has now grown for 16 consecutive quarters.

We continue to see strong growth from our local customers who are able to introduce new and fresh concepts that consumers are positively responding to. National customer case growth was 2.2%, driving overall case growth of 2.4%. The solid case growth performance translated into healthy gross profit dollar growth of 4.1% as customer mix continued to improve as we grew local cases faster than national cases. Additionally, the previously mentioned growth in Sysco Brand also contributed positively to the gross profit dollar growth.

Turning our attention to cost. Our adjusted operating expense growth for the quarter was 5.9%, driven by increased supply chain cost in both warehouse and transportation due to a combination of weather impacts and a continuation of ramp-up cost for new business; our ongoing investment in our selling organization, specifically marketing associates, in an effort to accelerate our local sales; and increased bad debt expense as a result of year-over-year comparisons to a very strong prior year.

Moving on to International Foodservice Operations. We had strong results for the quarter with sales growing 10.7%, gross profit growing 12.9%, adjusted operating expenses growing 13% and adjusted operating income growing 11.6%. Top line growth was strong for the quarter despite winter storms that had a negative sales and cost impact across parts of our European and Canadian businesses due to reduced shipping days. Additionally, we continue to experience acute product inflation in the mid- to high single digits across the European business also impacting our gross profit growth for the quarter.

From a cost perspective, we continue to make investments in our supply chain transformation across Europe, including a recently announced integration of Brake France and Davigel to become Sysco France. The merger of these 2 businesses will position us well for continued success in the French marketplace, enabling new capabilities and allowing us to offer a unique multi-temperature service to better adapt to our customers' growing needs as well as to provide access to new customer segments. In addition, we are investing in new capabilities, such as technology solutions and modernization of existing facilities, which are being implemented across the business to enrich the customer experience of doing business with Sysco, which will ultimately lead to improved loyalty and accelerated case growth with our local customers.

Despite the positive top line performance and the various investments mentioned, the sequential improvement in operating income results for International were largely related to the fiscal calendar timing shift for our European business. We continue to focus on executing against our long-term plans by investing in necessary capability across the International business and leveraging our position as a platform for future growth.

Finally, SYGMA continued top line growth during the quarter with sales up 4.6% on case growth of nearly 2%. However, the business continues to struggle with expenses, including inbound freight issues and increased transportation expenses due to driver challenges and third-party spend to meet the high service level expectations of our customers.

In summary, we are encouraged by the solid fundamentals of our business, specifically the top line growth trajectory we are on while continuing to invest in our future growth. As we approach the conclusion of our initial 3-year plan, I remain confident that we are on track to achieve the high end of the $600 million to $650 million range of adjusted operating income improvement target. Additionally, we remain confident in our ability to deliver our new 3-year plan, including the financial targets we laid out during Investor Day as a part of this plan.

We continue to make the necessary investments in our people, technology and training that will lay the foundation for future growth. And I'd like to thank our dedicated Sysco associates for all that they are doing to execute on our customer and operational strategies, which will ultimately improve our customers' experience of doing business with us and also for making Sysco the distributor of choice for our customers.

Now I'd like to turn the call over to Joel Grade, our Chief Financial Officer.

Thank you, Tom. Good morning, everyone. As Tom mentioned earlier, we are pleased with the top line fundamental results for the third quarter. Sales and gross profit growth were strong as we saw positive impacts from case growth, inflation and continued Sysco Brand growth.

Adjusted operating expenses reflect continued investments, along with some ongoing challenges this quarter. However, we're able to generate operating leverage, leading to adjusted operating income growth of 7.1%, and with the addition of tax benefits, adjusted earnings per share of $0.67. In addition, we continue to generate meaningful free cash flow as we posted $768 million in the first 39 weeks of fiscal 2018. As for our quarterly results, for the third quarter, sales grew 6.1%, gross profit grew 5.6% while adjusted operating expense grew 5.2%, which resulted in adjusted operating income growth of 7.1% and adjusted earnings per share growth of 31.4% to $0.67 per share.

For the third quarter of fiscal 2018, we saw foreign exchange benefit to sales of approximately 1.6%. Sysco experienced inflation across all of our segments in the third quarter. In our U.S. Broadline business, we experienced 2.6% inflation, driven by a few categories, including meat, dairy and produce. Within our International business, inflation was a combination of both product cost increasing and currency translation in the U.K. During the quarter, we had gross profit growth of 5.6%, driven by overall volume growth and improved Sysco Brand penetration.

As Tom mentioned earlier, freight expense trends have somewhat improved and were not as significant of a headwind as in previous quarters. Adjusted operating expenses grew 5.2% for the quarter. The increase in expense is largely driven by supply chain costs in both warehouse and transportation, which are partly related to adverse weather and increased fuel costs, the previously announced investment in our selling organization and increased bad debt expense in our U.S. operations. Additionally, we continue to make investments in transformation and integration in our International business.

During the quarter, we achieved operating pretax leverage as gross profit dollar growth outpaced adjusted operating expense growth. We saw a gap of 40 basis points this quarter and we expect to continue to improve this trend in the fourth quarter. As it relates to taxes, our results for the third quarter were impacted by a benefit from a contribution of $330 million to derisk and fund our defined-benefit retirement plan, which was deductible using fiscal 2017 tax rates, tax benefits from stock option exercises and additional tax credits.

Cash flow from operations was $1.1 billion for the first 39 weeks of fiscal 2018. Net CapEx for the first 39 weeks of fiscal 2018 was $356 million or about 0.8% of sales, which was roughly $39 million lower compared to last year. Free cash flow for the quarter declined $232 million, driven by a deferred tax payment from the second quarter of fiscal 2018 due to relief from Hurricane Harvey and the contribution to our defined-benefit retirement plan. However, free cash flow for the first 39 weeks of fiscal 2018 was $768 million, which was $81 million higher compared to the same period last year.

Now I'd like to transition to 3 business updates. First, regarding our new effective tax rate following tax reform. As a reminder, due to the way our fiscal year fell from July to June, our U.S. statutory rate for fiscal 2018 is 28% and our U.S. statutory rate for fiscal 2019 and beyond will be 21%. Over time, we expect that our effective tax rate will be in the range of 25% to 26%. However, we anticipate after fiscal 2018 our effective tax rate will be slightly lower as we continue to work through various initiatives and opportunities.

Second, regarding the annual savings from lower taxes. We invested a portion of those savings in our associates by increasing our ongoing contributions to the Sysco 401(k) Plan. We continue to evaluate our options with regard to how best to utilize the balance of the savings and will do so consistent with our capital allocation priorities. We believe this is an opportunity to reinvest in our business and further strengthen our competitive advantage.

Finally, regarding CapEx. We had previously forecasted investment of 1.4% to 1.5% of sales for fiscal year 2018 as we plan to move spend from fiscal year 2019 into fiscal year 2018. Based on current spend levels, we anticipate finishing the fiscal year somewhat lower than previously forecasted.

In summary, I remain confident that we are on track to achieve our 3-year plan financial objectives, including the high end of the $600 million to $650 million range of improved adjusted operating income, comparing fiscal 2018 to fiscal 2015, excluding Brakes. Fundamentals of our business remain strong as we expect to deliver solid local case growth, good gross profit dollar growth and improved cost management while continuing to help our customers be successful.

Operator, we are now ready for Q&A.

(Operator Instructions) And your first question is from the line of Judah Frommer with Crédit Suisse.

First, maybe just on the tax reform reinvestment. A little bit of confusion out there with the second 3-year plan and whether anything has been restated for tax reform. I think based on the CAGNY disclosure, it's only EPS. But if you could help us out with what is and what isn't good in that 3-year plan, that would be helpful.

Yes. So it's Joel, Judah. Thanks for your question. Just want to make sure I'm understanding your question properly. You're asking the benefit ultimately on the new 3-year plan on the tax reform. And so that's what I'm answering. At CAGNY, we talked about this benefit of $0.20 to $0.25 on the EPS line, which continues to be our view of how we see that moving forward. So that's current guidance we've given and that's our continued current view of it.

Okay. So like the operating income guidance, that would include any potential reinvestment of tax reform dollars?

Yes, I would say it this way. I mean, the 3-year plan we've laid out, if you'll recall, does include a slightly increased level of capital investment, which wasn't directly related to tax reform. But the answer to your question is that the net income impacts and the operating income over the next 3 years does factor in -- considers those areas where we've invested and the benefits thereof.

Okay, that's helpful. And maybe just quickly just in terms of the independent landscape and kind of all 3 public players still talking the same way about the attractiveness of the opportunity there. Is there any bumping up against larger competitors when you're competing for independent business more than there was, let's say, 3, 6 months ago?

Judah, this is Tom. No, I'd say, look, this business, as we've talked for a long time, continues to be very competitive. I don't think there's anything new that we're seeing from either the bigger publicly traded guys or even the regional players that are out there. I think everyone knows that this is an attractive space and so they always have and they'll continue to participate in this space. And it's incumbent upon us to continue to do the things that differentiate Sysco from everybody else to continue to earn that business. But I wouldn't say there's anything new or different that's come about lately.

Your next question is from the line of Vincent Sinisi with Morgan Stanley.

Just wanted to ask about freight. It was encouraging to hear that you said it improved somewhat this quarter. Just wondering if you can give us some color on -- I mean, to our understanding, certainly the capacity is still constrained. So is it more what you're doing when you're negotiating on the rates? Or just give us a little more color there. And then kind of are you holding things status quo from a freight perspective as we go forward the next couple of quarters?

Vinnie, it's Tom. So look, the freight environment obviously continues to be somewhat challenging out there. And I know everyone is seeing that and hearing that. I think our point here is there have been a few things that we've been able to do, and we talked about this over the last couple of quarters, that we needed to be able to work with the suppliers and work with the carriers both to improve the situation we ran into, especially in our second quarter or the fourth quarter of last calendar year. The more freight on the road obviously creates pressure for everybody. There's truck driver challenges and there's obviously just capacity challenges. I think combination in Q3, what we probably saw is a little bit of softening of some of that pressure that was there at the end of last calendar year or in our second quarter. But also I think our team is doing a nice job working with our various carrier partners, ensuring that we were getting the loads we needed and the coverage that we expected as part of our agreements and candidly working with suppliers, too, to help soften some of the impact that's out there. As it relates to going forward, I think it's anybody's guess. I mean, we continue to manage this thing. It snuck up, I think, on a lot of us at the end of last calendar year. And we're doing everything we can to manage it. It's still impacting us. But hopefully, we'll see more of what we saw in Q3 -- our Q3 going forward. But it's a little too hard for us to call that from where we sit.

Okay. And then maybe just a quick follow-up on Brakes specifically. More on the fundamental kind of the integration temperature zones and all that. Can you just kind of give us a little update where we are in terms of progress there?

Sure. So if you think about the Brakes acquisition, we're now about 18 months into the acquisition. And over the last, call it, year or so, we spent a fair amount of time reinforcing the Sysco approach and model to the business. I'd say in that first 9 months, we're just getting our bearings straight on what we acquired and what we had there. And what was going on in the market, as you also know at least in the U.K., a lot of things were happening in the U.K. market with Brexit. So over this last year, what we've done is spent more time focused on what are the kind of things that we need in place to sustainably grow this business, similar what we do here in the U.S. with a focus on local customers. And so what we've learned over that time is that there are investments we need to make in the supply chain area. Specifically, we've always talked about this transformation in the U.K. But multi-temperature, which is common ground here in the U.S. and the way we operate, is not necessarily that way in all of Europe and certainly in the business that we had acquired. So we're investing in multi-temperature, which means think about that as one facility being able to provide all 3 temperature, frozen, chilled and dry, on one truck. And we didn't have that in all markets. And that's an ongoing investment we're going to make. We also have a better sense of what capability we had from a technology perspective in each of the countries and we're making some investments there. And I'd say lastly, there's some structural things that we needed to get in place to make sure we could operate the business the way we needed to across this International segment. And that's what some resource we're putting in place in Europe specifically to oversee a lot of the efforts we have going on over there. So it's been a -- you hear and you see obviously the number of investments we're making there. We believe it really is important for us to continue to position ourselves well for the future and ultimately to start to get the value that we believe exists in those markets and in those businesses we acquired.

Your next question is from the line of Chris Mandeville with Jefferies.

Joel, if I could just get some clarity -- and I apologize if I didn't understand it correctly here. But on the new 3-year outlook, are you still evaluating how you might use tax reform on a go-forward basis and leaving things open to possibly adjusting your 3-year goals on the EBIT line? Or is it effectively final, you remain confident in growing EBIT $650 million to $700 million over '17's numbers?

Yes, just to be clear, and know that if there's lack of clarification on this, you should ask it again. No, we're not adjusting our targets for our next 3-year plan. Our targets for our next 3-year plan are $650 million to $700 million as we talked about at our Investor Day. We are simply -- what we have said is we're continuing to evaluate the options for investing that. But certainly again, our targets are what they are.

Okay. So the timing could shift a bit. But nonetheless, the end target is the same. Okay. And then just any insights on how cases may have trended in the U.S. during the quarter and how Easter and/or weather may have affected results? And then any willingness to discuss quarter-to-date trends?

Chris, just so I'm -- a missing piece of what you're saying. Are you just talking about how weather affected the U.S. or just trends in general?

Yes. So just in terms of the case cadence throughout this quarter, how Easter and weather impacted the overall quarter and then if you'd be willing to discuss quarter-to-date trends.

Okay. So obviously, we talked through -- we certainly had weather impacts both in the U.S. and in some of our International businesses as everyone's pretty aware of what happened in the U.S., specifically I'd say in the Northeast but also some around in the whole eastern corridor. So we certainly saw some impacts of that weather on our volume. The other thing that we did not talk about last quarter that we went back and did a little bit of work on, look, as we think about the shift that happened at the end of last quarter around the New Year's holiday, we also probably had a small impact in our business in Q3 because of that shift that took place in Q2, meaning we got -- we think about a 50 basis point impact volume that went into Q2 that the prior year would have gone into Q3. So I'd say those kind of things slightly impacted our volume for this quarter. But we continue to feel pretty good about the overall industry trends. There's been some choppiness because of that weather, and you saw that in the March sales numbers for a lot of restaurant operators. But generally speaking, we feel good about the fundamentals in the business and believe that these segments continue to be an opportunity. And as we've talked numerous times, given our market share position, we believe there's plenty of opportunity for us to grow, whether it's in restaurants or other segments across the foodservice landscape.

And is there any real ability to quantify the weather impact and/or the Easter benefit as many of the restaurants called that out?

I don't think it's really easy to quantify it because you've got so many year-over-year impacts. We believe -- we certainly know when we lose shipping days that we -- you don't usually get those back in this businesses as we all know. It's not like, "Hey, I didn't go out last week because of the weather. I'm going to go out twice this week." That's not usually how it happens. So I think the reality is you lose those days. But we deal with this year in and year out. It just happened to be a little more affected in fiscal year -- in our fiscal year '18.

Yes, Chris, we haven't quantified that. And like I said, I think to Tom's point here, I mean, it's not something we're trying to make an overly big deal of. We're simply acknowledging the fact that both from a volume perspective and probably from an expense perspective, we had some areas that were impacted. But we're not trying to oversell it.

Your next question is from the line of John Heinbockel with Guggenheim Securities.

So on the investment in the MAs, how much do you think that contributed to the 6% SG&A growth in the quarter? Could that be 50 bps or something like that? And then secondly, given the timing of onboarding those folks, when do you think they start to make an impact on local case growth?

Thanks for the question. So what I'd say, when you think about the expense impact, specifically the U.S. business that you're asking about, there really were 3 big areas of impact. Certainly, marketing associates and the investment we're making in the sales organization was one of them. I'm not going to give you an exact number as a percentage of that. But it's a pretty important investment that we're making. And we believe that, that, in addition to some of the technology that we're putting in place to support that organization, is important. And what I would say is think about these as somewhat planned investments in that we went into both the 3-year plan knowing what we needed to get done and why we've committed to the numbers we've committed to. And this was a key part of that investment strategy. So think about it as planned and something that we think from a timing, how long it will continue and how long it takes these MAs, if you will, to get up fully up to speed, I think 3 to 4 quarters is still probably appropriate. While we've gotten better at getting folks ramped up and trained and we've got a much better process and programs in place than maybe we had in the past, it still takes a while to get these guys really impacting the business in the marketplace. So I'd say I wouldn't suggest we're done with it after this quarter. We probably have another quarter or so of investment around the selling organization. The other 2 areas in expenses were around the -- and Joel talked about this. What we do have sometimes with weather impacts is we've got our fixed cost. Obviously, there, often times, we're paying our warehouse people and our drivers even if we're not shipping cases. So we do have incremental expenses associated with some of our operating expense. Fuel obviously is also up. And we know that and we're dealing with the impacts of fuel on the operating expense. And then the last thing we called out was bad debt. And part of that was just year-over-year, we had a really good year last year in bad debt and we had a less favorable year this year, and I'd say more consistent this year with what we've had maybe in our history. It's not like we had a huge issue. But versus prior year is why that stood out.

And then just as a follow-up on the MAs. So correct me if I'm wrong, I think you kind of went from flat to maybe up 2%, something like that, in growth in MAs. Is that about right? And with that kind of pickup, can that add a couple hundred basis points once these guys are fully mature to local case growth? Or is that too much?

No, I'm not going to try to quantify that. I don't -- we certainly believe that both -- as we've talked in the past, John, the ability to better analyze the opportunity is what enables us to focus these resources. So where in the past, we might just have added resources and hope we put them in the right place and focused on the right things, we now are much more surgical in that approach. And so we certainly believe that by adding them in the areas where we have opportunity, we will accelerate our growth in those areas. But it's not everywhere and it's not certainly -- it's not something that -- it is something that we think about. We built into our new 3-year plan, so it's certainly embedded in the numbers we've shared with you all. But I can't necessarily quantify if we added a couple percentage of MAs that, that's going to drive a couple incremental percentage points of sales growth.

John, it's Joel. Maybe if I could just add one little bit of perspective on this from the investment -- I'll just give you maybe 2 little data points here. Number one, you may recall a lot of conversations we had as we're heading into this, even in the second year of this 3-year plan we were in, we're at what I would call somewhat of an accelerated trajectory. And people were actually -- we're getting a lot of questions around, "Hey, are you going to outperform what you've talked about and this and that?" We remain very firm on this because part of that, the $600 million to $650 million target, included some of this investment we're talking about here. So again, we remain very confident and consistent in terms of how we stuck to that number. And then the other thing is from a corporate expense perspective -- and one of the things I think we've done a good job of and will continue to is it's been saving some dollars on the corporate expense side and then reinvesting some of those dollars into our operations that ultimately will drive long-term benefit. So I think there's -- some of the effect of what you're seeing in both those cases here, but again, I think very consistent to what we've talked about and just to give a little bit of other perspective, I wanted to just give you and the rest of the people on the call as it relates to some of the costs.

Your next question is from the line of Edward Kelly with Wells Fargo.

Tom, can I ask you about the independent business or the local business? And just an update from you on what you're seeing from that customer segment from a demand perspective. There's been, I think, just some concern about whether things may be slowing down there or not. It's obviously a very hard channel to track. So just thoughts on what you're seeing on the demand side there and what your expectation is going forward.

Sure. So look, we haven't really seen a big change from where we sit. I think we continue to believe this is a very important and growing segment of the restaurant space for all the reasons we've talked about. They are much more capable of flexing their business and their model to the changing consumer dynamics that are happening out there. They also -- you think about whether it's the technology that's out there or this delivery that wasn't often available to these folks, those kind of things are out there. So there are a lot of things that are happening in that space that we continue to feel good about. And we see at least from our numbers and our dealing with these folks that we think there's still runway there. Clearly, there are some cost pressures that they're facing. Obviously, product cost inflation is impacting them some. Some markets, the labor challenges that are out there are certainly impacting them. And labor, I think, is always going to be a challenge for the restaurant industry as we go forward here. But generally, we feel good. And as I've said earlier, given our share position, we feel like there's plenty of room for us to grow. And as we've talked in this local area, we've now grown our business for 16 straight quarters. And we continue to believe that we can deliver the kind of growth we've talked with you all about. There is some growth happening in what we would call kind of the micro chain. So think about as these emerging concepts we've talked about. There are some of these folks that are starting to get more traction. These are the -- they can be -- start out as 3 or 5 units and then they continue to add as they get traction. So we are seeing some pretty good growth within that segment of the independent market.

Okay. I just want to follow up quickly on the cost side. Can you talk about when we should expect the cost in U.S. Foodservice to begin to normalize a bit and see the true underlying EBIT growth within that business shine through?

I think as we get into fiscal year '19, you should start to see us get back to a little more balanced top line versus cost. As Joel just said, I think we purposely plan some investments in these businesses. And basically, we're executing that plan that we had built. But as we get into fiscal year '19, you should -- and as we talked about for our next 3-year plan, we're very committed to the gap that we have between our top line, our gross profit and our expense growth. And I think you should expect that as we get into fiscal year '19. And that's true across our business. I mean, we're very focused on those numbers. We've delivered them -- we've exceeded that what we had said in our first 3-year plan. And I think you should expect that we'll deliver what we communicated in our new 3-year plan.

Yes. And quite honestly, without that happening, we wouldn't be able to deliver that percent math gap. And we certainly feel -- again, we certainly feel good about our ability to do that. So I think that's certainly the way to think about this.

Your next question is from the line of Karen Short with Barclays.

Just a quick question on your operating profit goals. You stated you're still planning to be at the high end for the 3 years ending in '18. Can you just give us an update where you are now?

Sure. Yes, we're at $561 million through essentially the -- through 11 quarters. So we think we're in a good place.

Well, so I guess just as I look at what you have delivered each quarter this year, it seems like the fourth quarter, there's definitely -- a lot larger percent will be -- need to be achieved in the fourth quarter this year. Is there anything specific about the fourth quarter that we should think about? I mean, if you were to get $100-ish million in the fourth quarter, that would be a lot bigger than you have in the past.

Yes, I mean, I agree. I think -- but number one, again just certainly, we continue to feel good about it; two, certainly a big quarter for us typically. As there's some seasonality, it's typically a strong quarter, and so obviously Q3 being a smaller quarter and Q4 typically being a larger one. Yes, we do anticipate some -- a bit of some positives on some -- a couple of expense comparison areas as well. But I'd say just in general, nothing earth-shattering there. But we certainly continue -- we certainly expect to -- continue to expect to hit those numbers we've talked about.

Okay. And then in terms of freight, I guess, in general, I guess, obviously you said you had a plan in place to help mitigate some of the headwinds. But did it also get easier this quarter to pass on freight? Or is that kind of unchanged?

Yes, I think, look, as time moves on, yes, it becomes a little easier. But that's primarily in the contract customers, okay? I mean, if you think about the way this works, we -- it comes to us and for the independent customers isn't just another part of inflation, if you really think about it. The cost of the products, the landing cost of the products go up. And so it takes what's already normal inflation of 2.5% or so and takes it up even further, so -- in the [independents,] it's a little harder. But as you have some more time, you can pass that along. And from a contract customer, given the cycle and the way the freight impacts actually hit us and ultimately we pass those along to contract customers, we're able to pass more of that along. So the long-winded answer is yes to some extent. And that's certainly helping as well.

But I guess in that context then, fourth quarter for you should be better than third sequentially, shouldn't it?

I think what you maybe should expect is we're hoping a continuation of what we've had in the third quarter. I wouldn't necessarily say better. Having said that, we are still a little nervous about as the summer season kicks up, there's all kinds of new freight that's on the road. If things like produce start -- I mean, there's a lot of movement of freight in this country. And the summer season seems to be a big season. So we're a little nervous about that relative to what we saw in Q4 of last year. But time will tell.

But just one thing I'll add to that. I mean, to be clear, we're not banking our ability to hit the $600 million to $650 million based on an assumption of an improved freight market. If that happens, it's obviously great.

I wasn't implying that. Okay. And just last question, within the local organic case growth, I know that you've been asked this before and it's hard to do. But do you have any more insight into how much is really coming from same-store sales or, I guess, same-door sales versus new doors?

Well, look, we do manage in our own business what we would call penetration. So think about that as what you're asking is how much is coming from current customers buying more as well as business that's new or business we've lost. Our penetration numbers are positive, which suggest that we're getting more sales. But Karen, as you know, that's highly variable. Every customer and every concept and every market can be a little bit different, depending on what's going on in that market. So it's hard to paint that across the business. But as I said earlier, we continue to feel pretty good about a lot of these customers in this space. Not everybody has got a winning concept, not everybody is succeeding. But we feel good about the customers that we do business with. And many of them are doing well.

Your next question is from the line of Andrew Wolf with Loop Capital Markets.

Just wanted to ask about the gross margin getting a lot better sequentially on a consolidated basis. So would you ascribe that mainly to less inflation, making markets a little more efficient for distributors? Or is it mix or pricing? Just give us a sense of what you think drove the improvement there.

Yes, I'll start, Andy, and I'll let Tom chime in here. I mean, first of all, on the inflation comment, I mean, I would say broadly speaking, inflation, there wasn't much of really significant change there from that perspective. I mean, I think what we continue to see that ultimately drives again solid improvement in margin. We continue to talk about a continued good mix of local case growth. Our brand growth has continued to be strong. And so that's certainly again a positive contributor into our overall margin. I think the point Tom made, we just kind of talked about in this last conversation regarding freight. Again, that doesn't suggest that we've had some dramatic shift there. But the ability that over time, we've had a little bit better ability to pass some of those costs along, particularly to the contract customers as that ultimately translates into margin improvement as well. So again, I wouldn't say really there's been any sort of macro swing that's kind of mathematically caused it. But just in general, when you couple those things with continued enhancements to the technology and utilization of technologies to improve our pricing through our revenue management, I think, has just overall continued to allow us to do well in that area. I don't know if you want to add there.

Listen, I just want to follow up real quickly, if I could, on the International side of the business, where for the first 3 quarters, it's still substantially down. But this quarter, you were up a bit. First, I just want to make sure I heard your explanation right. Was this quarter's increase in operating profit internationally just mainly driven by the harmonization of the calendar -- the fiscal calendar at Brakes? I just want to make sure I heard that right. And what I'm really trying to get to is what's the implication for Q4? Should it be a better improvement?

Well, so -- yes, Andy, so I think what I would say to that is that, again number one, keep in mind, Q3 for our International business is a small quarter in terms of dollars. But I mean -- so percentages get bigger based on smaller dollar movements. But I mean, there are certainly some element of calendarization that was one of the main drivers of the improvement in this quarter. And we've talked about that over the last few quarters. We anticipated some of the negative impact certainly in the first half of the year. And we've talked about the second half being better. And we started to see some of that in this quarter. So I think again, that's -- and you'll see some more of that anticipated in the fourth quarter as well. So I think obviously there's a lot of work being done to continue to enhance the underlying operations of that. But certainly, again consistently as we anticipated, first half of the year had some calendar impact that some of which were picked up here and we'll pick up a little more in Q4. But not to suggest we're recovering all that, but that's what you're seeing there.

That's helpful. So we can now think of modeling the International operations in terms of seasonal [leverage] and such similar to the U.S. part, it sounds like?

Yes, I would say it's certainly much more similar. Look, obviously, the stuff that we've called out heading into this year, we certainly anticipate some. Now again keep in mind, we still have 1 quarter to go where you're going to see some of that. But starting in our next fiscal year, yes, I think that's a fair comment, Andy.

Your next question is from the line of Bill Kirk with RBC Capital.

I have another question on International. I think it will be in the Q tomorrow. But what impact did currency have on top line and on profitability for that segment in the period?

Yes, you know what, you're going to have to -- you'll have to wait for the Q on that one. I don't have that right in front of me in terms of that segment itself. I mean, as an overall enterprise, our foreign exchange contributed about -- a little over about 1.6% in terms of top line, had fairly similar impacts from gross profit and OpEx. But at the end of the day, on the net bottom line, it was a minimal impact for the enterprise as a whole. But you'll have to wait on the impact specifically for that segment until tomorrow.

Okay. And maybe another way to get to the same idea, what were the cases -- what were case growth for International segment in the 3Q?

Yes. So that's not actually something we break out. Our volume metrics in our International business are not the same in all cases as they are in our, what we'll call, our U.S. or our Canadian businesses. And so we don't actually have -- again, there's different volume metrics across those businesses. We haven't yet, what I'd call, harmonized the volume metric for that segment.

Your next question is from the line of Marisa Sullivan with Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

I'm not sure if you stated it exactly so far. But what is your expectation for inflation moving into the fourth quarter and then into the back half of the calendar year?

Yes, I think the way I'd look at that is it's pretty consistent where we're at, maybe slightly up, I think, is our view. I don't know that I'd necessarily call out anything really dramatic there. But certainly again, our 3-year plan expectations that we've laid out at Investor Day were, I would say, a little below where we're at today and what our expectation is as we move forward over the next 2 months.

Got it. And I think you mentioned in your prepared remarks some -- there were some operational challenges. Is this just related to weather? Or is there anything else to call out there that might continue into the fourth quarter?

No, what I talked about, Marisa, was primarily the weather-related impacts that we had and some of the ongoing transportation challenges. Fuel obviously was also an impact for us in the quarter. So I think fuel obviously is going to continue. But a lot of the weather ones obviously we're hoping we don't have those problems.

Yes. And I think other thing, I mean, we do a better -- we ramp up a bit of staffing at this time of year. And when we had a little bit of weather impact on volume, that also has a negative overall impact, particularly on operational metrics.

The only other thing I'd add is I did mention, we still -- we mentioned this in our Q2 and the -- as we've taken on some of these new business, most of them on the contract side, we have not mitigated some of those start-up costs as quickly as we would have liked. And so there was a little bit of that in Q3 as well. And we do think that, that will -- certainly, that's kind of mitigated now. And we should be in good shape going forward.

Your next question is from the line of Kelly Bania with BMO Capital.

Just wanted to ask again maybe a different way on operating expenses. Can you help us understand of the growth in operating expenses this quarter and last quarter, maybe how much of that is maybe some of these investments on things like MA and technology that maybe set you up to accelerate some of your momentum versus maybe some of the things that are a little bit more outside of your direct control in terms of the operating expenses?

Yes, Kelly, I mean, we've kind of talked about each of these. I would say not going to probably quantify it at a specific level you'd like, each of those areas. But I think the important thing to remember is many of these expenses in the quarter were planned expenses. And again, it's built into that 3-year plan that we laid out 2.5 years ago at this point and knowing we needed to make some investments in the various business. And that's a big part of what's happening in the U.S. I think, look, we just talked about some of these operational expense challenges. And those are real, certainly on the transportation and warehousing side, whether it's the ramp-up of new customers or some of the weather impacts, where we've got the expense without the volume and sales are real and then the bad debt was the other one. So those are the big areas. And when we talk about sales and MAs, I would include in that this technology investment we're making to make the -- that selling organization more efficient, more effective and certainly continue to work on how that experience our customers have of doing business with us gets improved. So those are the big focus areas. But as I said earlier, most of these were planned as it relates to the selling side of this. And I think as we talked earlier, we should start to see those mitigate in the first part of fiscal year '19.

Yes. And again, I just -- the only thing, Kelly, I'd just remind you, I mean, again as part of my prepared comments, I did talk about we continue to anticipate seeing a better [this] gap between GP and OpEx improve. And then certainly obviously, our next 3-year plan as we laid out at our Investor Day, continues to have this 1.5 point spread. And again, we feel good about where those are at. Again, there's just some -- again, we've talked, as we headed into this last part of this 3-year plan while making some of these investments, you're seeing some of it, but we certainly still feel good about all the stuff we've talked about here, both for the last part of this 3-year plan as well as the next one.

Okay, that's helpful. Then maybe just another one in terms of freight. You mentioned a little better performance this quarter, last quarter. But do you think we've hit the peak in terms of impact of that? Or is this something we're going to be dealing with for a couple of years here? And also at what point do we get to a level where either on freight or fuel that the surcharges kind of come back in the industry?

So we've talked a little bit about freight this morning. I think we feel good about what happened in our Q3 and some of that driven by probably industry and some of it driven by actions that we were taking. It's really too hard to call right now whether we think that level of performance is going to continue. And I think as I said earlier, a lot of this has to do with capacity. And as capacity gets tight, then obviously the challenges of anybody who's moving a lot of freight start to show up. And so we obviously receive a lot of freight from suppliers. Because the pressure has really been on drivers and the drivers -- that's not going to change overnight. There aren't a lot of drivers coming into the workforce at the rate that are probably necessary. And I think we've all got to continue to work to find better ways to move freight. Rail, at one point, was a good option. It's not been as great an option in the last year or so. But it's something we got to continue to look at. So we're going to continue to do everything we can. But just it's hard for us to sit here and make a call on that. Regarding fuel and surcharges, look, we have in place a surcharge approach for fuel primarily. And that process is out there and it's been articulated to our customers. So as fuel continues to grow, we have a process to mitigate some of that, doesn't ever cover all of it. But we do have those plans in place.

Your next question is from the line of Karen Holthouse with Goldman Sachs.

Just another one on the commodity inflation side. We're now a couple quarters -- or quarters in a row into 2%, 3% inflation. And I think when it initially moved, it started to move up. A lot of that was sort of attributed to noise around hurricanes and maybe produce. Is it -- are you starting to view it maybe as a little bit more structural or starting to see pressure in sort of the underlying grain or protein areas?

Yes. I mean, I wouldn't say it's -- again, there's really nothing dramatic there. I mean, I would say from a produce perspective, we're actually still seeing some level of produce inflation that I would say frankly is probably a little higher and a little longer than we anticipated. So that's kind of still there. The main categories here are dairy, produce and meat. And so I think -- I don't know that I'd really call it, Karen, anything really kind of underlying structurally that's really again outrageous there. But then again, I would just -- I would say the produce has probably been a little bit higher and a little bit longer than we anticipated.

Great. And then on the current 3-year plans out to 2020, it sounds like this year is going to come in a little bit below sort of the implied CAGR. And you've previously talked about sort of pretty balanced cadence between the 3 years. How should we think about that as it translates into the next 2 years? Would it still be sort of balanced between 2019 and 2020? Or would 2019 potentially be a little bit of a catch-up year?

Yes. So I guess, what I would say is, just as a reminder, I mean, Karen, we've been very consistent in talking about the fact that we are pretty confident in our ability to achieve the objectives we set out for our last 3-year plan, which is sort of high end of the $600 million to $650 million. We feel -- we are very much -- we feel on track in terms of heading into our next 3-year plan or, I guess, being the first year of our next 3-year plan. And one of the things we talked about as well at Investor Day is that there's -- we are pretty balanced in terms of the growth in -- that we're experiencing year-over-year as part of these plans. And so while certainly this year, we anticipate a little -- as Tom has talked about, with some of the investments we made, we did anticipate some higher level of expense coming into this year that suggests a little bit of a bigger ramp over the next couple. But I would just say in general, we're kind of on track where we anticipated being and feel good about where we're at.

Your next question is from the line of John Ivankoe with JPMorgan.

Just a clarification, I think, of 2 different comments that you made. So you expect on a corporate basis, GP dollar growth gap to expand versus OpEx in the fourth quarter but still not to expect expansion in U.S. Foodservice. Is that correct?

Yes, I didn't go into the second part. But what I was really saying to you is on the -- on an overall enterprise basis, I was expecting that to expand, yes.

Okay. But I did hear, as you were talking about optimizing the sales force, especially the new sales force, that you would -- you kind of expect improvement beginning in fiscal '19. So perhaps you interpreted that fourth quarter would be relatively slow as the third quarter was. Or correct me if I'm wrong.

Yes, I don't know that we actually give that kind of guidance, John. Just as you know, it does take a little bit of time, as Tom has pointed out, for those salespeople. I wouldn't necessarily look at this and anticipate anything dramatic on that in Q4. But again, we didn't guide that.

And also John, that's one piece of the overall cost puzzle for all the businesses and certainly the U.S. business. So I wouldn't assume anything in that.

Okay, fair enough. And finally, I mean, obviously digital is very important for your customers, very important for your sales force, efficiency and effectiveness. I mean, is there the tipping point that you expect that you can have much more effective and efficient salespeople? I mean, does that happen in early '19? And based on that type of comment, I mean, are there any markets specifically that you piloted that shows what the margin opportunity is with technology?

We continue to feel really good about the work we're doing in the technology space. And we continue to see improvement in the number of customers who are using our technology solution to both order products from us and operate their business. We also have seen, certainly as we've talked a little bit, more improved penetration in customers who use the technology solutions. But broadly speaking, we feel good about where we're at in that space and feel like it's going to continue to be an investment we need to make and one that will drive some benefits for us long term.

I think the only other thing I would add to that, and just as a reminder though, I mean, some of the investments we've made that we've talked about in our sales force are very targeted. So in other words, this isn't necessarily in any way sort of a reflection of -- like we were actually anticipating over time both increased productivity from our sales force as a result of the technology. But the investments we've made here are again, I would say, very targeted based on areas where we see additional opportunities to penetrate markets. So just as a reminder of that as well.

And at this time, there are no further questions. Please continue with any closing remarks.

Well, thank you, everybody. We'd like to thank you for tuning in to our third quarter conference call. As always, the Investor Relations team is here for any follow-up questions that you may have. Thank you for your attention.

Thank you, everyone.

Thanks.

Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude the Sysco's Third Quarter Fiscal 2018 Conference Call. You may now disconnect.