Unifi Inc (UFI) 2025 Q2 法說會逐字稿

Good morning and thank you for attending Unifi second quarter, fiscal 2025 earnings conference call. (Operator Instructions)

Speakers for today call include Al Carey, Executive Chairman; Eddie Ingle, Chief Executive Officer; A.J. Eaker, Chief Financial Officer.

During this call management will be referencing a webcast presentation that can be found in the Investor relations section of unifi.com. Please familiarize yourself with page 2 of the slide deck for cautionary statements and non-GAAP measure. I will now turn the call over to Al Carey. Please go ahead.

Thank you very much. Thanks for joining everyone for our call today on the second quarter of fiscal 2025.

I'm going to provide a few of the key headlines regarding our quarter and our second half of fiscal year outlook. And then as usual, Eddie Ingle and A.J. Eaker will provide the actual performance in more detail and talk about the actions that we're taking at Unifi.

So let me start by telling you that the Q2 revenues were very similar to the previous few quarters and a little less than we had projected. And this continuation of sluggish sales has been with us and the entire textile industry for some time in both North America and in Asia.

But I will tell you that we are finally seeing some green shoots. Beginning in January I'd say for the last six weeks, we have seen an improvement in our revenue trends and our customers are more optimistic about demand and improved inventories coming out of the holiday season I think they would describe the holiday season as solid.

This should allow us to show up with a stronger half two performance in our overall numbers as what versus half one, which is what we had talked about a while back during this quarter, we made a decision, a very important decision to close one of our three plants in the US.

However, we will lose no sales. The production will transition to other facilities that we have that have capacity in North America.

Now this move is going to improve our fixed cost utilization which has been a challenge and it's also going to improve our profitability for North America. We will then sell the plant and allow us to reduce our debt.

Now, we're encouraged with the momentum on two top line revenue ideas. One we've talked about for quite some time which is the beyond apparel efforts that we've been after for about a year.

They're beginning to, those efforts are beginning to pay off as we're starting to enter two new areas for Unifi with sales of carpet and the military segment. And both of these sales are being made possible by I call it out in quotes made in America approach.

These sales are beginning right now in this month. And another positive is our addition, our circularity, and our textile takeback innovation that we talked about on the last two calls are now beginning to gain some traction with our customers. We are likely to see some sales in Q4 of this fiscal and more of a trust in 2026 fiscal.

We're going to be very busy over the next 5 to 6 months with closing a plant moving equipment, getting our whole organization focused and these activities will show up as a stronger performance in half two and then into the next fiscal year. So, with that overview, let me now turn it over to Eddie Ingle our CEO to give you the big details of what's going on in the quarter and in the future, Eddie.

Thanks Al. And as Al just mentioned, our results for the quarter were slightly below our outlook due to a lower-than-expected sales that impacted our business in both the Americas and Asia.

Despite this short-term setback, we continue to remain optimistic about the remainder of calendar year 2025 and beyond as we already are beginning to see an increase in customer orders and interest for some of our recently announced beyond the power initiatives and REPREVE Fiber products, which I'm going to touch on in greater detail shortly.

Before I go into the details of our results for the quarter. I would first like to discuss our recent efforts to optimize our America's business.

As many of you are aware, we announced earlier this week that we have taken steps to consolidate our manufacturing operations with the closing and future sale of our Madison North Carolina manufacturing facility.

The closing of the Madison facility is an important strategic decision that will allow Unifi to become stronger and a more efficient company. As we exit the current calendar year by consolidating this facility, we will be able to improve our cost structure and operational performance without any customer disruption or loss of current production capacity.

AJ will provide greater details on the financial implications of the sale of the facility later on in the call. But this proactive step will optimize our business and make Unifi a leaner and more profitable organization that will ultimately enable us to better serve our customers.

This decision to close Madison was a particularly difficult decision for me personally as it was a place where I gained a lot of valuable experience as a general manager early on in my career. And I'd like to acknowledge the work that the employees put into making this facility a valuable contributor to the profitability of Unifi business over the years and I thank them for their contribution.

Before I go over the results of the business segments, I'd like to briefly discuss the recent tariff announcements that were put in place last weekend on Canada, Mexico and China. Given that the situation is still very fluid, and that Mexico and Canada have already delayed the tariffs by 30 days and opened a dialogue with the US government.

The impact of these tariffs on our business remains uncertain as our customers are still assessing how it may affect their businesses. We'll continue to keep you updated in the coming quarters on the situation as the potential impact of the tariffs becomes more clear.

Transitioning now to an overview of the quarter on slide four, during the second quarter of fiscal 2025 we reported $138.9 million in consolidated net sales which was slightly up compared to the prior year due to an improvement in the America's business and the consistently robust sales volumes in Brazil.

Now to dive a little bit deeper into each of the business segments in the America segment. We did a slight did see a slight increase in net sales during the quarter compared to the previous year due to the increased activity in Central America.

However, our financial results were impacted by the September 2 hurricanes in the Southeast US which dampened some demand and continued inflationary pressures.

With that said we do anticipate that we will see an improvement in our Americas segment during the second half of the fiscal year as a result of the traction we are seeing for our beyond apparel initiatives in the carbon market and military applications.

In addition, we are continuing to see growth in our business in Central America, which is very encouraging even with the normal slowdown from the Christmas holiday, our Brazil segment continued to perform well. Thanks to the increased demand for textured polyester and favourable pricing dynamics.

Brazil has been our best performing segment for the past year now and we expect that this trend will continue for the remainder of the fiscal year. In earlier segment we continued to experience headwinds due to the unfavourable economic conditions and pricing pressures in China.

Given the seasonal impact from the Chinese New Year, we do anticipate that we'll see similar results in our third quarter for the region. But these should improve as we move into the fourth quarter of fiscal 2025.

Turning now to slide five for an update on REPREVE during the second quarter REPREVE represented 31% of sales, a slight decrease when compared to the previous year. This decrease in REPREVE. Sales was largely driven by the macroeconomic pressures in China.

But with that said, we do anticipate that we will begin to see an improvement in our pre fiber business during the second half of the year and in fiscal 2026 as our recently announced free take back filament yarn and thermal products begin to gain traction with our customers.

Moving at slide 6 to highlight some of our recent marketing efforts, we witnessed the versatility of REPREVE through excited cobranding initiatives this quarter. For example, Malibu C a hair care brand using the pre regime in its eco blue bottle received the prestigious 2024 Global Green Beauty award.

[Satan Mattresses and Teva] which is footwear also continued to promote their use of REPREVE on product pages and Costco highlighted REPREVE branding in store across several brands including Puma and Kenneth Cole in both the US and Canada. Additionally, during the quarter, we forged key partnerships with Guess Europe the North Face and New Balance.

Guess Europe featured our marketing and communications director in their guest eco video series showcasing their long-standing commitment to using REPREVE. The North Face launched their A68a collection with an event in London emphasizing its end of life, recyclability through unified textile takeback process.

And finally, New Balance partnered with us to recycle unused race shirts to REPREVE, recycled polyester which was used to produce this year's New Year's [CTCS Marathon] T shirts could say that was circularity in motion.

And on slide 7 as a highlight of our leadership in product innovation Unifi was recently announced the winner of the 2024 Just Style Excellence Award for product launches in the area of circularity Unifi received this award in recognition for the successful launch of thermal loop. One of our latest innovative for pre products that provides customers with an insulation material made from textile waste using our proprietary textile takeback process.

And before I wrap up, I'd like to provide some additional updates on the beyond apparel initiatives, both carpet market and military and predictive apparel applications that we discussed during our first quarter call.

Both initiatives have been performing well and we have already begun to see the initial sales revenue from these two programs and we will see additional revenue benefits from these two initiatives beyond apparel. During the second half of this fiscal year.

We look forward to providing additional updates on these growing segments of our business over the coming quarters. With that, I'd like to pass the call over to AJ to discuss our financial results for the quarter.

Thank you, Eddie. Despite a difficult environment during the quarter, we continue to make great progress towards positioning our business for future growth and profitability to ensure we track to our goals.

Our focus remains on keeping our variable expenses across both production and administrative functions low, which will help create both cost savings and increase profits that we will reinvest in the key areas of our business that will enhance our revenue performance and drive margin expansion, including the Beyond apparel initiatives and innovation.

Transitioning to our financial results on slide 8, you'll see our consolidated financial highlights for the quarter. Consolidated net sales for the quarter were $138.9 million up 1.4% year over year. The increase in net sales on a year over year basis was primarily driven by continued improvement efforts in the Americas and growth in Brazil but was offset by lower sales in Asia.

Turning to slide nine in the America segment. Net sales were up 3% compared to the prior year due to the traction from our recent sales growth initiatives. Despite the unfavourable weather impacts to the Southeast US causing a miss of a couple million sales dollars.

Slide 10 displays our Brazil segment highlights which demonstrates our continued strength in that region with robust sales levels. Brazil's margin rate reflects both the positivity of improved value-added mix but the normalization of raw material costs and pricing dynamics.

On slide 11, our Asia segment saw net sales declined by approximately 7% year over year as the sales mix and pricing dynamics in the region remain difficult, particularly in China.

I'll now briefly discuss our balance sheet on slide 12. We're pleased to have reduced cash burn in the second quarter with improvement on both a year over year and sequential basis. This is aided by our strict cost control measures and limited CapEx spending.

Finally, I'll discuss our efforts to consolidate our US manufacturing footprint. As Eddie mentioned, the Madison facility provided decades of profit generation and cash flow. And we're grateful to all of the Madison community and employees who have been a part of its historical success.

The facility remains in excellent condition, and we be operational for the next several months as we screen for an appropriate buyer of the real estate. The proceeds that we receive from the sale of the medicine facility will be prioritized against existing debt and we will improve our financial position.

During calendar 2025 we will incur expenses related to wind down relocation and separation. Our expectations around these transitional restructuring charges range from $5 million to $7.5 million.

As a result of this transition, we expect to achieve overall organizational savings by increasing the utilization of our yak and bill facility and leveraging a more efficient operating footprint that would require fewer man hours per square foot and yarn pounds produce. We will provide additional details on the progress of this transition and the savings benefits as we move through this process.

Looking ahead, we'll consider additional steps to improve both the strength of our balance sheet and our financial performance to ensure that we remain well positioned to pivot to growth with that, I'll pass the call back to Eddie to take us through the last few slides of the presentation and make final comments.

Thank you, AJ. Hit that turn to slide 13 to discuss our forecast for the third quarter of fiscal 2025 for the third quarter we are expecting net sales and adjusted EBITDA to increase sequentially as we see a more robust order book and sales levels for the America segment.

And we expect capital expenditures to be around $5 million to $6 million due to the transition of the production out of the Madison facility. Transition to slide 14 we will discuss our guidance for fiscal 2025. We're updating our outlook for fiscal 2025 which now includes net sales to be in line with fiscal 2024. As we expect our second half, fiscal 2025 to improve over the corresponding first half.

Profitability metrics are expected to improve year over year while second half fiscal 2025 underlying profit generation will be partially offset by us manufacturing transition costs and we expect capital expenditures to range between $14 million and $16 million which includes the costs related to the transition activities.

Moving on to slide 15, you will see our updated key strategic priorities that we're focused on for the remainder of fiscal 2025.

We are all exploring opportunities to optimize our business which is highlighted by the proactive manufacturing consolidation measures we discussed today that will enhance our operating efficiency, lower fixed costs, improve profitability and further strengthen our balance sheet.

As we look ahead to the second half of fiscal 2025 our focus will continue to remain on investing in innovation products in both our pre fiber platform and beyond the power products that will help improve our product mix and grow our customer base.

We believe that our commitment to implementing cost saving initiatives and making strategic investments in innovation and high growth opportunities has positioned us well to drive value for all of our stakeholders. With that, we would now like to open the line for questions. Thank you.

(Operator Instructions)

Your next question comes from the line of Anthony Lebiedzinski from Sidoti & Company. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone and thank you for taking the questions. I guess, first for the quarter, certainly nice to see the sales and gross margin improvements in the Americas and Brazil segments. I know you guys talked about higher sales volumes in both of these and have good pricing in Brazil.

So, you know, just wondering is the higher sales coming mostly from existing clients or did you, were you already able to pick up some, some new clients? Or maybe it was just a combination of both that just, just wanted to get a better sense as to the sales volume drivers in those two key segments.

Yeah, thanks for the question, Anthony. The Brazil segment, we are seeing it across the board with existing clients. The market for textured polyester continues to grow over the quarter, outside the normal holiday period, we ran our plants pretty full, and we saw an increase in demand across all segments.

I would say maybe in particular, there was the apparel segment did, perform exceptionally strong including the denim section sector, which is very, very big part of our business down there as it relates to the US I think the way I would describe that is Central America really was the star performance as far as growth as we went through the year and through the quarter.

And you know, we started at calendar 2024. It was very challenging, but we ended it on a high spot. And again, we're seeing some activity with brands continuing to support Central America and I think perhaps maybe it was in light of the pending tariffs that were taking place. We're, we're not exactly sure yet how the brands are reacting, but that seems to be the indicator for us in that area.

But one other comment, Anthony, this is Al some of these beyond apparel items like military and the carpet they're just hitting now, but those are problems.

That's great to hear. Yeah, so it does sound like you guys are seeing some green shoots, which is definitely, reassuring. So, as far as, the opportunity for carpet and the military and I'm sure you guys are working on others as well.

But, you know, as far as, maybe talk to us, maybe about like what you see as that, potential from those markets and as far as timing, it sounds like you should pick up some business in the second half of this fiscal year. But maybe just, if you could provide some additional colour as far as how you see that, maybe in fiscal '26.

Yeah. So, I'd really, I'd like to sort of turn it to calendar 25. You know, we did see at the tail end of our of calendar 24 in our Q2 fiscal '25 we saw some activity as we go through this next 12 months. We are expecting to see growth in both of these market segments on a sequential basis. We're actually installing some capacity, additional capacity in our fiscal Q4 to meet the growth that goes beyond the existing capacity of this, some of the technologies that we have.

So, as we go through this calendar 2025 you can expect us to get more details around revenues from these two, these two businesses. But more importantly, it's the excitement we're seeing in these two product lines comes from the fact we're able to make products that are performing better than the incumbents.

And that gives us comfort that the investments we're making both sometime and capital are going to pay out. We're quite confident that we're very confident about that as we move through this calendar year.

Thanks for that. And just switching to Asia. So, I know you said that you expect a similar performance in Q3 versus what you've seen here recently. But the, historically, that that business has performed better, both sales and gross margin. So, when would be, when do you think it's reasonable to assume that that piece of your business gets back to more or less, historical trends.

As you, as we said on the call, this is, this quarter is impacted by the Chinese New year, but as we go into Q4, we are expecting to see a meaningful improvement in the revenues out of that business. And the forecast deal for, for calendar 2025 is to see growth as we move throughout the year.

It's it again talking about tariffs in that, in that section. That that's still the US government and China have not really resolved their differences in that space, but the increased tariff of 10% is not as impactful as it would have been for Mexico and Canada. So, we're not expecting right now to see demand drop off. In fact, we're expecting demand to still increase. As we, as we get the benefit of our REPREVE, take back innovation and our thermal loop products.

Got you. Okay. All right. So as release the tariffs certainly realize it still remains a dynamic situation. But assuming that Canada and Mexico get resolved and there is a sort of less long term pause or permanent pause.

And then China has a 10% tariff, with tariffs overall, given that you are largely US manufacturing company, it would tariffs be a net positive you think for the company or any sort of way to frame that, that really would be helpful.

Yeah. It's really uncertain because it depends on the level of tariffs and what products they're put on. There's a lot of dialogue around in and we hear this from our involved with the textile organization, but in Mexico, they are trying to defend their textile market.

And maybe textiles get would get carved out between Mexico and the US as being something to protect for both sides because a lot of fabrics are made here shipped to Mexico. I do think Central America is an area that will pick up because of this threat of the tariffs because it's, it hasn't, has yet been mentioned in the three countries in northern and Central America have been, described as being prone to getting tariffs at least for now.

So, I think that's going to help us and the other part of the tariffs was the de minimis, ruling, which was a loophole for that allows goods to come into the US that are worth less than $800. There, there's still a lot of energy around fixing that loophole by the governments and we'll see how that plays out. That could be a big positive for us.

Interesting Anthony is that we have a number from the government that approximately $1.5 billion in sales have come in through this minimis in the last calendar year. So, if that were to move in any direction, to be very positive for us.

Understood. Okay. Yeah. So certainly, it does seem like there is some potential movement, I guess. So, I guess we'll see what happens there. Now, as far as the Madison North Carolina facility closure, I'm not sure if you're prepared yet to give a specific number, but maybe just ballpark estimate, once this transition is completed, how much could we talk about as far as annual cost savings? With now Unifi running fewer facilities in the US.

Thanks Anthony. It's AJ good, good question.

Good morning. Like I said, a lot of good years out of the Madison facility and we saw the utilization there fall significantly recently. So, this decision was, was tough but important for the future for us.

Bringing that facility offline will obviously improve a lot of the fixed cost base that we have as well as overall labour man hours will be able to move a lot of production into our [Yagin Bill facility] where we have more automation and really a better facility to handle the overall volume and some more efficiency there.

Not looking to disclose the actual number that we're targeting at this point. But we'll certainly provide that as we've gathered all the details and complete that consolidation. But we are expecting some material savings from reducing the operations in that facility.

A quick update on the overall facility itself as well. The tax value there right around $29 million or so. And the book value on that facility for us is right around $9 million. So, we do expect that to be a favourable, favourable move for us from a balance sheet perspective.

That’s very helpful. Okay. All right. Well, yes. And then as far as other facilities, as I know you guys also sold the warehouse, so as you look at your properties, do you think there could be some additional opportunities perhaps to, to optimize the overall structure or, or you think you're kind of more or less kind of tapped out as far as opportunities in terms of just, just as overall your facilities and properties.

Yeah, thanks Anthony. AJ again, this is certainly going to be a big move for us that will be very important over the next several months and take a lot of detailed time. So, we're focused very heavily on the, on this move right now, as I mentioned in the prepared remarks, we'll continue to look at opportunities.

There's nothing to highlight at this point, but I'll remind the audience also that when we did sell that warehouse, that was about 250,000 square feet with a decent amount of land and achieve greater than $30 a square foot on that sale.

So, we were quite pleased with that and hoping to have a very positive sell as well for the Madison facility. But specific to your question, we'll continue to looking at what makes sense, see how all of the consolidation efforts play out, look forward to those savings and then continue to find opportunities.

Got you. Okay. And my last question, I guess, so as far as just to follow up on the Madison facility, what's the square footage of that property?

Sure. The building itself is in excellent condition, high ceilings and right around 950,000 square feet. It also has a significant land buffer and the land and surrounding areas in great condition as well.

Got it. All right. Well, that all sounds good. Well, thank you very much and best of luck.

Great. Thanks so much Anthony.

Thank you, Anthony.

Again, if you would like to ask question, press star one on your telephone keypad that ends our Q&A session and we appreciate your participation. Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's call. Thank you all for joining. You. May now disconnect.