Good morning. My name is Miranda, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Andrew Peller Limited Third Quarter Fiscal 2022 Results Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question- and- answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, please press star, then the number two. Thank you. I would now like to turn the call over to David Mills. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Thank you, Miranda. Good morning, everyone. Before we begin, we remind you that during this conference call, we may make statements containing forward-looking information. This forward-looking information is based on a number of assumptions and is subject to a number of known and unknown risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those disclosed or implied. We direct you to our earnings release, MD&A, and other securities filings for additional information about these assumptions, risks, and uncertainties. I'll now turn things over to Mr. John Peller, Chief Executive Officer.
Good morning, everyone. Great to be with you. I'm joined today by our CFO, Steve Attridge, and we had our Andrew Peller board meeting yesterday afternoon. It's been a tough two years for everybody in the pandemic, and it's really positive to see that we're turning a corner and that the impact of the virus is definitely waning. Although we're all bitten by our past predictions that things would improve quickly, it's clear now that things are improving significantly, and we're looking forward to returning to a more normal time.
You know, certainly our business was totally impacted over the last two years by the pandemic, but we're very proud and pleased with how the company has performed through this period. You know, I think I recall explaining the last time that in the first year of the pandemic, we had a bit of an updraft from all the kind of, you know, panic, pandemic buying that occurred, particularly with value products and for leaders in the first part, so that we got a bit of a lift from the first part of the pandemic. Of course, now in the tail end of the pandemic, the screen door is kind of hitting us in the ass. You know, our revenue that we reported for up to the nine-month period is down 6% over the previous year.
We kind of expect to finish down 5% towards the end of the year. Of course, we've had the government liquor stores and our TWS retail stores and grocery outlets have kind of remained open throughout the period. Although they've had various Monday closings and the like, as we've explained in the past, but in those trade channels that have stayed open, we have performed very well. In fact, we have sales that are 5% above where we were pre-pandemic. We think that's very solid organic performance. Our sales have been negatively impacted by the restaurant industries, which you know normally provides up to 18%-20% of the volume of our industry, has been closed and compromised significantly.
Sales in the restaurant area are probably just less than half of what they normally were pre-pandemic. We had estate, winery, and hospitality closings, and, you know, our export and international travel business has been significantly compromised. In spite of that, we've maintained a focus on a lot of product innovation and new products. We've had good performance in premium wines and in our spirits business. Our RTD business and our No Boats brand continues to do very well. Naturally, we've increased our focus on cost reduction. You know, we're calling this last part of the pandemic and certainly into next year, the fifth wave, where the first four waves were viral, the fifth wave is an inflationary wave.
We're focused on managing our costs accordingly and managing price increases and then focusing on those price increases and efficiencies where we can get them. Now that the revenue is expected to bounce back, we're looking forward to next year. I'll turn things first over to Steve and then have a few closing comments for you. Over to you, Steve.
Thanks, John. Good morning, everyone. As John mentioned, our sales and operating results through fiscal 2022 continue to be impacted by a number of unusual factors related to the pandemic. Year-to-date sales were down 6% when compared to the prior year due to temporary COVID-related shifts in purchasing patterns over the last two years. When the pandemic was announced in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2020, purchases increased and continued through fiscal 2021, driven by uncertainty and concern about whether supply chains for alcoholic beverages would remain open during the pandemic. The LCBO in Ontario closed on Mondays through much of fiscal 2021, driving consumers to our higher margin retail outlets and increasing sales of our products through our chain of over 100 retail stores.
We were also significantly affected by the cycle of government-mandated closures of restaurants in the estate winery, hospitality businesses, and most negligible sales in our export business due to restricted international travel. Additionally, through much of the pandemic, sales volumes of our value-priced wines increased significantly, and our higher-margin premium and ultra-premium brands decreased, largely a factor of the closing and restrictions on hospitality. Now we're seeing our value-priced volumes begin to return to the pre-pandemic levels. However, premium and ultra-premium revenue is not rising enough to offset this decline due to the cycle of openings and closings and restrictions on restaurants in our estate wineries and international travel. Looking ahead to the challenges presented by the pandemic on our near-term results, we expect will continue to affect our performance in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2022 and into fiscal 2023.
However, given these challenges, we do believe that we've performed well throughout the pandemic, given the very difficult cycle of openings and closings that we've experienced. Turning to our margins. Gross margin, again, was negatively impacted by purchasing patterns and other factors related to the COVID-19 pandemic. These included higher imported wine and other raw material costs. In addition, we're experiencing the same increased costs as others related to much-publicized global supply chain issues due to the pandemic, as well as increased cost due to inflationary pressure. We're implementing price increases in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2022 that are expected to partially offset the inflationary pressure on margin. Well, we're also assessing fills and costs, cost-saving initiatives to mitigate against increasing supply chain costs.
Our sales and admin expenses increased compared to last year as we return our staffing and marketing overheads to more normal levels. You'll remember that in last year's first half, we furloughed a significant part of our workforce due to closed trade channels and to conserve cash. In addition, this year we incurred certain non-recurring start-up costs related to the opening of a recently acquired Riverbend Inn. September 28, we completed the sale of our Port Coquitlam, British Columbia, property and assets for total cash proceeds of about CAD 8.8 million net of transaction costs. Still generated a realized CAD 7.5 million, or CAD 0.21 per Class A share.
Including all of these factors, net earnings for the first nine months of fiscal 2022 were CAD 19.5 million or CAD 0.46 per Class A share, compared to CAD 34.1 million or CAD 0.80 per Class A share. Now looking at the balance sheet. Total debt increased marginally to CAD 180.4 million at December 31 due to reduction in cash from operation and increased investment in the company's properties and operations. At quarter end, we had capacity on our revolving credit facility of about CAD 167 million. As of December 31, we've repurchased and canceled 598,600 Class A non-voting shares under our normal course issuer bid at a weighted average price of CAD 8.70 per share for total cash consideration of CAD 5.2 million.
Thanks very much for your time this morning, and with that, I'll turn things back to John.
Thanks, Steve. So, you know, we're expecting to finish the year about down 5% in revenue and perhaps down 30% in our EBITDA. As we plan for next year, you know, we're really seeing things return to what we think will be fairly close to post-COVID normal. You know, restaurants and restaurant revenue should get back into the kind of 90% range. There's been at least a 5%-8% closure in restaurants and, you know, there have been many significant changes. You know, people ordering food to take home has become part of the restaurant normal now. That will be a significant change. We're hoping our estate wine business, which was performing extremely well last year. All our estates did well even though they were closed for a quarter.
We expect them to be open for a full year. Really, it should be just in the travel area where we expect at least another year of disruption because people will start traveling more, but it's not expected that things will return to post-COVID normal until about a year or two out. Naturally, we're taking price increases and we're expecting, you know, double-digit inflationary impact, and we'll certainly have a single- digit pricing increase impact. It's certain that you know, earnings and margins will be impacted for another year, the so-called fifth wave of COVID. You know, that being said, we have definitely kept our focus on the long- term and positive growth potential in our business.
You know, I've reflected many times in the last year that, you know, we've been over the last 40 years that I've been with the company, you know, we've been through many inflationary and deflationary economic times and challenges. Our industry has always, and our company has always performed well, both during those periods and subsequently. I'm absolutely confident that will be the case this time, that we fully expect to leave the COVID pandemic a much stronger, more capable company. Certainly, our investments in the last few years, we've put in over CAD 100 million into our facilities and our people. You know, we've talked about our ERP system, which is fully implemented right now.
It's been an incredible amount of work, but sets us up to really digitize our business going forward and draw increased efficiencies and capabilities from the very complex supply chain that we manage. All our entrants into new product categories are doing very well. You know, we're particularly excited about the premiumization of our industry and the future that it has for our company. Thanks for all your support. We definitely plan to get out and chat with everybody throughout the year. I'm happy to take questions if any of the callers have any comments or questions they'd like to share with us. Over to you, operator.
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. Should you have a question, please press star followed by the number one on your touch tone phone. You will hear a three-tone prompt acknowledging your request, and your questions will be pulled in the order they are received. Should you wish to decline from the polling process, please press star followed by the number two. If you're using a speakerphone, please lift the handset before pressing any keys. One moment for your first question. Your first question will come from Amr Ezzat from ECHELON Partners . Please go ahead.
Good morning. It's Michael Vaccarino here on behalf of Amr. Just a couple of questions from me. In your prepared remarks, you spoke to higher input and supply chain costs that drove gross margins down. When do you foresee margins starting to rebound again?
You know, it's a question that every company President and CFO is getting across the country right now. Obviously, none of us are crystal ball experts on this. I mean, you know, certainly it's transportation costs are the ones that are highlighted or the wine we purchase around the world is currently inflated as well, and so is all our packaging and pretty well most everything. You know, it's hard for us to predict that. I think it's certain that it'll be, you know, six months to a year is kind of the timeframe that people talk most commonly about. It could drag into the following year a bit as well, but it for certain will be for a year.
You know, a lot depends on, you know, economic policies and political policies that we don't have a lot of insight to. All we know for sure is that they will definitely come and that they've happened to us already, that we're doing everything we can to mitigate their impact. We also know that they'll eventually come back to normal, you know. Hopefully in a year's time, but we'll have to wait and see.
Thank you. On capital allocation, you had previously repurchased some stock. How do you think about capital allocation going forward? I would think about M&A versus buybacks or other ways of allocating capital.
Well, I mean, it's part of our everyday life, and we've, you know, we still have a very, very strong balance sheet, and nothing feels better for management knowing that they have the opportunity to invest in growth as we go forward. That is our ambition, to invest in growth and we continue to monitor M&A very, very carefully. You know, on top of that, we bought shares back in this last year and I believe the year previously as well. You know, our shares are trading at a very low value right now. You know, to the extent that it persists, it will still be part of our calculus to consider that opportunity. We're also investing in vineyard development.
You know, as our premium and ultra-premium business, estate winery business grows, we're having to put a lot of money into the red premium varieties. I mean, I think in the short- term, we'll certainly be a little more cautious with our spending and our cash flow management while we get through this inflationary period. I think we'll continue to allocate capital as we have in the past, including investments in our assets. We'll monitor the opportunity to purchase our shares back, and we'll certainly be interested in any M&A opportunities that can help us grow strategically in, you know, spirits, in premium wine and in the RTD business as well.
Great. Thank you so much. I'll pass the line.
Ladies and gentlemen as a reminder should you have a question, please press star followed by the number one. Your next question will be coming from Nick Corcoran from Acumen. Please go ahead.
Good morning, and thanks for taking my questions.
All right, Nick.
Just looking at the third quarter, were there any, what you call one-time items or temporary impacts in the quarter that might have impacted gross margin? Should we expect a sequential improvement in margins in the fourth quarter?
I mean, Steve, do you wanna take that? I don't recall any one-time item.
Yeah. You know, I'll say the only thing that happened in the quarter that, you know, I would think about as unusual is, you know, we did have all of the major highways in British Columbia washed out for, you know, a considerable period of time. You know, that definitely added to some difficulty. I think that you know we did a terrific job of getting products moved around at, you know, kind of a critical time before the holidays. You know, there would've been a, I would say, a one-time impact, relatively small, you know, when you consider the amount of inflation that happened in the window. I would say that would be the one thing that is probably a bit of an anomaly, Nick.
Moving on to the price increases that you talked about implementing in the fourth quarter, when do you expect those to take hold?
We put those price increases in already, and we've started to. You know, we could see it at the very broad range of trade channels. In some areas, it's easy to put the price increases and expect them to hold. You know, in some of the broader retail areas it can be a little more challenging. Suffice it to say, we've seen all our competitors respond as well, which is kind of unusual. You know, we've tended to have led that activity in the past, and now we're seeing others that we would not normally see including Europeans who are starting to take price increases. We've started our pricing policy increases for the year. We're well into where we think we need to be. You know, we'll update you in our next quarterly call.
Good. I noticed in your disclosure that you amended the credit agreement prior to quarter end and then again in February. Can you give any color on what the amendments were and what might be the reason beyond that?
You wanna take that, Steve?
Yep, sure. We amended both. Our agreement is subject to two covenants, so funded debt and interest coverage. We amended both of them just as we, you know, kinda look into the future and, you know, can see a fair bit of inflation on the horizon. We amended the agreement to relax the covenants, you know, as we kinda go through a bit of an inflationary period, just to make sure that we can continue to stay onside with lenders.
Good. The last question from me. Do you have any updates on the Port Moody asset and what you're doing there, either in terms of getting the development permit or potentially moving it towards a sale?
Yeah. Nick, things, I think, are moving positively on the Port Moody side. We are expecting to have our development permit approved in the month of July. I think there is a provision for us to extend that a year if we needed to, but we're not anticipating needing an extension. You know, I think. It's fair to say that the VC development community has put COVID in its rearview mirror and there is a considerable uptake in development interest and planning. We're certainly talking to lots of people, and I'm feeling very positive and confident about the investment opportunity going forward and, you know, for sure in the next year, hopefully, or at the latest in the second year.
Great. That's all for me. Thanks, again.
There are no further questions at this time. Please go ahead.
All right. Thanks to everybody for joining us. As always, we invite you to call us at any time during the week if you have any questions or concerns. We're looking forward to finishing the year positively, and we're excited about our future here and hope to get out and speak with all of you throughout the next year. Thanks very much, and we'll talk with you soon.
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes your conference for today. We thank you for participating, and we ask that you please disconnect your lines.