Greetings. Welcome to The Alkaline Water Company third quarter fiscal 2022 earnings call. At this time, participants are in a listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. Please note this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to your host, Jeff Wright, Director of Investor Relations. You may begin.
Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us for The Alkaline Water Company third quarter fiscal 2022 earnings conference call. Shortly, you will hear from Ricky Wright, our President and CEO, and David Guarino, our Chief Financial Officer. During the call, we will be making forward-looking statements within the meaning of the safe harbor provisions of U.S. securities laws, and we may make additional forward-looking statements during the question and answer session. Forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, and undue reliance should not be placed on such statements. Certain material factors or assumptions are applied in making forward-looking statements and actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied in such statements.
Additional information about factors which may cause actual results to differ materially from expectations about material factors or assumptions applied in making forward-looking statements can be found in the company's Form 10-K, which was filed today and other reports filed with the SEC on EDGAR and the Canadian securities regulators on SEDAR. In addition, such forward-looking statements and any projections as to the company's future performance represent management's estimates as of today, February 14th, 2022. The company does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements and projections, except as required by applicable laws, including the securities laws of the United States and Canada.
Actual results could differ materially from those contemplated by any forward-looking statements as a result of certain factors, including but not limited to, general economic and business conditions, competitive factors, changes in business strategy or development plans, ability to attract or retain talented professionals, as well as changes in legal and regulatory requirements. The company issued a press release announcing its financial results and filed a Form 10-K with the SEC, and participants on this call who have not already done so may wish to look at those documents, as the company will provide a summary of the results discussed on today's call. In a moment, I will turn the call over to our CEO, Ricky Wright, who will give you an overview of the company's third quarter fiscal 2022 results.
Following Ricky's comments, David Guarino, our Chief Financial Officer, will provide an overview of the company's operating results. Ricky will follow David again, providing closing remarks. We'll open the call for Q&A after management's prepared remarks. Now, I would like to turn the call over to Ricky.
Thank you, Jeff. Thank you for all attending the conference call today. We are pleased to announce that this quarter exceeded even our own expectations. We're happy to report that our sales for the third quarter were $15.1 million. This represents a 57% year-over-year growth for the quarter. This is the second straight quarter with year-over-year growth in excess of 50%. It's also the second largest revenue quarter in the company's history. Many factors have contributed to this outstanding quarter, including substantial growth in our single-serve format, growth in our complete store channels through our new direct store delivery partners, DSDs, and operational changes we implemented in the fourth quarter of 2021, which has allowed us to avoid most of the supply chain problems of our competitors. Our ambition has always been to make Alkaline eighty-eight water a household brand.
Thanks to the efforts of our sales team and the marketing department's excellent integration with our brand ambassadors, Shaquille O'Neal and Authentic Brands Group, our brand awareness and our market penetration has never been higher. This past weekend, we had the opportunity to participate in four different events surrounding the Super Bowl, where literally millions of new consumers were introduced to Alkaline88 for the first time, and retailers could see how serious we are about our marketing efforts. As this fiscal year draws to a close, the drivers for next fiscal year are firmly in place for continued growth. Although sales have been excellent, we have seen significant margin contraction as a result of inflationary pressures over the past 12 months. We've already taken a number of steps that will allow us to begin to increase our margins beginning the first quarter of fiscal 2023.
These additional steps include the following. First, an approximate 9% cost of goods price increase, which should be effective across all banners for the entire fiscal 2023 year. Second, we should have a slight reduction in the current freight costs based on the opening of our new co-packers throughout the country, which will allow us to manufacture products closer to their destinations. Third, our buying power has allowed us to lock in many of our raw material costs over the next 12 months, avoiding additional inflationary increases. With these in place, management expects our margins to increase between 3% and 5% in fiscal 2023. We continue to explore other ways to reduce our operating deficit without hampering our growth. We are reiterating guidance of $62 million for fiscal 2022.
Later in this call, David Guarino will have additional comments on this quarter's financial results. As we continue to grow as a national brand, it's important for Alkaline88 to be a leader in the value-added enhanced water category. Independent third-party industry data confirms that we are outperforming our category and our peers. Just a little over nine years ago, we sold our first case of water as a company and quickly became one of the fastest growing value-added water companies in the country. Admittedly, it was easy to show impressive growth when our monthly sales were starting at near zero. Now our monthly sales for the first nine months of fiscal 2022 have averaged close to $5 million a month, and yet, according to Nielsen data, we are still outperforming the category in growth and outpacing the top 10 brands.
This is a testimony to our business plan, our employees and our product. In the most recent quarter, Nielsen data for the 13 weeks ended January 1st, 2022, for all outlets combined, excluding convenience stores or XAOC, confirmed that we were the fastest-growing top 10 value-added water in the country. We managed to grow 46.4% in dollar volume over the last same quarter of the previous year. As I said, this outpaced all other top 10 brands, including the non-flavored brands Smartwater, vitaminwater, Essentia, CORE Hydration and LIFEWTR . Of the over 70 brands listed in the report, Alkaline88 had the third highest year-over-year gain in market share.
Furthermore, if you look at the Nielsen data for sales growth over the past two years, Alkaline88 has grown 54% based on a two-year stack, which beats all other brands in the top ten category. This is almost 2x greater than the overall category growth. Our unit growth on a two-year stack basis is 47% or more than 5x this category's growth. As the founder of the clean beverage movement, Alkaline88 has always had a home in the natural food grocery channel and with health-conscious consumers. According to the SPINS data platform, which tracks natural food channels, in the 12-week report ending December 25th, 2021, Alkaline88 sales ranked second for all brands in the enhanced water category. Our year-over-year revenue growth for the period is 47%. That's more than 2.7 x greater than the overall category.
Although all our SKUs continue to show outstanding growth within the natural food channel, I'm very proud to say that our one gallon bottle is the number one SKU in dollar value in the entire enhanced water category within the natural food grocers reporting to SPINS. The data in both of these reports covering our last quarter indicate the tremendous amount of organic growth since most of the resets are just now starting in this new calendar year. We now estimate that we are in 80,000 stores nationwide, and we expect that that number will expand to between 90,000 and 110,000 stores in the next 12 months. Our drivers for growth remain the same as the fourth quarter of fiscal 2022 and fiscal 2023.
Expanding marketing, expansion of our direct store delivery network, e-commerce, club specialty growth, hospitality, functional CBD water, additional co-packer expansion and sustainability initiatives. All of our sales efforts will be boosted by the expansion of our marketing efforts, which began with the activities surrounding the Super Bowl yesterday and will continue with regional launches in the first quarter of fiscal 2023. Many listening today are aware that last quarter we launched our first ever marketing program in strategic areas of the country with the Shaquille O'Neal assets that we generated during our second quarter. We delivered over 11 million impressions from a diverse mix of media. These included 30-second commercials on broadcast and cable TV, Hulu connected TV, YouTube, Yahoo, Programmatic digital video and display and social influencers. Our results showed a significant uptick of our Nielsen reported sales within the region during the launch.
We will be expanding on the marketing efforts utilizing these assets beginning in our new fiscal year. During the week of Thanksgiving, we also launched new ads on an 8,500 sq ft Times Square billboard featuring Alkaline88 and Shaquille O'Neal. We estimate that our billboard will have over 48 million impressions through December 31st, 2022 in the largest city in America. That's tens of millions of brand impressions to New Yorkers who can now find Alkaline88 in more retailers like Gristedes, CVS and Stop & Shop than they've ever been able to have before. We've been working diligently to extend the reach of the brand and leveraging our relationship with Shaq and our brand fans. This included our sponsorship of the Sports Illustrated A wards.
We were privileged to have Shaq present the Smooth Play of the Year and the honor of being the main sponsor for the Muhammad Ali Legacy Award presented to the legendary Billie Jean King. We were the exclusive water for the event, and our aluminum bottles were on all VIP tables. The data shows that over 6.8 million viewers saw the show. Greater than 2 billion impressions for the event were available on earned media and 500 media placements valued at $51 million. This is all driving more demand for our product and establishing Alkaline88 as a household brand. For the past nine years, we have intentionally built our brand equity through a direct warehouse model in the grocery, drug, and specialty retail channels.
This allowed the consumer to become familiar with our brand in a large store format. Only this year, we have aggressively moved to grow our expansion in direct store delivery networks or DSDs. We know a DSD partner, coupled with a strong marketing team, is a key to success in certain channels. 160,000 convenience stores in the country with over $4.5 billion in bottled water sales in 2020 operates almost exclusively through DSDs. We've had a great rollout with Hensley in Arizona, Nevada Beverage, Mahaska in the Midwest, with sales exceeding forecast expectations and growing daily. We're expected in the next two weeks to be able to announce another top-tier DSD distributor. As we stated in the past, we added DSD strategically in regions where they will have the greatest impact on revenue growth.
Recent major wins in convenience store channels include the addition of over 1,400 stores through our DSD partners alone. Our DSD efforts have also led us to a number of other major opportunities with national C-store chains and military bases that we will be announcing over the next few quarters. Our near-term target list includes over 3,100 new stores. E-commerce accounts for over 25% of sales and more for some of our competitors. Due to the cost of ramping up e-commerce and the costs associated with shipping water, it has never been a significant portion of our sales. We now have a dedicated e-commerce team headed by Chris Pittman, who helped one of our competitors grow to over $40 million in yearly e-commerce sales. He's bringing many of the same tools and skills to Alkaline88. We are achieving new sales records weekly.
In October, we announced our entrance into quick commerce space through our partnership with Ohi. This enables us to deliver water within two hours in places like New York and Los Angeles. Their distribution model allows us to have the most cost-effective product delivery in the two largest cities in America. As they continue to expand into other major metropolitan areas, we have plans to expand with them and to capture e-commerce share of those markets. Chris and his team will be launching a newly updated website and optimization of our overall web presence before the end of this quarter. All the fine-tuning and steady improvement that we are constantly making in this department are allowing us to continue to move more product, more efficiently through e-commerce platforms like amazon.com, walmart.com, and alkaline88.com, as well as other emerging platforms.
As we sell more through these platforms, our ability to provide more inventory to their fulfillment centers increases and is driving our cost per unit down and improving our e-com margins while our gross sales grow. We hope by this time next year, our e-commerce sales will be a reportable segment in our financial statements. Traditional brick-and-mortar groceries, specialty retail, drugstores, and clubs has always been a very important part of our strategic plan. This quarter, we expanded into the club channel with the addition of Sam's Club, and we are furthering that relationship and are hopeful for a major announcement in the near future. We're also looking forward to running regional trials into the top 10 specialty retailers in the country with hopes of expanding later this year nationwide.
We also made our way into GNC this last quarter, adding two single-serve sizes to 350 of their premium retail locations. We continue to see tremendous growth in our relationship with CVS, as they've added a number of new SKUs to their shelves. We hope to add Alkaline88 in about 10,000 new locations in new clubs, specialty retailers, groceries, and drugstores in fiscal 2023. In addition, we have almost 15,000 of our retailers looking to add new SKUs within the next six months. There's room to grow since our ACV, which is a weighted measure of product availability based on total store sales, is only around 50%, according to the Nielsen data.
Our recent announcement in Q4 that Stop & Shop in the Northeast began ordering Alkaline gallons and 3-liter for the first time, and Lidl adding our 2-liter snack pack next to our 1-gallon SKU are only the tip of the iceberg of what we expect over the coming months for these channels. The hospitality market for bottled water is almost as big as traditional retailers. We are pleased to announce that we are putting our new eco-friendly 750 ml white aluminum bottle this month. This product will have a tremendous table presence, both aesthetically and as a premium choice water for venues across the country. It will be a great choice for restaurants, sporting venues, university cafes, hospitalities, and anywhere else that is looking to offer a beautiful and deliciously smooth drinking experience to their patrons.
Alkaline88 landed in over 100 market kiosks in nine of the busiest airports in the United States, which serves almost half a billion people combined, as an on-premise choice in hundreds of health clubs and spas, in addition to opening doors to new distributors and new on-premise providers. We expect in another six months, as summer approaches and restaurants, universities, and hotels make their fall purchasing decisions, we will become a significant player in this market. Finally, we continue to leverage our outstanding reputation with retailers and consumers to bring new products to market. Through the use of our FreshCap powered by Vessel, our deliciously smooth Alkaline88 is now the base water for a number of new functional beverages. Alkaline88, of course, was our first functional beverage as it offers elite hydration and deliciously smooth taste.
This is a major step for our company in that we have the ability to meet consumer demand for almost any functionality. Our new products will combine the elite smooth hydration of Alkaline88 with functional ingredients. Apart from Alkaline88 water, our A88CBD water is our first true functional beverage. With the passing of favorable legislation in California, New York, and Texas and elsewhere, we're allowed to include CBD in beverages, and we are now slowly adding products to shelves throughout the country. We expect A88CBD FreshCap to be in over 7,000 retail locations by the end of fiscal 2023. CBD beverages are expected to be the number one growing product in the billion-dollar-plus CBD ingestible market over the next three years with a CAGR exceeding 50%.
With all our contacts in the beverage industry, I believe everything is aligned for The Alkaline Water Company to become a major player in this category. I'd now like to turn the call over to David for a brief financial overview. David?
Thank you, Ricky. Before I begin, I'd like to encourage interested listeners to view the Form 10-Q that we filed with the SEC for a more detailed explanation on some of the quarter results I will be highlighting today. For the three months ended December 31st, 2021, we reported our second best quarterly revenue ever of approximately $15.1 million compared to the $9.6 million for the three months ended December 31st, 2020. This represents a 57% increase in sales. Our gross profit for the quarter ended December 31st, 2021 was approximately $5 million compared to approximately $3.4 million for the quarter ended December 31st, 2020. The decrease in our gross margin percentage was attributed to an increase in raw material and freight costs.
As Ricky just mentioned, we are taking various steps to mitigate the impact that these costs have had and will have on our gross margin going forward. Total operating expenses for the three months ended December 31st, 2021 was approximately $15.9 million compared to approximately $7.6 million in the prior year quarter. Total operating expenses increased primarily due to higher freight costs to our customer, additional promotional expenses related to our new marketing efforts, and general capacity building expenses across our organization. Net loss for the quarter ended December 31st, 2021 was approximately $10.7 million compared to the net loss of $4.4 million in the quarter ended December 31st, 2020. Net loss per share in the quarter ended December 31st, 2021 was $0.10 per share.
Both the net loss and the net loss per share were impacted by non-cash expenses of approximately $0.03 per share in the quarter ended December 31st, 2021. Cash used by operations during the nine months ended December 31st, 2021, totaled approximately $25.9 million as compared to $9.6 million of cash used by operations in the nine months ended December 31st, 2020. The increase in cash used by operations was primarily due to our increased net loss and increase in cash used to fund our working capital. At the end of the quarter, we had approximately $3.3 million cash on hand and a number of available resources to ensure that we have the capital to meet our growth objectives for the coming year.
These include, but are not limited to our line of credit and our sales agreement with ROTH Capital Partners, as detailed in our 10-Q. With that, I'd like to turn it back to Ricky. Thank you.
Thanks, David. Looking to the fourth quarter of fiscal 2022 and beyond, the most recent Nielsen four-week data reported ending 1/29/2022 shows that our momentum continues to grow with 60% year-over-year growth for that period. More exciting is for the first time in the company's history, we're ranking this report as the seventh-largest enhanced water bottle company in the country after leapfrogging several of our competitors. We continue to get a halo effect from many retailers as one of the few suppliers that delivered reliably during the pandemic and during the current supply chain delays. We've announced several recent wins and expect thousands of existing stores to add new SKUs over the next 3-6 months.
Although lead time for initiatives in some of the new channels like hospitality and e-commerce being extended due to COVID and others such as A88CBD FreshCap that had regulatory hurdles, we now have a clearer picture of the likely prospects and wins for the first half of fiscal 2023. Many of the deals I'm referring to are already at or very near the finish line, and we look forward to sharing news of them with you soon. Our sales team has worked hard laying the foundation to open new accounts with premium banners across the country. Our operations team has worked hard to make sure that we have the inventory and operating capacity to meet demand across the country, and our marketing team is just getting started. We look forward to adding tremendous value for our customers, employees, and shareholders now and for years to come.
Thank you for your time and patience today. I now turn it over to the monitor for questions.
At this time, we will be conducting a question-and-answer session. If you'd like to ask a question, please push star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you'd like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star key. One moment, please, while we queue up for questions. Our first question is from Aaron Grey with Alliance Global Partners. Please proceed with your question.
Hi, good evening, and congratulations on the quarter.
Thank you, Aaron. How are you?
Got the zoom up. Thanks, Ricky. First question for me. You mentioned a 9% price increase in the framework. Just curious, can you talk about relative price gaps for you guys relative to your competitors, and whether or not you're seeing you know similar levels of price increases, if maybe you're seeing a little bit greater or lesser price increases. Just trying to get a better sense of the price gap, whether or not you maintain a dynamic you know less or increased spend.
Yeah, I would say that, you know, we have run comparables. I mean, you know, the only data that we can really run against is the Nielsen reports in terms of, you know, the average retail. So there's probably a little bit of play in that, but we're well within the mean for the industry. We feel pretty good about it. You know, obviously, what we don't know, going forward, Aaron, is if there's gonna be any demand elasticity. So far, in the banners that have picked up the price increase and maybe have even added their own private label, we continue to outperform and continue to be very, very strong.
I think the marketing push that we've had this last year and some of the additional awareness we're getting and plus the quality of the underlying product relative to the rest of the market continues to drive consumers to us.
Okay, great. Thanks for that color, Ricky. Just on in terms of expanded distribution, you know, you talked in the past about, you know, COVID demand from the shelf reset at retail. Do you feel now you're kind of more of a normal state of the shelf reset, you know, anticipate, you know, any potential, you know, delays in terms of your distribution, you know, capabilities? Or do you feel like now that more comes in, we're back on track and feel more confident in terms of those expansion opportunities? Thanks.
Yeah, Aaron, that's, you know, we look at that almost, you know, biweekly here. Yes, we feel very good about our goal of between 90 and 110 thousand stores this year. We feel that that is a very achievable goal within our group. Of course, last year we were at about 75,000, so that's a substantial increase just in new banners and new doors alone. Then we're very excited about some of the announcements we just made and some of those that are coming. You know, we don't like to announce prior to getting a PO. You know what I mean? It's great to have a guy say they're gonna bring something in, but we always wait till we actually see the PO and most of the time delivered.
We see, you know, up to 15,000 stores taking additional SKUs. You know, we've got a lot of our current banners that are now going to take in and have agreed to take in expansion of our current SKUs, and we feel very good about hitting thousands of brand new doors as well.
Oh, great. Thank you very much for that color. I'll jump back in the queue.
Our next question is from Sean McGowan with ROTH Capital Partners. Please proceed with your question.
Thank you. I have a couple of, perhaps multi-parts. On first, I'm just trying to get a sense of what in these numbers might be considered, you know, not normal or not ongoing. Specifically, you know, when you talk about inflation at the gross margin level, can you quantify how much of that, you know, might have been, like, above expectation or above what you would call normal? Same thing with marketing and selling and G&A. Like, what of those expenses, what do you expect not to repeat going forward?
David, do you want to handle that, or you want me to grab that?
Go ahead, Ricky.
You know, we've had I don't know if it's been $1 million or better in additional freight costs the last two quarters. It's been $2 million, easily. That obviously is squeezing some of our bottom line. On the marketing expenses, we have spent a tremendous amount of money upfront with a lot of the Shaq initiatives. We will continue to do that as the year goes by, but at least for now, this quarter, we've slowed those down as we gather our information and get a plan together that we know will be effective. We had a very good start on that. It's just, you know, we have to get the data down, and we don't wanna miss any steps.
As we like to say around here, we're a small company that needs to fight above our weight class and punch above our weight class. We're very judicious with respect to those trends as well. I think the majority of what happened, we will be continuing to be in the cost of goods. We don't see a lot of inflationary pressures easing at this point. We've taken really good steps in order to minimize some of that, i.e., opened up new packers around the country, so freight in is less, freight out is less. We also have been able to negotiate some longer term contracts where we're locking in for a period of a couple of years, some of the cost of some of our raws, which we had not done in the past.
You know, who knew we were getting fluctuations that were mainly favorable for the last four years? Those are the kind of things that we see as probably stuck, but we see a lot of that being picked up through the increase in pricing to the retailer. We figure that's gonna be a 3%-5% increase in our margins just going through 12 months.
Okay. Can I ask you to clarify that a little bit? I just wanna make sure I'm understanding correctly. When you say margin, you mean gross margin?
I mean gross margin, yes. We see a 3%-5% gross margin increase.
3%-5%. By 3%-5%, you mean 3-5 percentage points?
Correct.
And then the last.
33%-34% to, you know, 30%-36%- 38% and, you know, maybe with some product mix, maybe we can get back up to closer to 40%.
Okay. That was my last question here. What do you expect the starting point to be for the full year, you know, around fiscal 2022? Is it about 33%-34% level?
Fiscal 2023 will be up from that. We'll probably be closer to 35% or 36% for fiscal 2023.
Okay. I meant more at the starting point. Basically what I'm saying is what are you expecting for the fourth quarter? You know, about the same as what we saw for the third or a little higher, a little lower?
About 34% because some of the major chains have not taken in the price impact for this quarter. They've agreed to it. They just haven't put it into effect yet. They usually want 90- 120 days to institute it.
Okay. I'll squeeze one more in here. You guys have done a great job so far of being ahead of the curve on supply chain issues. Will that continue in the third quarter, and do you think there was any negative sales impact with supply chain issues?
None. I think that we've done a better job. In fact, you know, I would say that our sales guy would agree with that, which is always hard to get in a room of management where operations and sales agree on how we're doing. I would say that we've had zero of that. Doesn't mean that it couldn't occur. You know, we still have only one or two suppliers around the country in each one of these areas for us, but we're taking steps every day to make sure and ensure that it hasn't. I think on the last call, I indicated we added about 150,000 sq ft to the warehouse space for the company for the first time.
You know, that was one of the ways that we combated some of the hiccups that some of our competitors got.
Okay. All right. Thanks a lot. Appreciate it.
Our next question is from Jaime Perez with R.F. Lafferty. Please proceed with your question.
All right. Thank you for taking my question. Also, a great quarter. I just have a few questions. On your deal with Shaquille O'Neal, I mean, it's been great. Any opportunity to add other celebrities and sports figures? Also, what about sponsorship of athletes? You're looking into. I'd like to hear your thoughts.
You know, I've got a CMO that's doing an outstanding job for us. We run down a ton of different opportunities every month. A lot of them are sports related. We should have an announcement here in the near future on some of that. You know, some of that's just premature yet in terms of getting announcements. In terms of additional celebrities, though, in the sports arena, you know, I think my CMO says we've got the athlete pretty much covered in terms of the right guy being Shaquille O'Neal. You know, the series with the Super Bowl other than Michael Jordan, I mean, Magic Johnson. We're sorry about that, folks. Magic Johnson was the previous year was for Shaquille O'Neal.
You know, we know that he is well loved, and we feel we have that. As far as some sponsorships, we have a tight relationship with Authentic Brands Group, which has the Sports Illustrated franchise. We continue to see opportunities to expand our influences there. Some of the things we're doing on the CBD and our enhanced beverage area, the functional beverages, there may be some sponsorships and some influencers there that we work with that are specific to a particular product.
All right. Thanks. Now, my second question is, I know it might be a little bit premature, but what about, the, international market as far as, Mexico and Canada? Any initiative or any thoughts about penetrating those markets?
Yeah, we've been in Mexico for a little while now. We're really in the free trade zone. Then in Canada, we did announce a brokerage deal this last, I think a quarter and a half ago. That is just beginning to bear fruit. The beauty on both of these is that it's FOB USA. We do have the export license and that's there in place, I think for another 18 months in terms of with the FDA. I think you have to renew them every three years. We will continue to keep that plan. I do expect some announcements, particularly in Canada, in the next 3- 6 months.
All right. Good. All right. That's all the questions I have. Thanks.
Okay. Bye. Thanks.
As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you'd like to remove your question from the queue. We have reached the end of the question-and-answer session, and I will now turn the call over to Ricky Wright for closing remarks.
Thanks everyone for entering. You know, Sean just got back in the queue. You wanna ask Sean a question?
I'm happy to.
Sure. Yep.
Our next question is from Sean McGowan with ROTH Capital Partners. Please proceed with your question.
Thanks. Just a quick one for David. Could you spell out the detail on the non-cash expenses that were in the quarter?
It was mostly if you look under the equity footnotes in the 10-Q. It spells out we have RSU expenses and stock option expenses. Most of that and all for two items. We.
I was a little surprised I didn't see it broken out in the cash flow statement, the repayments or the forgiveness, rather, of the PPP. Is that kind of embedded in the number there somewhere?
Yeah, it is.
Okay. All right. Thank you.
Yep.
We have reached the end of the question and answer session, and I'll now turn the call over to Ricky Wright for closing remarks.
Thank you, everyone. Again, it was a great quarter. I couldn't be happier with my team. That goes from operations to sales to finance to marketing. They've all done a wonderful job this quarter. The momentum is definitely with us. I think the Nielsen reports we got last week, you know, everybody did a little happy dance here, becoming the seventh largest in that four-week period and passing some of the major brands in terms of brands that were ahead of us in the past. I think it's a testimony to the fact that we continue to grow. I think the three brands or two brands that we passed, they actually had a negative quarter. For us, it's a big day at Alkaline88.
I think one of the things that is most exciting is, and I intimated it earlier, was that we are gonna see some major pickups this year in terms of new banners, new storefronts, and additional SKUs in our current clientele. We really see this as being an exciting year. Obviously the DSD networks are working great for us and we hope to expand those before too much longer. Again, they will be very strategic in their nature. Keep our fingers crossed if, you know, we have another great year in terms of some of the products that we're introducing into the marketplace. I appreciate everybody's time, and hopefully we'll have a great end of the fiscal year. Thanks again.
This concludes today's conference and you may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.