Participants

Trevor Rousseau; Investor Relations; Laird Superfood Inc

Jason Vieth; President, Chief Executive Officer, Director; Laird Superfood Inc

Anya Hamill; Interim Chief Financial Officer; Laird Superfood Inc

Alex Fuhrman; Analyst; Craig-Hallum Capital Group

George Kelly; Analyst; ROTH Capital Partners

Presentation

Operator

Good afternoon, thank you for attending today's Laird Superfood, Inc. fourth quarter 2024 financial results conference call. My name is Tamia, and I will be your moderator for today's call. (Operator Instructions) I would now like to pass the conference over to your host, Trevor with Laird Superfood. You may proceed.

Trevor Rousseau

Thank you, and good afternoon. Welcome to Laird Superfood's Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2024 Earnings Conference Call and Webcast. On today's call are Jason Vieth, Laird Superfood's President and Chief Executive Officer; and Anya Hamill, our Chief Financial Officer. By now, everyone should have access to the company's earnings release, which was filed today after market close. It is available on the Investor Relations section of Laird Superfood's website at www.lairdsuperfood.com.
Before we begin, please note that during this call, management may make forward-looking statements within the context of federal securities laws. These statements are based on management's current expectations and involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described. Please refer to today's press release and other filings with the SEC for a detailed discussion of these risks and uncertainties. And with that, I'll turn it over to Jason.

Jason Vieth

Thank you, Trevor, and hello to everyone on the call. I'm thrilled to share with you today what has been an exceptional close to 2024 for Laird Superfood, a year that truly underscores our transformation into a high-growth premium brand with strong margins and unlimited potential.
For the full year 2024, we achieved a remarkable 27% top line growth with net sales reaching $43.3 million, up from $34.2 million in 2023. In the fourth quarter alone, net sales grew to $11.6 million, a 26% increase over Q4 2023. This growth rate isn't just impressive in isolation. It significantly outpaces the consumer goods and food industry averages, where top line growth typically hovers around 3% to 5% annually according to industry benchmarks.
We're not just keeping up, we're leading the pack. Equally exciting is our improvement in profitability metrics. For the full year, we maintained gross margins at nearly 41%, this is a roughly 11-point lead from the 30.1% that we reported for 2023, driven by strategic sourcing, a shift to a variable cost manufacturing model and disciplined trade spend management.
To put this in perspective, the average gross margin for food companies often sits in the mid-20s to low 30s and at 25% to 35% from any of our most premium peers. Our ability to sustain these margins while growing at nearly 30% demonstrates the strength of our business model and our strategic focus on operational efficiency and premium positioning.
This success has been driven by 2 key strategic pillars that we outlined on previous calls, rapid growth in e-commerce, particularly on Amazon and significant strides in expanding our wholesale distribution.
Let's start with e-commerce. In 2024, our e-commerce channel grew by 32% year-over-year, led by our Amazon platform that not only recovered lost ground from our 2022 quality event but exceeded our internal expectations by a significant margin. Q4 was no exception with Amazon delivering its strongest quarter ever for Laird Superfood, fueled by improved inventory management targeted marketing and growing consumer demand for our plant-based creamers, coffee and hydration products.
Amazon makes up more than 40% of our e-commerce channel, and we expect that share to continue to grow in 2025 and beyond. Our direct-to-consumer business also saw a healthy increase for the year, bolstered by a shift toward a subscription model, which now accounts for nearly half of our DTC sales and serves as a testament to the loyalty and trust that our consumers place in our brand.
On the wholesale front, we've made tremendous progress expanding our retail footprint. In Q4, we secured new distribution with major retailers like Kroger and Safeway Albertsons, building on earlier and ongoing wins with partners like Whole Foods and Sprouts.
Full year wholesale net sales grew 19% year-over-year contributing 41% of our total company revenue. This expansion reflects not just broader reach, but also improved dollar sales velocity at existing accounts, driven by existing promotional strategies and strong consumer pull for our products.
During the 12 weeks ending December 29, we grew in retail sales across the MULO universe by approximately 35% and which included strong growth in both distribution points as well as dollar sales velocity. During Q4, we were also able to initiate the upsizing of our liquid creamer to a 750-milliliter package which is aligned with the category norm and represents a 50% volume upsizing for our product.
At the same time, we were able to improve the nutritional benefits and taste profile of our formula. I am pleased to report that this transition is being completed now and has seemingly gone well with a minimal amount of out of stocks and very little excess inventory of the discontinued size. In the past, I've seen these types of product transitions go off the rails at much larger companies with far more resources.
And so I am extremely proud of the Laird Superfood team for its execution of this important initiative. Taking a look at supply chain. I am pleased to report the strong quarter and a very solid year for the operation of our business.
Despite persistent commodity pressure in coffee, kakao and coconut milk powder, our team has been extremely resourceful in establishing and cultivating supplier relationships across our ingredients, manufacturing and distribution partners, and we were able to largely mitigate the cost impact during this period.
We have repeatedly stated that our goal is to achieve a gross margin in the upper 30s, and we finished 2024 at nearly 41% with Q4 coming in at nearly 39% despite the aforementioned cost pressures.
Speaking of which, by now it is no secret that there continues to be persistent inflation in the food industry. It is our belief that many of the recent commodity increases have been opportunistic and trader driven and we believe there could be a correction in some, if not many of these costs over the course of 2025 and beyond.
We have managed the procurement of our ingredients very carefully, and are also finding efficiencies in our operation to offset a portion of the cost increases. As a result, we intend to take price (inaudible) when and if necessary, preferring to maintain our strong volume growth whenever possible. That means that we may choose to temporarily trade away gross margin points for gross margin dollars so that when some of these costs again normalize to lower levels, we can have a bigger business with a strong gross margin profile.
In this way, we believe that we can optimize the future size and profitability of our business in order to maximize long-term shareholder value. When you have a business growing as rapidly as ours, it can be challenging for the supply chain to keep pace. This has been the case for us over the last months as the sales of our creamers and instant latte products have repeatedly outrun the sales forecast and thereby created out-of-stock situations for some of our most popular SKUs.
If not for these out-of-stock issues, we estimate that we would have captured more than $1 million of additional net sales during Q4. As we've worked to resolve these issues, our team has successfully identified additional raw material supply and supplemental suppliers, which should help us to mitigate future product shortages and to control input costs. We have already begun bringing these products back in stock over the past weeks and expect to have outrun these shortages very soon after Q1 is complete.
These out-of-stock products will have an impact on our sales during Q1 and though we remain on pace for strong growth during 2025 and have confidence in the overall trajectory of our business. Now let me hand it over to Anya to dive into the financial details for the quarter and for the full year.

Anya Hamill

Thank you, Jason, and good afternoon, everyone. Today, I'm pleased to share our fourth quarter and full year 2024 financial results. Coming off a record high net sales in the third quarter. we delivered another nearly equally strong quarter of top line growth in Q4. Net sales grew 26% to $11.6 million compared to $9.2 million in the prior year period.
This quarter, our wholesale channel led the company's growth, increasing by 52% year-over-year and accounting for 42% of our total net sales.
This growth was driven by distribution expansion in grocery and velocity acceleration itself in both retail and club. E-commerce sales increased by 12% year-over-year. and contributed 58% of total net sales, with significant improvements in media efficiency in this channel.
The growth was driven by strong sales on Amazon.com building on the momentum over the previous 3 quarters and due to an outstanding commercial execution.
Full year 2024 net sales grew 27% to $43.3 million, compared to $34.2 million in prior year period, posting strong growth across all channels. E-commerce sales increased by 32% year-over-year and contributed 59% of total net sales. Sales on both Amazon.com and the DTC platform contributed to this outstanding results, driven by growth in subscription revenue and repeat customer purchases as well as higher order values. Beginning with this reporting period, we will be reporting net sales from Amazon and DTC platforms under a combined e-commerce channel to reflect the fact that this is how we manage our business internally
as we have structured ourself to be agnostic to consumer shopping on whatever digital platform they prefer. Wholesale sales increased by 19% year-over-year and contributed 41% of total net sales, driven by velocity improvements in retail and distribution expansion and grocery as well as more efficient promotional spend.
Gross margin for the fourth quarter came in at 38.6% and compared to 40.4% in the corresponding prior year period. This margin contraction was driven by increased gross to net sales spend in retail channel related to prior periods and not related to the fourth quarter activity. (inaudible) expenses were also higher, driven by new distribution expansion and contributed to increased trade spend in the quarter. Sequentially, gross margin contracted 4.4 points versus the third quarter of 2024. Due to the benefit of supplier settlement recognized in the third quarter and higher trade spend in Q4.
On a full year basis, gross margin was 40.9% and as compared to 30.1% in the corresponding prior year period. This represents 10.7 points expansion driven by lower raw material costs due to a shift to direct procurement of key ingredients, full realization of co-manufacturing model benefit and planned reductions in promotional trade spend.
We are confident in our ability for sustainably achieving gross margins at at least in the high 30s in the coming quarters. Operating expenses increased $1.3 million in the fourth quarter compared to the same period last year, driven by slightly higher marketing investment, broker and Amazon selling fees related to volume growth.
People-related costs such as stock-based compensation, which is a noncash expense. Net loss for the fourth quarter was $0.4 million compared to net income of $0.1 million in the prior year period. On a full year basis, net loss was $1.8 million compared to a net loss of $10.2 million in the prior year period, representing 82% improvement driven by top line growth gross margin expansion and lower operating costs.
Turning to our balance sheet. We ended the quarter with $8.5 million in cash and no debt. I am particularly pleased to report that for the third consecutive quarter, we have delivered a positive quarterly cash flow, which was $312,000 in Q4 and totaled $807,000 for the year reflecting our improved performance and disciplined management of our working capital, which decreased year-over-year, excluding cash, while driving year-to-date revenue growth of 27%.
We continue to project that we have sufficient cash to fund our operations as we grow our business and make operating improvements that drive us towards breakeven and profitability.
We also have an asset-backed line of credit available for our use, should we need it.
Looking ahead to 2025, we expect continued growth in our core business segments and channels as we remain focused on executing our strategic priorities. As such, we are reaffirming the guidance we gave last quarter and expect net sales to grow in 20% to 25% range for the full year 2025 and gross margins to hold in upper 30s despite commodities cost pressures.
I expect the first quarter net sales growth to be below the full year target due to out-of-stocks impacting our creamer business early in the quarter. We are well on the way of resolving this issue and expect a full recovery by the end of Q1 or early Q2. I expect net sales to accelerate growth in the second part of the year relative to full year guidance.
We will target our adjusted EBITDA to breakeven on a full year basis and reinvest any surplus in traditional top line growth. We expect $1 million to $2 million negative operating cash flow in order to invest into inventory to support top line growth and minimize out-of-stocks. And now I will turn the discussion back over to Jason for any closing remarks.

Jason Vieth

Thank you, Anya, and thank you once again to all of you who are supporting our journey. In a crowded food market, Laird Superfood is carving out a unique space with our Whole Food functional ingredient portfolio. Our 27% sales growth outpaces nearly all of the household names in our industry and our 40% gross margin surpasses even long established players. Much more, our dual channel success across retail and Amazon gives us a versatility that many competitors lack.
We're not just a DTC [ Darling ] or a brick-and-mortar relic, we're thriving in both worlds and meeting consumers where they prefer to shop. It has been an exceptional couple of years for our brand and our business, but we really do believe that we are just getting started.
I couldn't be more proud of our team for what we have already accomplished or more excited for our continued expansion as we go forward.
Operator, this concludes our prepared remarks, and we are now ready to open the call to questions.

Question and Answer Session

Operator

(Operator Instructions)
Alex Fuhrman, Craig-Hallum Capital Group.

Alex Fuhrman

You mentioned having some stockouts that you've been dealing with lately. Did those impact Q4 at all? Or is that really more of a Q1 issue. And then can you give us a time line of when you think that will be resolved? And what exactly the inventory investments you're making this year to help to alleviate that?

Jason Vieth

Alex, it's Jason. Thanks for that question. It's 1 that we want to make sure that we address really clearly here. Yes, I mean the reality is what happened last year as we were rolling into Q4, I think a number of folks on this call probably saw, we started to have products that we're out of stock.
In DTC in particular, and sometimes at retail as well. And the reality is when you start moving through at a pace even faster than we expected on -- especially on the coconut milk related products. And so what we did is we started to prioritize where we put that product.
We took care of our subscribers ahead of any new customers and it slowed down some of our marketing as a result. And then at the same time, we made sure that we were able to keep our main customers in stock as much as possible, which is mostly in stock. In total, I mean it ended up probably costing us, I would guess, based on our estimates, somewhere close to $1 million of sales to the top line which is a 2-edge sword, a, we would have loved to have reported it and had those sales.
But on the flip side, it just demonstrates the demand and even growing almost 30%, we still had another $1 million or so that we could have been stocked -- sorry, that we could have sold if we had been in stock. And so this is a top priority for us. The reality, though, is you have to remember, unlike a lot of our peers, who can simply throw more ingredients and chemicals, et cetera. into pots and spit out new "food".
Our food just a couple of ingredients. So when we're short on coconut milk powder products, we need more coconut milk powder and that takes time, it comes in from Asia. So it just puts a little crimp into your supply chain. We've gone out. We've identified a couple of new suppliers.
So we have a more robust supply than we've ever had.
We're very, as you guys know, we are very quality-oriented, so those suppliers have been vetted very carefully. They are all direct relationships for us as well and they give us the ability to really expand our supply from here, which will work out nicely as we're seeing demand really kick up here.
We've got -- to your question, in Q1, there will be some impact. We still expect robust growth here. And as you saw in the earnings release, we're still -- we're reiterating our call for the year. We believe that we have 20% to 25% growth in the year despite some early challenges.
And so we're really actually 2-edge sort, as I say, -- we're excited about the demand. We're in a position to be able to increase our supply. It just takes a minute to work it through the supply chain and get it over here and put it in the bags and on to the shelves.

Alex Fuhrman

Great. That's really helpful. Jason. And then I guess, talking about some of your products that don't have the coconut in them. I was impressed to see it looks like the coffee category, the beans grew something like 40%.
And this year and more than 50% in the fourth quarter. Can you talk a little bit about what's driving that?
It looks like you've been having a lot of success with the functional coffees that you have a lot of differentiation within the marketplace. Has that been the biggest driver of your wholesale growth? I know you've had a really strong business in some key retailers with coffee beans.

Jason Vieth

Yes, that's right, Alex. We've had really, what we call our coffee solutions, which is our coffees, ground and holding coffees as well as our creamers plus our instant lattes have all been doing exceptionally well over the last couple of years. And we're seeing a lot of uptake with retailers, coffee for us has been a bit surprisingly strong.
Again, areas that we've been pleasantly surprised by demand-wise. We've just had some really strong uptake in the not only in the wholesale segment, but also online, Amazon and DTC as well. So it's an area, obviously, with escalating costs that we have -- we've been watching closely. We've we bought, I would say, in an advantaged position, a lot of our coffee up until now. And we're watching it carefully and making choices, I think, that are very strong relative to our P&L.
We did take pricing recently on our coffee. We announced a small price increase of $1 per bag in online channels and then pass through commensurate to the -- commensurately to the retail trade. We've taken a position on price, as I mentioned, we're really more interesting gross margin dollars than we are in gross margin percentages. And we intend to -- still very much intend to keep our gross margin in the high 30s, but we're willing to trade away a couple of points in order to gain a couple of dollars of incremental sales because remember, we're versus our expectation.
We have opportunity to sell products that we didn't expect to gain additional revenue and thereby additional gross profit dollars, which is very meaningful to our business and our cash position. So -- so that's the way we're managing it. I think we're managing it very smartly. We've got eyes on all of these trackers that we're reviewing daily where we saw some relief in the coffee market recently.
And and taking advantage of that. And so I think we're in a really strong position to continue to grow that business. And consumers want it. It's the functional coffee, as you said, it's the functional lattes as well where we put our performance mushrooms into these coffees. So we have some innovation in both of those areas with new products that have been doing well, and we're really excited about that entire category of the business for us.

Alex Fuhrman

Okay. Well, that's great to hear that you're seeing a lot of traction there. I certainly agree, not a lot else out there in the marketplace with the functional benefits for coffee that you guys have. So I'm glad to see that, that is doing well and appreciate the thorough explanation, Jason.

Operator

George Kelly, ROTH Capital Partners.

George Kelly

First, maybe a modeling question for Anya. I was curious the commentary around gross margin. Could you maybe be more specific about like how much you're willing to kind of digest or give up in the early part of 2025? Do you expect gross margins to step down a little bit from what you reported in Q4? And then what happens sort of throughout the year?

Anya Hamill

George, this is Anya. Thank you for your question. Yes, we intended to hold our gross margins in our high 30s. Obviously, commodities are being inflationary, and we are closely watching that dynamic. As Jason just mentioned, we have taken some pricing in our coffee business which is breaking records in terms of cost inflation.
We've taken that price increase in our online channel as well as in wholesale, and we're going to continue monitoring the situation. But again, as Jason just talked about, we are willing to trade off a couple of points of margins from where we've been before in the 40s or above in favor of market share and really growing the top line.
But I'm going to -- we don't really give quarterly guidance, so I'm going to stick with our annual guidance of our gross margins being in high 30s.

George Kelly

Okay. Fair enough. And then next question, with respect to the new sizing on the liquid product, I was curious, Jason, you mentioned in the prepared remarks that I think your comment was that it had seemingly (inaudible) had seemingly gone well. I was just curious if you could give any more specifics about velocities or really just what you've seen since that product has hit shelf.
And maybe a secondary question on the same topic is just how are you incorporating the new liquid product in your 20% to 25% revenue growth target. It just seems like such a big category you've got this product now that's more competitive? And sort of how are you baking that in? Is it a material portion of the growth that is in that target? Or -- are you kind of just letting it develop and it could represent upside to that target if it's a successful launch?

Jason Vieth

Yes. Great questions, George. Thanks, by the way, for those. I think that the way that I would think about this, it's too early to tell. And that's why I said has gone well instead of outright saying it had gone well.
What I know has gone well is that we managed to complete the transition with very little inventory or waste. So we're very pleased with how that transition went at the retailers.
I don't know of any meaningful loss distribution. I don't know loss distribution, but certainly nothing meaningful -- that happened as a result of the upsizing, which is not always easy because you're going with different shelf heights, et cetera, and we did not have any challenges with that.
So as far as I know -- and then the production ran well. So as far as I know, it's gone exceptionally well. Now having said that, we don't have any sales (inaudible) yet So back to your question, your real question here, which is, what do we know about sales.
Our expectation is that there will be something less than a 1:1 translation. We've upsized the volume by 50% but we're only expecting somewhere around 80% translation of volume units where you had product on shelf and then you have now larger products ourselves.
The reality is a lot of times in consumer goods, you don't actually see a step down. So we're hopeful that, that will be the case. We're prepared to support that demand should it materialize ahead of our expectation. And then we are, of course, aggressively outselling additional volume. I agree with you, George, very big category.
We're actually holding our own nicely within a couple of key retailers in the natural channel. And we just started to make some of the expansion to the conventional channel, as we discussed on previous calls, so fingers crossed, we think that this is the most likely product to really cross the Rubicon into the conventional channel over the next couple of years.
And although quite frankly, a number of other products are starting to show real opportunity to do that as well. So we do have I would tell you, we have high hopes for this product. We anticipate that there could be some outperformance this year, but it's just too early to call it.

George Kelly

Okay. That's helpful context. And then maybe just 1 last one. Back in the out of stocks. I guess the question is, is there sort of a ceiling on on these products that you're bumping into?
How much more supply out there is there for coconut milk powder? And I mean, could -- as you look out over the next 2 to 3 years, is there just like is this going to be an ongoing challenge? Or is it really just sort of a timing issue?

Jason Vieth

Yes. Great question, George. I would tell you, we barely dent the overall supply of coconut what we utilize. So -- and the reality is coconuts get used in a variety of ways. You have coconut milk, you have coconut sugar, you have coconut oil.
And as you have additional demand that comes up for 1 of those products, they can shift, you can only produce 1 of those 3 with the coconuts as they mature. So you have to make a choice.
But if we were to ramp up demand and require more there would be opportunity to shift from some of the lower-value products over to the coconut milk powder anyhow. But we're barely scratching the surface. So we're not worried about that. The issue for us that a little bit idiosyncratic to us is the level of quality that we demand from our coconut milk supply just means that we need to go over and we need to qualify the suppliers.
We need to taste their products, we need to understand how they make their product. And so we're a little bit of a slower process. We thought we had all of our demand captured by a single supplier for this year and then for next as well. They -- adding additional facilities, specifically for us, which ended up getting delayed, and we just weren't able to pivot as quickly as we needed to, and it was the perfect storm because demand also ramped up those particular products at the same time.
And so put us into an out-stock situation, which, as you know, just takes some time to recover from it. We're filling everything hand to mouth. And I think keeping everybody in these pretty decent stock, but certainly there's additional opportunity. And once we are able to get all of the supply fully online. We anticipate being able to to fulfill that demand as well.
And that, as I mentioned in the prepared remarks, we anticipate that happening sometime right around the end of Q1. So we're not far away from it right now. It's not like we're out of stock. We certainly are -- it's just a little bit of Whac-A-Mole where you're out of sweet and creamy and then you might be out of sweet and creamy, adaptogenic and then you're out of turmeric and -- so you produce those as they come up as the additional coconut milk powder is received, and that's what we've been doing.
It's a tough -- just a tough game to be in. And certainly, there are lost sales, but we feel confident that we can recapture those and that we'll have the supply to do so over the course of the next, call it, 4 to 6 weeks.

Operator

Thank you. There are currently no other questions queued. (Operator Instructions)
No more questions have queued at this time. I'll turn it back over for any closing remarks.

Jason Vieth

Thank you. Yes, I just -- the only thing I want to add really beyond the discussion that we've had is 2024 was a really exciting year for us at Laird Superfood. It's the year that we proved that we came through the transition, the term that we had been talking about, and we're able to establish gross margins even in excess of what our target was, so there was a little bit of an extra bounty that was there for us.
And we really anticipate as we go forward that we'll be a high-growth company with high 30% gross margins, which really puts us in a class with very few in there, and we're really excited about that, excited about where we go.
These challenges that we have right now are going to pass with the out of stocks. I do believe the commodity pressures are going to pass as well. As I mentioned, I believe that these are -- these truly are transitory inflationary costs, especially if we treat them as such. We do believe that we will see them back down from where they are right now. And even where they are right now, as we mentioned, our P&L can handle it.
So very exciting time for us, and I think we're in great position to really be able to take advantage of the healthy food trends that are sweeping America right now. Our products are an incredible fit for those trends. And the demand increase that we're seeing is really proof of that. So we're excited. We'll be back in that long, just a few more weeks to be able to talk about Q1 and look forward to giving an update then.
Thank you all.

Operator

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect your lines.