Good day, and welcome to the BellRing Brands second quarter 2023 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising that your hand has been raised. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the call over to Jennifer Meyer, Investor Relations for BellRing.
Good morning, and thank you for joining us today for BellRing Brands second quarter fiscal 2023 earnings call. With me today are Darcy Davenport, our President and CEO, and Paul Rode, our CFO. Darcy and Paul will begin with prepared remarks. Afterwards, we'll have a brief question-and-answer session. The press release and supplemental slide presentation that support these remarks are posted on our website in both the Investor Relations and the SEC filings sections at bellring.com. In addition, the release and slides are available on the SEC's website. Before we continue, I would like to remind you that this call will contain forward-looking statements which are subject to risks and uncertainties that should be carefully considered by investors, as actual results could differ materially from these statements. These forward-looking statements are current as of the date of this call. Management undertakes no obligation to update these statements.
As a reminder, this call is being recorded, an audio replay will be available on our website. Finally, this call will discuss certain non-GAAP measures. For a reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to the nearest GAAP measure, see our press release issued yesterday and posted on our website. With that, I will turn the call over to Darcy.
Thanks, Jennifer. Thank you all for joining us. Last evening, we reported our second quarter results and posted a supplemental presentation to our website. I'm pleased to share that our first half performance was strong, with Q2 results above our expectations. The business is steadily accelerating and gaining momentum as we bring on new capacity and begin to drive demand. Net sales grew 22% over prior year, and EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA was up 34%. We continue to see higher shake production leading to higher in-stocks, which is driving higher consumption at the shelf. You saw last night we raised our outlook for the year. We now expect net sales to grow between 17% and 21% over fiscal 2022, with adjusted EBITDA to grow 18%-23%.
Our better-than-expected first half performance, along with strong consumption trends and continued category momentum, drove our decision to raise the top and bottom line. The updated guidance factors in lower than expected input costs in Q4. Let's start with shake production. We saw double-digit production growth this quarter as we finished lapping the worst of our supply constraints. Our capacity expansion plans are on track, with annual production expected to grow low double digits in fiscal 2023. Our bottle co-manufacturer is performing above our expectations, and our newest Tetra co-man had a smooth startup in Q2. As a reminder, our two greenfield facilities were scheduled to come online in Q4. One of these co-mans is slightly ahead of schedule. We are not expecting meaningful contribution from either of these new co-mans until fiscal 2024.
Our incremental capacity in 2024 is expected to be north of 20%, setting us up for many years of robust shake growth. Now to our category and brand updates. The convenient nutrition category remains strong at 16% in Q2, accelerating two points compared to prior quarter. Ready to drink was at 21%, and ready to mix grew 24%. Both segments are growing despite price increases and continued capacity constraints across the RTD competitive set. Everyday and sports nutrition segments are driving category growth as more consumers seek functional food and beverages and pursue their fitness goals. New powder products, in particular, are boosting sports nutrition growth. Premier Protein shake consumption strength accelerated this quarter, up 22%.
Growth was robust across all key channels, with the highest growth in food and mass, as those channels were the most impacted by our capacity constraints last year. The e-commerce channel returned to growth this quarter as our bottle supply is now sufficient to meet demand. In April, overall shake consumption continued to grow, up 31%, demonstrating continued strength. Our brand metrics made great strides this quarter and reflect the strong momentum we are feeling in the business. Premier Protein market share ended the quarter up 19%, up 130 basis points versus year ago. I'm proud to share that across track channels, the brand became not only the number one brand in the RTD segment, but also the number one brand in the convenient nutrition category.
This is especially exciting given we still had limited SKUs on the shelf and hadn't started meaningful marketing and promotion. I'm pleased with the progress Premier Protein made in household penetration this quarter, with the brand increasing 3% versus Q1, reaching 14.2% of households, the highest in the category. We expect to steadily grow households as we increase items on the shelf and restart marketing and promotion activities. Our repeat and buy rates are holding steady, demonstrating our consumer loyalty. Excuse me. Premier Protein powders more than doubled this quarter, with consumption up an astounding 123% behind our first ever national marketing campaign. It exceeded our expectations, driving record-breaking sales and household penetration for the product. We continue to be excited about the growth potential for Premier Protein in this incremental form. Turning to Dymatize.
The brand had a great quarter, with consumption dollars up 38% across tracked and untracked channels. We saw double-digit growth in nearly all channels, driven by distribution gains, pricing, and promotion. The brand's strength continued into April with consumption up 32%. The one exception was club, where we went from two full-time items in 2022 to one full-time, less expensive item this year. Consumption on the new SKU is performing well. Our strategy around expanding Dymatize to mainstream channels is working. Market share and TDPs reached all-time highs this quarter, and household penetration continues to grow. We ended the quarter with 5.5% market share in tracked channels. Encouragingly, as Dymatize adds new households and distributions, repeat and buy rates are holding steady. In closing, I'm encouraged by our first half progress.
In almost every part of our business, whether it is brand, format, or channel, we are gaining momentum. Our category continues to show remarkable growth on strong macro trend tailwinds. Premier Protein reached the number one share of both tracked RTD and the entire convenient nutrition category for the first time. Premier's household penetration is back to growth. We are expanding shake capacity and are now only months away from a step change in our shake production run rate. We are reintroducing our full range of Premier Protein shake flavors and restarting marketing and promotion. Premier Protein powder and Dymatize consumption are rapidly climbing, bringing mainstream consumers into the category. We have a deep innovation pipeline that will help fuel our future growth. Lastly, I would argue most importantly, our culture is thriving.
For the seventh year in a row, we earned the Great Place to Work certification. Our U.S. employees voted and received our highest average score ever, with 93% of our U.S. organization said that it was a great place to work. We remain confident in our long-term outlook for BellRing and look forward to providing further updates next quarter. Thank you for your continued support. I will now turn the call over to Paul.
Thanks, Darcy. Good morning, everyone. As Darcy highlighted, our second quarter and first half performance was strong. Net sales for the quarter were $386 million, adjusted EBITDA was $68 million. Net sales grew 22% over prior year, adjusted EBITDA increased 34% with adjusted EBITDA margin of 17.6%. Starting with brand performance, Premier Protein net sales grew 26%. Higher average net selling prices contributed 20% to overall growth. Volumes grew 6%, reflecting increased shake production compared to a year ago and strong growth for Premier powders. Shake net sales growth of 22% was in line with consumption growth in the quarter. Dymatize net sales grew 11% compared to a year ago, benefiting from higher net pricing, organic growth, and increased brand investments offset slightly by 1% lower volumes.
As expected, volumes were negatively impacted by the lapping of our strategic discontinuation of certain Dymatize products. In addition, club volumes declined as we lapped distribution changes and the impact of load-in timing this year. The combination of these items was an approximate 23% headwind to the net sales growth rate in the quarter. Excluding these items, net sales growth tracks closer to consumption growth. Gross profit of $117 million grew 35%, with gross margins of 30.4% up 280 basis points. Our pricing actions continue to offset significant inflation. The increase in gross margin was largely driven by lapping prior year supply chain inefficiencies and favorable freight rates. Excluding one-time separation costs, SG&A expenses as a percentage of net sales increased 180 basis points.
Our marketing spend accounted for the majority of this increase as we invested behind Premier Protein powders and Dymatize. Before reviewing our outlook, I would like to make a few comments on cash flow and liquidity. We generated $20 million in cash flow from operations in the first half of the year. Net working capital increased in Q2, primarily driven by higher raw material inventory. We expect to generate much stronger cash flow in the second half as our working capital increase largely reverses, driven primarily by lower raw material and optimized Dymatize inventory levels. We are already seeing some of the working capital time reverse in the month of April, as we generated approximately $23 million of cash excluding financing activities. As of March 31, net debt was $954 million, and net leverage was 3x .
With our expected EBITDA growth and strong cash flow generation, we continue to anticipate net leverage to be lower than 2.5x by the end of fiscal 2023. With respect to our share repurchases this quarter, we bought 900,000 shares at an average price of $29.74 per share. Last week, the Board approved a new $80 million share repurchase authorization. Turning to our outlook, we raised our fiscal 2023 guidance for net sales to be $1.61 billion-$1.66 billion and adjusted EBITDA of $320 million-$335 million. The updated guidance reflects our better than expected first half results, strong consumption trends, and category growth momentum.
Our outlook for EBITDA is tracking modestly higher, factoring in higher net sales as well as lower than expected input costs in Q4. For Q3 net sales, we expect mid-to-high teens percentage growth compared to prior year, with both Premier Protein and Dymatize growing double-digits. Approximately 2/3 of the overall growth is expected to come from pricing and the remainder from volume. We expect Q3 gross profit margins to modestly step up versus Q2, with further margin expansion in Q4. Likewise, we expect adjusted EBITDA margins to step up each quarter. Q3 adjusted EBITDA dollars are expected to be flat to prior year as sales growth is offset by higher advertising and other G&A expenses. Before wrapping up, I want to review our capital expenditures guidance.
We now expect to spend approximately $6 million this year as we invest in systems and process improvements to support our long-term growth. In closing, we are pleased with our first half momentum. Our strong first half results gives us greater confidence in our full year outlook and long-term growth prospects. I will now turn it over to the operator for questions.
Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star one one on your telephone. If your question has been answered or you wish to remove yourself from the queue, press star one one again. Our first question comes from the line of Jason English with Goldman Sachs.
Hey, folks. Thanks for thanks for spotting me in. I appreciate it. Can you give a little more context around the pace and magnitude of the re-engagement you're talking about in terms of marketing and merchandising activity going forward? On a related topic, because it all kind of tethers to margins, we're looking at the high protein whey cost, and they've fallen precipitously in the recent months. I think we're now tracking with substantial down like 36% year-on-year levels. When would you expect that to flow through, begin to flow through? How much of that upside would you expect to reinvest back in the belly of the portfolio or belly of the P&L to keep the revenue going? Thank you.
Yeah, I'll start.
Thanks, Jason. Oh, go ahead.
Yeah, go ahead, Darcy.
Well, I was just gonna hit the marketing question. You can answer the second one. Just from Jason, just from our demand driving activities, you didn't ask about the new flavors, but we started shipping the new flavors at the end of this quarter. Didn't really hit consumption until April. From a marketing standpoint, we did have marketing. First of all, Dymatize will be pretty steady, Q2 to Q4. We had some marketing on basically Premier Protein powders and then we'll start on the rest of the shake support in Q3 and Q4. It's still pretty light through Q3 and Q4 as we're basically just starting to communicate to our consumers again as we anticipate more demand driving in 2024.
I'll hand it to Paul from a U.S. dollar standpoint and then your second question.
As far as marketing investments, in Q2, we spent just over 3% of net sales. We expect the second half to be similar, we are definitely investing behind marketing. You know, it's at consistent levels that we saw in Q2. As we look at next year, we'll revisit if that, you know, is increased. From a fiscal 2023 perspective, we expect to spend around 3% or so of net sales on marketing. As far as protein, we did as you saw, you know, we brought our guidance up on EBITDA and called out in our prepared remarks that we do expect, you know, gross margins to improve in Q4 or to grow in Q4 sequentially from Q3.
That's largely because we are starting to see some benefits from protein costs, primarily on our powder business, not so much on shakes yet. That's, you know, we think that's more in fiscal 2024, but we do expect to start to see. To your point, in fiscal 2024, we expect to see more meaningful protein reductions. However, we do have some other offsets. You know, we do have inflation in some other areas of our supply chain. In packaging, we've seen that step up, and that starts to step up on our second half. Those are, you know, that's from a protein perspective, we do start to see some of it in Q4, but really it's more fiscal 2024 on shakes.
Okay. That's helpful. As those lower costs flow through, is there risk that pricing will flip negative as you reengage on promotions merchandising at retail?
Darcy, you want the retail question?
Yeah. I think that we expect, and it's pretty common in especially the powder side of the business, that as commodities go up and down, that you basically offset it with promotions. When it goes down, you lean into promotion a little bit more and so that's how you really manage the pricing of the commodities.
Jason, on shakes, you know, as we look at 2024, we expect it to be more of a normal promotional calendar versus a very light promotional calendar in 2023. We do expect some modest headwinds from pricing there, but as protein costs come down.
Yep, got it. Makes sense. Thank you.
Thanks, Jason.
Thank you. One moment for our next question, please. Our next question comes from the line of Bryan Spillane with Bank of America.
Thanks, operator. Good morning, everyone. I just wanted to cover one area, which is, you know, if we look at the performance for shakes in the quarter by channel, right? The track channels, you know, outperforming untracked. I'm assuming part of that is because club was getting more priority when you were capacity constrained. So A, is that true? Then B, as we kinda look out over the next couple of quarters, would we expect to have this sort of same relative, you know, channel performance, meaning that the tracked, you know, outperforming the untracked channels?
You're, you're right in that food and mass definitely got hit the hardest with our capacity constraints last year. We are lapping that now, and that is why you're seeing tracked channels outperform untracked. You're right, we should expect to continue to see that. I guess the other dynamic, Bryan, is we just, you know, we're under distributed in food and mass, so we have a lot more upside from a distribution standpoint in food and mass. I think as we start shipping our flavors to food and mass, the paused flavors as well as continue to launch new ones, there's more distribution upside.
Okay.
Bryan, if I could add one thing. The one thing I would add is that SDM is a more complicated channel and that has a lot more flavors and pack sizes, where club is, you know, it's a limited SKU environment. You've mentioned prioritization, but it is more complicated, which is why, you know, it took us a little bit longer to get some of those flavors and pack sizes, you know, fully back to bright because it's just a little more. It's a lot more SKUs to manage.
Okay, just one follow-up to that. Should we expect as you exit fiscal 2024 that you'll have kind of the assortment where you want it, right? You know, now that you've got more capacity available, you'll have the flavors that you want, the pack types. Just, at what point in the future do we expect that, you know, you're gonna be, you know, playing with, you know, basically at full strength, right, in terms of assortment?
Yeah. By the end of. I would say by the end of calendar 2024, we will have gone through a full cycle of resets, and we will have our, you know, full existing portfolio on the shelf, and then it will be about new items, innovation, et cetera.
Okay. Thank you.
Okay.
Thank you. One moment for our next question, please. Our next question comes from the line of Ken Goldman with JP Morgan.
Hi. Thank you. How do we think about your ability to maximize capacity in the new plants into next year? I realize you're not prepared to give any formal guidance into next year, and of course, there'll be some kind of production ramp-up period. You know, but it feels to me, you know, looking at The Street's numbers, The Street's looking at under 12% sales growth for you next year, but you're going to have so many tailwinds from that supply chain expansion and what it allows you to do in terms of marketing and the reintroduction of products and so forth. It feels like it would be kind of a uniquely strong growth year, and The Street's not really modeling that.
Again, I'm probably putting you on the spot in a way you can't answer right now, but I'm just trying to get a sense for how quickly you realize you really can get up to that, you know, max capacity in those new plants.
I mean, Ken, you are putting me on the spot. Just kidding.
I know. I lied.
We have communicated that we expect production to be above 20%. However, remember that, some of that production doesn't go. You can't say that sales is gonna be up 20% because some of that is gonna go into rebuilding our internal inventory. I think it's fair to say that we would expect net sales to be high end of our algorithm, and that's 10%-12%. I think The Street is, you know, pretty close. But you're right. I think that we do. We definitely have some momentum in the business. We are experiencing, you know, week to week, you know, it's record weeks without promotion, without marketing, and without our full portfolio.
I think that we're excited to see the continued momentum as we bring on new capacity.
Thank you. My follow-up is, you know, you talked about how in powders you won't take. You'll have to promote back to sort of offset any kind of cost or deflation. Not every producer can promote at the same time. There's limited shelf space for that. You know, is it reasonable to think that you're not going to, you know, just to follow up on a previous question, you're not necessarily gonna take your price, your net price down all the way all the time, but just kinda head in that direction. I just wanted to get a sense of, you know, how people are or how you are thinking about that from a net perspective versus inflation or deflation.
Our general plan, I mean, Dymatize and now Premier Powder is a low household penetration brand. Yes, we talked about promotion, but we wanna invest in brand building. We think there's a ton of opportunity to get new consumers to try these products and continue that kind of mainstreaming, and that's gonna be done mainly through brand marketing. We think there's a big opportunity as commodities come down to invest in the brands and see it in top line and continue to bring new households into the category.
Thank you.
Thank you. One moment for our next question, please. Our next question comes from the line of Matt Smith with Stifel.
Hi, good morning.
Good morning.
We've heard this morning about your restarting of promotional and marketing activity later this year. I'm curious if inventory levels for retailers need to build in your fourth quarter ahead of planned events in the beginning of your year 2024. Should we expect shipments to outpace consumption in the back half as retailers build back the additional flavors and perhaps build inventory ahead of distribution gains and promotional events?
Yeah, I'll take that one. From a shipments versus consumption, we do expect shipments to slightly outpace consumption, but not dramatically. You mentioned the flavor relaunches. You know, it's not a big bang, it's more as retailers reset shelves, those go in over time. It's not one big bang. From a promotional perspective, you know, we do have some light promotion on shakes in the fourth quarter, but we really expect them to load in really in the same quarter and then you know, be consumed in the same quarter. Net-net, slight shipments above consumption in the second half as we do reload flavors, but it shouldn't be dramatically higher.
Okay. Then just quickly as a follow-up, club events have been a significant volume driver in the past. Do you have visibility or confidence into your capacity that you have the ability to restart promotional events in the club channel beginning in your fiscal 2024?
Yes. We factored in the volume that we expect to sell through with club events and overall events and promotional events within food and mass, and that's all within our forecast that we are adding capacity for.
Thank you for that. I'll pass it on.
Thanks.
Thank you. One moment, please, for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Andrew Lazar with Barclays.
Great. Thanks a lot. Good morning, everybody.
Good morning, Andrew.
I think, the newer greenfield or dedicated co-pack facilities are being built on sort of larger footprints that I think allow for incremental lines to be added much more quickly than what was possible with some of the previous, maybe more space-constrained co-pack facilities. I guess I'm curious how many lines are being put into the new facilities. I guess really what I'm getting at is has that changed maybe recently, i.e., increased or optioned for more lines than you initially expected, just given the obviously the momentum and consumption trends in the business?
Currently in the two new facilities, you're exactly right. The, the footprint, they're only. I'll use the Post facility first. There's room for 10 lines. They're starting with four. That has always been the case since the beginning. I mean, they haven't produced a shake yet, so starting with four. The timeline is about, so think of for a, you know, to have to build a new facility, to find the land, et cetera, that timeline is around, you know, somewhere between two and three years. Now that we have our partners, that have more space to grow, the timeline is about, you know, somewhere about 18-20 months, with if you need to get like the full processor and fillers.
You know, we're already really talking about. We're talking 25 and 26 volume now with our partners. The second facility is as similar. They added four lines. That was the same as what we planned in the future, but we're already talking about expansions with them as well.
Thanks for that. With household penetration continuing to increase, I think you mentioned that the repeat rate has remained pretty steady. I guess, would we normally expect, not necessarily in convenient nutrition specifically, but would we normally expect repeat rates to start to drop as you bring on more households that maybe are, you know, more casual users or less loyal users? If that's right, we haven't I guess we have not seen that for Premier, if I have that right.
Absolutely. As you expand both distribution and household pen, it is very common to see repeat and buy rates fall. And that's because Yeah, you have your loyal base that are usually the higher consuming consumers. When you add, they kind of, you know, dip their toe in. Yes, really encouraging on actually both of our brands, Premier Protein and Dymatize, that as we're adding distribution and household penetration, that we're holding very steady from a buy rate and a repeat rate. It just shows how loyal our consumers are.
Thank you.
Thanks.
Thank you. One moment please for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Pamela Kaufman with Morgan Stanley.
Hi, good morning.
Good morning.
Morning. Can you talk about the improvement in your performance in the e-commerce channel and your strategy there for Premier? I think your comparisons for e-commerce get easier over the coming quarters. Should we expect to see accelerating growth there?
Yeah, e-commerce consumption absolutely improved this quarter. If you remember, we had a slower ramp up for our bottle co-manufacturer, which is the format that we sell into e-commerce. We are past that. Our bottle co-manufacturer is consistently producing. We have inventory. Last quarter, we had issues with our retailer, our, you know, major e-com retailer, having enough inventory to really drive demand. We are now seeing that that is, you know, that is getting better and we're seeing that in consumption. You saw an improvement this quarter in e-com consumption. Yes, we should continue to see improvement kind of quarter after quarter.
Great. Thanks. Then you mentioned that you expect lower input costs now in Q4. Can you just comment on what your outlook is for gross margins for the back half of the year?
Sure. Yeah. From a gross margin perspective, we would expect the second half to be, you know, at or slightly below the first half, keeping in mind that in Q4 we do have some wide promotion that obviously is offset. We are seeing some other inflationary costs, like I mentioned, in packaging and some of our other supply chain. Q3 should be up modestly from Q2, Q4 should be up again from Q3, second half largely in line with the first half, maybe down slightly.
Thank you.
Thank you. One moment please for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Robert Dickerson with Jefferies.
Great. Thanks so much. Darcy, just a kind of general question is all I have. Kind of longer term outlook, I think the, you know, target, you know, for gross margin 32%, 34%, and then EBIT's, 18%-20%, released in the first half now and then kind of what you guided on EBITDA for the year, you're kind of there, right? I realize there could be, you know, some incremental spending on promotions, maybe ramp marketing, but at the same time you have like a nice production capacity tailwind. Just kinda trying to get a, get a general perspective, how you're thinking about, you know, the current business performance on the margin side relative to those longer term targets, given you're kind of doing pretty well as is and you've still been somewhat capacity constrained?
Darcy, you want me to start or you?
Yeah. Yeah. Why don't you start with margins?
You're correct that really last year we were, you know, at the high end of our EBITDA margin algorithm, and we're kind of in that same spot in 2023. Now keep in mind though, the last two years we've, you know, intentionally pulled back on marketing and promotion. Obviously as we go into 2024, those will ramp back up at higher levels than we've seen over the last couple of years. But we've also weathered obviously protein costs at, you know, historical highs. As we get into next year, really the thinking is that we're gonna, you know, we wanna keep investing in the top line and that should mean more promotion and likely more marketing, with perhaps gross margins, you know, ramping up a bit from this year.
Net net getting back to an EBITDA margin that's still, I think we're likely in the high side of the high half of the algorithm, so 19% +. You know, that's still where we're targeting at the moment. There is opportunity as you mentioned, that perhaps we can, you know, sustain towards the higher side of that.
All right. Thank you. That's it.
Thanks, Robert.
Thank you.
Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Matt McGinley with Needham & Company.
Thank you. I have a quick follow-up on the EBITDA guide. Your guidance implies that the margins in the back half will be down, I think 150-200 basis points year-over-year. You noted, I think twice that the gross margins will be up sequentially in the third and the fourth. Overall, do you expect that year-over-year pressure to be mostly realized in gross margin or in G&A in the back half?
In, it's more in G&A. We, you know, as we ramp up our A&P spend, compared to last year, that's the primary driver, versus last year in the second half.
That makes sense. The second question is on with the decline in working capital investment around inventory that you noted, I think you should have a pretty good back half in terms of cash flow generation. What's the priority for capital return in the back half? Is it paying down the revolver balances or repurchasing stock? Does the strong stock performance and multiple expansion that you've had this year change your priority or in terms of how you think about returning capital?
Yeah. As we look at the second half, we will prioritize, you know, debt pay down. We'll pay down the revolver, as you mentioned. We continue to look at, you know, the long-term growth prospects of this business we still feel are very strong. We will continue to be opportunistic on share repurchases as we get into the second half. First priority will be debt pay down and then second share buybacks.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you. One moment, please. Our next question comes from the line of Bill Chappell with Truist.
Hey, good morning. This is Stephen Lengel on for Bill Chappell. Thank you for taking our question.
Morning.
This will just be a quick one. I guess you called out some of the investments in systems to support the long-term growth, around CapEx expectations. I guess how have those expectations changed over the past few months? Is there anything you could call out there?
No, we've been assessing, you know, looking at our processes, looking at our systems. We went through an assessment process that identified some things we wanna implement and change. It's not ERP, but it's some of the subsystems and support infrastructure of the business. As that became clear that, you know, what we were planning to do there, then we realized that some of that would be, you know, capital expenditure. That's what's really driving the increase. We look at this, you know, we have a very fast-growing business, and we wanna make sure that, we have the infrastructure and processes to support that growth, and not only now, but for the next few years. We're investing now to make sure that that is the case.
Great. Thank you guys so much.
One moment please for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Jim Salera with Stephens.
Hi guys. Thanks for taking my question. Darcy, you mentioned that, you know, you guys are under distributed in FDM. What would it take? Is that just a function of kind of the capacity constraints and not having all the SKUs that they want? What would it take to kinda get on par or back to a level that's kind of relatively the same to the other channels in FDM?
Yeah. I mean, so yes, its short answer is it's a byproduct of our capacity constraints. Also just when you look at the potential, if you look at some of our competitors, we have about even market share with, you know, one of our major competitors, and they have double the space we have. We know that the Premier Protein, and I'm specifically talking about Premier Protein shakes. We know we're under distributed. We know that we drive new households into the category. Now getting those, getting the capacity and then getting those products back on the shelf. I think it goes back to a prior question about when does that happen.
I think that we're getting some really encouraging news from the resets, that, you know, the retailer calls that we're having, and feedback on the shelf dynamics and what's changing in the shelf sets on resets. Retailers are really leaning in and excited about the fact that we have capacity coming on. They're definitely leaning into Premier Protein and Dymatize, which is exciting.
Okay. As a follow-up, if we zoom out and you guys are obviously the leader in kind of that RTD shake category, what does it take to drive overall category awareness? I mean, you have kind of a core consumer that utilizes the product on a normal basis, but what does it take to pull in additional consumers that might not be familiar with kind of the use occasion, or just the category more broadly speaking?
It is basic stuff. It is getting back to. I mean, if you go back into, in fiscal 2021 when the last time that we were really marketing, promoting, and driving demand through new items, et cetera, we increased. We helped. We are bringing in new consumers into the category. We added about between one and two points of household penetration for our brand as well as the category. We have a playbook on how to kind of talk to those consumers that are outside of the category that are kind of open to ready-to-drink shakes and powders. It is, you know, linear, it's TV, it's digital, it's that, you know, kind of the 360 marketing view of making sure we have shopper marketing, as well as promotion and display.
We have kind of a playbook that works for us, and now it's just about getting back to executing that playbook.
Okay, great. Thanks, guys. I'll pass it on.
Thanks.
Thank you. One moment, please, for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of John Baumgartner with Mizuho.
Good morning. Thanks for the question.
Good morning, John.
Darcy, I wanted to ask about Dymatize. The momentum in e-commerce has been pretty strong for the last couple of years, but I've been surprised more recently at the pace of distribution growth in grocery and mass. For a brand that's traditionally had an audience that's more specialized, what are you seeing or what's evolving that's giving you confidence Dymatize has appeal in these outlets? I don't know if it's just white space fill, but if not, it would seem to suggest a much longer runway for growth.
Yeah. I think this is one of the most exciting things about Dymatize. Really kind of the make or break of it. It was either gonna be a really steady niche product within the specialty side of the business, or it was gonna be, you know, a bigger, more mainstream sports nutrition brand that had relevance across not only specialty and e-commerce, but also FDM. It has definitely proved to be the latter. The support of that was its success in specifically mass. You know, one major mass retailer, where we got distribution, just about, I guess it was about two, three years ago, it was successful.
I think that was the first time that was kind of the proof point that this brand, which is a super premium sports nutrition powder brand for athletes, you know, in the know, it could sell in mass. Since then, I think, we're continuing to expand distribution. I mean, you can see it in some of our supplemental charts. It's still low, but we're seeing really strong takeaway in, Well, really strong distribution TDP growth within food and mass, and we expect to continue to see that.
Okay. Thanks for that. Then just a follow-up.
Mr. Baumgartner, could you please press star one one again? Your line seems to have dropped. One moment please.
Hello?
Your line's back open.
Great. Thank you. Then just to follow up, Darcy, I asked last quarter about the change in data providers to Numerator. With a bit more time under your belt now, can we sort of revisit that in terms of just, you know, grasp of some of the nuances, any learnings or surprises you can kind of integrate into the plan going forward? Thank you.
Yeah, for sure. We've continued to. Yeah, if you remember last quarter, it was brand new. We now have about three to four months under our belt, and it's great. I think that our. We're definitely able to kinda dig into the consumer understanding more. We're understanding purchasing patterns, media habits, and it's helping us in, I would say, two specific areas. One is just improved day-to-day management. We're able to forecast more effectively because we understand the interactions with competitors as well as kind of where our growth trajectory is just from a, like, lifts, et cetera. I think more importantly and more...
I think what excites me is just around our future thinking and planning, more around brand strategy, media comm, media and communications planning, as we get into planning for 2024 and beyond. That's where I think the deep consumer insights that we're gleaning from that data is really helping us.
Thank you, Darcy.
Thanks.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's conference call. Thank you for participating, and you may now disconnect.