Turning Point Brands Inc (TPB) 2021 Q2 法說會逐字稿

Good morning, and welcome to the Turning Point Brands Second Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference Call. (Operator Instructions) Please note, this event is being recorded.

I would now like to turn the conference over to your speaker, Louie Reformina, Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone. This is Louie Reformina, our Chief Financial Officer. Joining me are Turning Point Brands' President and CEO, Larry Wexler and Graham Purdy, Chief Operating Officer. This morning, we issued a news release covering our first quarter results. This release is located in the IR section of our website, www.turningpointbrands.com where a replay of today's conference call will also be available.

In this call, we will discuss our consolidated and segment operating results and provide a perspective on our progress and our strategic plan. At is customary, I direct your attention to the discussion of forward-looking and cautionary statements in today's press release and the risk factors in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The disclosure outlines various factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from projections or forward-looking statements that may be cited in today's discussion. These forward-looking statements and projections are not guarantees of future performance and should not place undue reliance upon them except as provided by federal securities laws, and we undertake no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements.

In the call today, we will reference certain non-GAAP financial measures. These measures and reconciliations to GAAP can be found in today's earnings release, along with reasons why management believes that they provide useful information. I will now turn the call over to Larry Wexler, our CEO.

Thank you, Louie, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining the call. We are pleased to report a quarter that once again outperformed our expectations. In the second quarter, revenue was up 17% to $123 million, above our prior guidance range, and adjusted EBITDA was up 32% to $30 million. Revenue growth was led by Zig-Zag which had an exceptional quarter with over 70% growth. We are harvesting the fruits of our strategic growth initiatives and are continuing to outperform the market. We were also aided by a favorable comparison against COVID disruptions in our wraps business that negatively impacted the prior year period, and the consolidation of ReCreation Marketing's results.

There was progress throughout our product lines. Paper cones and e-commerce continued to provide a big boost to sales, while our wraps business benefited from salesforce execution against favorable market demand and benefitted from a trade inventory load. In total, wrap sales doubled in the quarter. Stoker's performed in line with our expectations, was up 8%, led by double-digit growth in MST, which continues to be well positioned for the secular shift into the value category.

Our chewing tobacco business gained share but had a modest sales decline as it comped against a competitor going offline in last year's quarter. NewGen faced a tough year-over-year comp and a new regulatory hurdle outperformed our expectations during the quarter. The vape distribution team responded well to the implementation of the PACT Act, which made the logistics of delivering vape products to customers and consumers more challenging. While we still expect volatility in NewGen, we are seeing progress in both the FDA's efforts around the PMTA process and increased enforcement against unauthorized products still in the market.

During the second quarter, the FDA issued 52 warning letters to manufacturers that did not submit a PMTA to bring the total to the end of the quarter to 131 warning letters sent out since January, in an effort to bolster its enforcement against the legal products in the market. Importantly, on May 20, the FDA posted its continued compliance list which provides a directory of those deemed new tobacco products for which a PMTA was timely submitted. We believe this list will provide retailers and trade customers more clarity on which products they can carry. This includes our submissions for our deemed products, all of which have now received acceptance letters. A number of the products are now in scientific review.

We are confident that we have submitted robust filings and anticipate working successfully with the FDA through the process. We believe that both the PACT Act and the PMTA process are creating barriers to entry in our business that will position us well in the long-term as these factors force the consolidation in the industry.

We've also been very active in our capital deployment with share repurchases and investments. In April, our subsidiary, ReCreation Marketing acquired DVW, a distributor with strong presence in British Columbia and with major national chains. While DVW has marginal profitability at the onset, it serves as a great platform to expand the distribution of our more profitable proprietary products, an area where we previously had limited reach.

Last week, we announced an $8 million investment in Old Pal, one of the most recognized brands in the cannabis space with product offerings in 7 states. Old Pal has a nimble, asset-light, non-plant-touching business model that has allowed it to scale across multiple states and a team that's been adept in managing the ever-changing complexities of the cannabis market. Old Pal fits well within our strategy of building a house of scalable, well-known brands in the cannabis industry, joining previous investments in Docklight, which holds the rights to the Marley brand for cannabinoids in Dosist.

What caught our attention with Old Pal is their experienced management team and the awareness they have been able to build with the brand even in states in which they do not currently operate. Our investment will allow them to accelerate their growth while also providing a prime opportunity to increase our own product sales presence in dispensaries.

Yesterday, we also announced the acquisition of certain cigar assets of Unitabac. Cigars are a very important multibillion-dollar category, where industry observers have highlighted that growth is being driven by cannabis consumption. Cigars are a perfect complementary product to our MYO cigar business, one where we were lacking the necessary IP to compete effectively in this space. Unitabac assets come with a portfolio of grandfathered products and other FDA premarket filings, providing us with a broader and more cost-effective platform to compete in the market. Our plan is to expand distribution for Unitabac's brands while leveraging the IP to introduce line extensions in the Zig-Zag cigar portfolio.

With approximately $180 million of liquidity on our balance sheet to end the second quarter, along with strong free cash flow generation, we remain very active on the acquisition and investment front. With another solid quarter of performance, we are able to raise our guidance once again and look forward to continuing our momentum. To add some additional color and perspective on our quarter and the path forward, let me turn the call over to Graham Purdy, Chief Operating Officer.

Thank you, Larry. Let me now give you a quick snapshot of the performance from the segment level. Zig-Zag products saw double-digit growth in the quarter, led by a doubling of sales in both our MYO cigar wraps and Canadian businesses and strong double-digit growth in U.S. rolling papers, led by e-commerce and paper cones. Our MYO cigar wrap business compared favorably against the previous year period that experienced a COVID-related disruption when our third-party manufacturer went off-line.

With retail sales accelerating, we were able to leverage a more efficient supply chain post the Durfort acquisition to fill the backlog that was built up heading into the current quarter and further benefited from the inventory trade load as our customers built buffer inventory which pulled roughly $2 million of sales into the quarter.

In the U.S., Zig-Zag paper's position as the leading premium and overall paper brand strengthened, increasing its share in the measured market by 2.4 points year-over-year to 35.1% according to MSAI. After not growing share for the first 3 years since our IPO, this was the eighth consecutive quarter that Zig-Zag has realized year-over-year share growth, reflecting the portfolio and channel efforts put in place to revitalize the business, where we are still in the early stages of this process. Our new products and our expanding e-commerce platform again provided a boost. During the quarter, our paper cones had 33.3% share of the segment in the major channel according to MSAI, up 10.5 points from the previous year as our volumes more than doubled. We continue to lead the growth and penetration of the product in convenience stores and are expanding our presence in the non-measured alternative channel where Zig-Zag is still underrepresented.

In Canada, we had a strong quarter of growth with our business more than doubling as ReCreation Marketing, which is now being consolidated, continues to ramp and is now being bolstered by DVW. E-commerce was again a big driver of growth. Our e-commerce business, which is now double digits of our U.S. paper sales, is still only 1.5 years old and continues to make strides of over 3.5x last year's levels and up 50% from the previous quarter.

Stoker's products saw high single-digit growth in the quarter with double-digit growth from moist snuff again being the driver. Stoker's market share was up to 5.8%, a little over 50 basis points compared to a year ago according to MSAI. Stoker's moist snuff is now in stores representing 62.2% of industry volumes, 3.8 points above last year's level, which still leaves a long runway for further growth.

Chewing tobacco sales saw low single-digit decline during the quarter after comping against a quarter that saw 6% growth when a competitor experienced COVID-related disruptions in the prior year period. Despite the tough comp, Stoker's chew gained 20 basis points with a 26% share in the second quarter according to MSAI to position Stoker's as the number one chewing tobacco brand. With the continued secular shift into the value category and Stoker's positioning as a leading value brand, the chewing tobacco business is well placed to provide us with a stable annuity stream of cash flow going forward.

Moving to NewGen, where we once again had a resilient quarter in a very disruptive environment, our vape distribution business saw double-digit declines against a tough comp during the prior year when we benefited from a COVID-related disruption at a B2B competitor and a strong B2C quarter during the stay-at-home provisions. The business did benefit from advanced buying in April ahead of the stricter shipping regulations around vaping as a result of the implementation of the PACT Act. We believe this boosted sales by $2 million during the quarter as customers adjusted to the longer lead times by building inventory.

The PACT Act had meaningful impact on costs. Our outbound freight expense in vape business, which we recognize in SG&A, was up over 300 basis points as a percentage of its sales from the previous quarter, and this increase was only partially passed on to the customer. We believe that the additional cost and complexities around logistics and delivery of vape products to customers caused by the PACT Act is consolidating the industry further and positions us well to take share.

Outside vape, WildHemp contributed to our growth and we are encouraged by the early reception for our FRE white nicotine pouch as we begin its rollout during the second quarter. Going forward, while we continue to expect short-term volatility in the vape distribution business, we like our positioning from a long-term competitive standpoint and are excited by some of our new product launches, including FRE and NewX. And with that, I'll turn it to Louie for a review of our fourth quarter financial performance. Louie?

Thank you, Graham. Our performance in the second quarter was ahead of plan once again. Turning to segment reviews, Zig-Zag products net sales in the quarter increased 72.3% to $47.2 million, with a doubling in our MYO cigar wrap and Canadian businesses and strong double-digit growth in U.S. rolling papers. Total Zig-Zag segment volume increased 64.6%, while price mix increased 7.7%. According to MSAI, first quarter industry volumes for U.S. rolling papers increased mid-single digits in the measured channel.

During the quarter, our volumes grew at 2.8x the rate of the overall market and Zig-Zag contributed over 90% of the industry's growth with our paper cones being the major driver. This growth excludes the incremental volume growth we are seeing from the alternative and e-commerce channels. MYO cigar industry volumes were up strong double digits in the quarter.

During the quarter, we saw the segment's gross margins expand by 160 basis points to 58.8%. This was the result of the financial benefit of eliminating royalty payments to Durfort, resulting in higher margins for our MYO cigar wrap product. Zig-Zag accounted for 58% of our segment operating income in the second quarter and continues to be our fastest-growing segment.

Stoker's products net sales increased 8.3% to $33.4 million in the quarter. Net sales for the MST portfolio grew 16.1% and represented 62% of Stoker's revenues in the quarter, up from 58% a year earlier. Total Stoker's volume increased 2.4% with price mix advancing 5.9%. Segment gross margins expanded by 80 basis points to 54.4% during the quarter, driven by price across the segment and fixed cost leverage in our MST business. Year-over-year industry volumes for MST were flattish, with chewing tobacco declining by approximately 3%. Stoker's brand shipments to retail continues to outpace the industry in the quarter, growing its MSAI share in both chewing tobacco and MST.

Moving to our NewGen segment, net sales decreased 10.0% to $42.1 million, driven by tough comps in the vape distribution business, but was up 13% sequentially, which was above our expectations. We continue to expect near-term volatility due to the PMTA process in 2021, along with the impact of the PACT Act. For the quarter, NewGen gross profit contracted 20 basis points to 33.5%.

Now moving to the consolidated business, adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was up 32% to $30.0 million. We achieved 41% incremental margins during the quarter, reflecting the strong performance in our core segments as we leverage our fixed cost structure. In this morning's release, we updated our 2021 guidance as follows. Net sales of $447 million to $462 million. This is up from previous guidance of $422 million to $440 million and includes $109 million to $114 million in the third quarter. Adjusted EBITDA for the full year is now expected to be $108 million to $113 million, up from previous guidance of $103 million to $108 million. For Zig-Zag, we expect strong double-digit sales growth. As Graham mentioned, MYO cigar also benefited from roughly $2 million of orders from a trade inventory load that pulled forward sales from the third quarter.

As a reminder, in 2020, our cigar wraps business benefited from $5 million in backlog built in the fourth quarter as we recovered from manufacturing-related disruptions early in the year. This will affect year-over-year comps during that fourth quarter. Going forward, we expect Zig-Zag gross margins to moderate slightly from second quarter levels due to mix as ReCreation Marketing ramps up and adds the contribution of lower gross margins from its DVW acquisition.

For Stoker's, we expect high single-digit sales growth. In chewing tobacco, we face another tough comp in the third quarter when we grew 10% year-over-year last year as a competitor was temporarily out of the market. For NewGen, we now expect flat growth, up from previous guidance of mid- to low single-digit decline in revenue. This includes low single-digit declines for vape distribution. This is up from previous guidance of single-digit decline, offset by growth in NewX. We believe vaping sales in the quarter benefited by $2 million as customers increased inventory levels as they adjusted to the longer delivery times due to the logistical challenges of the PACT Act.

Moving to our balance sheet, we ended the quarter with $157 million of cash on the balance sheet and $179 million of available liquidity. This puts us in a strong position to execute on an active pipeline of opportunities we are currently evaluating to grow our business. With that, I'll turn the call back to Larry for closing comments.

We had a strong first half to the year. Our core businesses continued to perform led by Zig-Zag's performance. We are benefiting from solid execution in a favorable environment, driven by the secular growth in cannabis consumption. Stoker's continues to drive share gains and NewGen has performed well amidst the disruption of the PMTA process and the PACT Act, which are likely to be transformational events for the industry. Our strong performance would not be possible without the continued efforts of our employees. I want to personally thank them once again for the commitment and contribution to our success. Thank you for participating in the call today.

And with that, I'd like to open the call to questions.

(Operator Instructions) We have our first question from Eric Des Lauriers from Craig-Hallum Capital.

All right, great. Congrats on a really impressive quarter here. So first from me, in NewGen, nice job weathering the volatility from both PMTA and PACT Act here. Understanding the dust has not fully settled yet, but could you give us an update on the competitive landscape there and your ability to ultimately increase mix of proprietary products?

Eric, as we've been talking about, there's a lot of volatility in the business. We've seen a number of smaller competitors go out of business. We've also seen some of the -- one of the larger competitors grow a bit. Looking forward, we expect to see accelerated activity by the FDA as it gets close to their previously announced date for completing the PMTA process, which is in September. I don't think they're going to hit that. They've given every indication they're not going to complete the process by them, but I think that they're going to want to put some news out in terms of where they are along that process. So we continue to see volatility. The USPS is currently still shipping some B2B products, so we haven't seen the complete implementation of the PACT Act. That will be another disruptive event going forward.

Okay. Great. It seems like you guys are well positioned to handle all that, so good to see. Next one for me, on the M&A front, you guys have really made some nice investments in Dosist, Docklight, now Old Pal, clearly building up an impressive brand portfolio kind of attaching yourself to that high-growth cannabis segment. With Old Pal, you guys called out the fact that they are non-plant touching. Would you guys look to consolidate any of these non-plant-touching cannabis brands in the near future here? Or should we think of really all of these as sort of remaining minority investments until we get some sort of federal reform?

Yes, they are minority investments at the moment, as you mentioned. I think our objective is that these are stand-alone companies right now. We have the option to deploy more capital, so I think that the strategy here is to build a house of brands, diversify our portfolio, and be able to kind of double down as these businesses get de-risked and so closer to federal legalization to bring them in-house. How we do that will be kind of determined in the future as the market evolves.

Okay. That makes sense. And then last one for me here, just within the Zig-Zag business, I'm not sure if I missed it, but could you guys quantify to the best of your ability the inventory pull-through in the quarter? And then maybe just give us an update on the competitive landscape in that non-measured channel and your efforts to increase share there?

Yes, so Eric, this is Graham. We estimate it's about $2 million that was pulled into the quarter.

Yes, so what happened was, going into it more, we filled our backlog and post the quarter our trade customers wanted to build up inventory for buffer given what happened with COVID over the last year. And so we believe that pulled $2 million of that inventory into the quarter.

Okay. That makes sense. And then just an update in that non-measured channel and the competitive landscape, your ability to penetrate there? Just any kind of color there would be helpful.

We continue to make progress. We actually had tested putting some, assigning some people to that area. We liked the results of that test and we're now in the process of hiring more people to address the non-measured channels, if you will. You're starting to see some penetration by Zig-Zag, additional penetration by Zig-Zag in dispensaries and as well as in head shops and other nontraditional areas. Long runway, we still have lots of upside there. We're not totally satisfied with where we are, but we're making progress.

Yes, I would say the Old Pal investment, outside of the investment itself being attractive, is a great strategic complement to our strategy there. As you know, Old Pal sells a decent mix of flower as a percent of sales, which goes along well with our smoking accessories that go into dispensaries.

Your next question comes from the line of Gaurav Jain of Barclays.

So 3 questions. One is on this acquisition of Unitabac. Can you help us just dimensionalize, like how could this opportunity pan out over the next few years? And Zig-Zag has been growing quite fast over the last 12 months, but I guess after 6 months, it will come into difficult comps. So could this kind of growth rate that we are seeing at Zig-Zag right now, like 30%, 40%, can it sustain now for the next few years as you guys scale up the tobacco business?

Yes, I don't think we're going to underwrite 40% growth forever. So what I will say is, with the markets that we compete in now with rolling papers and wraps is less than $500 million from a wholesale manufacturer revenue standpoint. The cigars market, which is a perfect complement to our MYO cigar wraps product, is a $2.5 billion-plus market and growing pretty nicely. And so this provides us a great platform to be able to enter that, reenter that market more efficiently and more cost effectively. And so that's a big market opportunity for us to be able to get back into with this acquisition.

Okay. That's very helpful. Secondly, on all these acquisitions that we have done, WildHemp, Dosist, they are now almost I would say a year old. So what have you learned and have those acquisitions met the targets that you had set out when you have made those initial investments?

Yes. I think with WildHemp, our expectations were for a gradual ramp. I think that is taking place now. It is a relatively new category in smokable hemp CBD. That is one that we feel has growth potential as some nicotine cigarette smokers want an alternative form of smoking experience without the nicotine. So it's been as we expected. And Dosist, we are kind of pleased with some of the transformation in terms of expanding the brand into other categories like gummies and other form factors as well as entering the CBD line. But it's early in the progress still in terms of kind of the introduction of these lines.

Sure. And lastly, just a housekeeping item, what was the benefit of the consolidation of ReCreation Marketing, which I think has happened into the deadline, if you could just update it out for us. And if they were already the benefit of this acquisition, that ReCreation did, the DVX acquisition in this quarter?

Yes, it's about $2.5 million for the quarter, and DVW had about a little over a month of benefit into that quarter. 2 months of benefit during the quarter.

Your next question comes from the line of Susan Anderson from B. Riley FBR.

It's Alec Legg on for Susan. Just a question on Zig-Zag sales to the e-comm channel. Have you ever disclosed what percentage of sales are through e-comm? And then just longer term, what percent of penetration would you aim to reach? And then what's the margin delta between selling through your e-comm channel versus your partners?

Sure. It's about right now, as a percent of our U.S. paper sales, in the teens percentage of our U.S. paper sales. So our goal is to continue to ramp that. The one part of the business that we have, we think has more significant opportunity to ramp is our B2B business. So that is, kind of dovetails with our alternative strategy to getting more of our product into dispensaries and head shops. So part of the strategy last year in terms of the fact and that was using this platform in going to trade shows to sign up more consumers and customers onto it. And obviously, that did not happen to the extent that we thought last year given that there weren't any tradeshows. So that's still a big piece of the strategy that we are still kind of rolling out. So we continue to expect that e-commerce business to continue to ramp for us.

And then I guess just the margin difference between selling through that channel?

It's comparable at the moment. It can fluctuate depending on the product mix.

And then I guess another follow-up on Zig-Zag, just utilizing that brand awareness, I think you've mentioned previously expanding into apparel and accessories at the alternative channel. I guess, how is that progressing? And then what do you think the longer-term opportunity for that would be?

It's going well. It's still a small piece of the business, but growing nicely. And this also dovetails well into our head shop and alternative strategy and e-commerce. These are products, when we focused just on convenience stores, there wasn't really a home for them in convenience stores just because of the limited shelf space that you have. But they are perfect products to get into head shops that want to embrace more of the lifestyle around the brand. And so we're seeing some success around that as well as selling through our e-commerce channel. So it's still early as well on accessories, but we're seeing nice growth on it.

(Operator Instructions) Your next question comes from the line of Greg Pendy from Sidoti & Company.

Just shifting gears to Stoker's, can you just kind of walk us through, in light of the 8% growth there, did you take pricing typically in the May, June period? And I think earlier you mentioned the trade down. Where do you think we are in terms of consumers trading down? Is it more intense than normal? Or is it just kind of on par with what you saw last year?

Okay. So the trade down is a secular trend over many years. We did see some acceleration last year during the lockdown period of COVID moving in. I think it's returning more towards traditional long-term secular rates.

And then just in pricing, did you take some pricing on tubs and then cans like you did in the prior year?

Yes.

And then just also just moving on in terms of the buyback, you bought back a little bit more stock than you typically have it looks like. Just how are you thinking about the buyback in terms of are there any metrics that we should be thinking about that's accelerating -- accelerated the buyback during the period?

Our buyback is meant to be opportunistic in situations where there's a lot of nonfundamental kind of drivers to our stock. We take those opportunities to be more aggressive on the buyback.

And then just one final one, just on the premiumization that you're seeing I guess from papers to cones, where do you think we are in terms of that, kind of like what percentage? And then how much legs does that have to it? Or is it just kind of a trend that has several years to go you think?

So we think -- we are driving -- look, there's 2 separate channels. There's the measured channel and the non-measured channel. So let's take the measured channel first. In the measured channel, we are driving the growth and penetration of kind of cones there. So it's still relatively new in the c-store channel. Of our -- within the industry of stores that ordered papers, only 30% ordered paper cones, so there's still a decent opportunity there in terms of penetration. Within our papers business, in the measured channel it was teens percentage of our volume. So we're still kind of early in that penetration in the measured channel. In the non-measured channel, we believe cones to be a bigger percentage of the market, and we are also much more heavily underrepresented there. So we see bigger upside in the non-measured channel in terms of kind of our opportunity set there.

(Operator Instructions) Your next question comes from the line of Vivien Azer from Cowen and Company.

This is [Nila Quatra] on for Vivien. My first question is on Zig-Zag. Can you please offer more color on the growth that you saw by channel last quarter because of last year distribution opportunities in alternative channels? How big of a contributor was that channel? And more specifically, what are future gains in that channel?

Sure. It's -- well, I would say that we saw strong growth across the channels, right? Because in the measured market, we're gaining share. Cone is a big driver of our ability to gain share in that channel. In the non-measured channel, a lot of it is incremental, right? So e-commerce is a big driver of that. I mentioned it was teens as a percentage of our U.S. paper sales and that was just starting to ramp really in Q2 of last year, so a decent contributor to growth. And you're seeing in our mix a bigger percentage of our volumes that are going into these non-measured channels, which means that the alternative strategy is ramping up. So we're seeing healthy growth in each of the channels, in the measured channels driven by our market share gains, and in the non-measured channel, kind of increasing our penetration in terms of the stores that we are in.

Understood. And my next question is, turning to Stoker's, despite a tough comp, the business continued to do well. Can you comment at all on the growth by form factor, specifically tubs versus cans?

So with Stoker's, we introduced the concept of tubs into the market, which established the Stoker's tubs as the leading brand and it remains the leading tub product in the market, and it is a driver of the growth. It is an excellent value buy for the consumer. If you look at on a per can basis, it sells at a discount to our cans and you have the convenience factor of only going to the store once a week or so. And so tubs are the driver. In fact, what we see when we put tubs into can stores, that you do see a migration from cans to the tubs. The cans are actually a great introductory product for the tubs and leads consumers to the tubs. They're a great combination.

Makes sense. Understood. And last question, as it relates to your recent investment in Old Pal, can you elaborate on the mechanics of being able to make that investment?

Sure. Yes. I mean it was -- Old Pal was structured as a non-plant-touching cannabis company, so they license out the brand to their partners. And so we were able to invest directly into -- well, we have a convertible note at the moment, but that is convertible into a kind of series of common shares as well.

There are no further questions at this time. Sir, please continue.

Well, thank you, everybody, for joining the call. We look forward to seeing you next quarter and with some more good news. Thank you.

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.