We can get started here. Hi, everybody. Thanks for joining us today. I'm Pooran Sharma. I'm the Food and Agribusiness Equity Research Analyst at Stephens. It's my pleasure to welcome you to today's Fireside Chat with Cal-Maine Foods. For those that are not familiar with the company, Cal-Maine Foods is the leading producer and distributor of fresh eggs in the United States. With me from the company are Sherman Miller, President and CEO, and Max Bowman, Vice President and CFO. To help us learn more about the company and its key drivers, let me turn it over to them to provide a more detailed background on the company.
All right. Good morning, and thank you for having us back today. As you mentioned, I'm Sherman Miller, CEO and President, Max Bowman, our CFO. I've been with the company 28 years and just completed my second year as CEO. My third year being at Stephens, and always good to be here, and really appreciate the attendance and your interest in our company.
Cal-Maine has a heart to serve our employees, customers, and shareholders. We have a continued focus on our company's culture, history, service of our customers, cost management, revenue, and shareholder expectations. I always like to start by talking about our product, which is the business we're in, and a simple word called eggs. Seems extremely simple, but eggs have tremendous tailwinds at the moment. FDA is going to allow us to put the word healthy food on an egg carton, which seems only natural.
The United Nations calls eggs the nutrition superfood, and the Academy of Pediatrics is promoting egg consumption from conception to two years of age because of the benefit of choline in development. The American Heart Association is promoting eggs as a part of a heart-healthy diet, and the eggs are still competitive on a cost-per-serving basis, even at some of the elevated levels we've seen recently, and eggs are in a good spot with the newest emphasis against foods containing sugar, sodium, and saturated fat. They're either low or zero in all three, so very proud to be an egg company.
Cal-Maine started in 1957 by Mr. Fred Adams, centered around one word, and that word is choice. We want to produce the type of egg that our customers want to purchase. We're the largest US producer and distributor of eggs, and we're a controlled company. The family owns 53.8% of the voting shares. We operate for the long term through a family culture. In fiscal 2024, we sold approximately 1.15 billion dozen shell eggs, which we believe represents approximately 21% of the domestic shell egg consumption.
We estimate as of August of 2024, we own 15% of US laying hens. We have a stated dividends policy. We pay one-third of net earnings on a cumulative basis. We are a member of the Eggland's Best cooperative, and in calendar year 2023, our sales, including affiliates, represented 50% of the Eggland's Best's branded eggs and 45% of Land O'Lakes' branded eggs. We have a track record of strong operational performance and growth. Our scale allows us to have unique adaptation. We call it stealing from our peers or support groups, which supports innovation and problem-solving. We're regionally diverse.
We have a long history of managing through the cyclical business. Incredible employees and incredible customers that we understand that we must win their business each and every day. We're genuine in doing the right thing and truly believe that eggs, our product, have a huge part in relieving food insecurity around the globe. Cal-Maine's growth strategy, the cornerstone of our company's enduring strength and scale, rests upon three key pillars. Number one, organic expansion.
Number two, inorganic growth through strategic mergers and acquisitions. And number three, focus on growing specialty eggs or value-added business. And I'd like to give a quick update on each of the three. Number one, organic growth built our company into what it is today. We have completed a four-house expansion project in Utah this past year and look forward to completing our Kansas and Kentucky projects in 2025. Number two, inorganic growth through mergers and acquisitions has made us the company of scale that we are today. Our track record comprises 25 acquisitions through Q1 of 2025. We maintain a vigilant watch of acquisitions that seamlessly align in our strategic objectives. Our time-tested framework scrutinizes various critical factors, including geographical relevance, customer base, synergies, operational compatibility, and financial returns. This disciplined approach ensures that we make judicious, well-valued, and enhanced acquisitions.
For example, Fassio: last year, we closed on the acquisition of the Fassio Egg Farm with 1.2 million laying hens that are about 90% cage-free, operating in a cage-free deficit area. This has been a solid bottom-line contributor since closing, and we're proud of the team for making a seamless transition to the Cal-Maine programs.
Dexter, Missouri: This asset acquisition from Tyson of a feed mill hatchery and processing plant puts us in an excellent position to expand our cage-free production. And ISE America: despite a long negotiation and closing timeline, we're extremely pleased with the addition of ISE's assets and footprint. This acquisition is off to a great start and gives us market access into the Northeast that should allow growth opportunities for many years to come. And the third pillar, specialty eggs value-added business.
We're pleased to have driven growth in both specialty egg production and both Eggland's Best and cage-free production and sales. Also, we announced the Crepini strategic investment a few weeks ago that we believe will be an investment that has exciting potential for growth and long-term profits for our shareholders. Quick update on input cost: Corn, Q1 of 2025 is $4.03 a bushel compared to Q1 of 2024, $5.30. That's down 24% or $1.27 per bushel. Soybean meal, Q1 of 2025 is $340 a ton compared to $422 in Q1 of 2024. That's down 19.5% or $82.41 per ton. The stocks-to-use ratio in both corn and soy looks favorable. Estimates that we've seen between 11% and 14%. As long as we stay north of 10%, there should be certainly adequate supply.
I'd also like to give a quick update on cage-free. Since 2008, the company has either spent or placed $808 million. To date, we have spent $780 million of that, allocating costs to be spent, remaining of $28 million. Current projections in the US show that 40.8% of the flock is cage-free as of October 31, 2024, and the legislative timelines encapsulate 10 states that either are fully transitioned or are transitioning. Lastly, I'd like to give a real quick update on highly pathogenic avian influenza.
November 14, 2024, total birds affected since it began in early 2022 was 82.7 million. Of that, 79.1 million are layers and another 3.36 million are pullets. Significant activity still exists in both the wild bird and dairy cattle that can spread the virus. We know that based on what's going on in Europe and Canada, the virus is not gone. In the year ahead, we don't do formal estimates, but regardless of the circumstance, we have been here before and we're prepared. Doing the right thing always pays off in the long run, and we'll do the right thing. I'll stop there and turn it back over to you for Q&A.
Thank you, Sherman. I guess maybe we could start off just, and I know you mentioned it. You're saying egg prices. We have a tailwind right now. We just gave an update on HPAI. Can we maybe just start off with, let's talk about, you know, why is this virus so hard to contain? Why is the egg industry getting so impacted?
You want me to start and you pick up?
Sure.
So back in 2015, 2016, there was a severe outbreak, but it only lasted three months. And during that period, the virus just simply disappeared. Fast forward to 2022, this virus certainly has had a lot more longevity. And the spread back in 2015, 2016 was about 80% of it was caused by vertical transmission, meaning from one farm to the next. But this time, 85% of it is direct wild birds. So the biosecurity programs definitely have to spread from producer to producer. But the wild bird introduction still exists. And when it possibly could have been slowing down, dairy cattle has come on the scene. And there are new hosts.
Dairy cattle were infected directly from wild bird, the first herd. And then it has spread from herd to herd. And that virus can spread from dairy cattle to chickens. The dairy cattle aspect has definitely created a lot of the more recent depopulations that we've seen. So a lot of dynamics at play there.
Yeah, absolutely. I guess when speaking on that dynamic too, and just marrying that in just general seasonality and egg prices, can you speak through that and just let us know when kind of egg prices or eggs are in demand and marry that with the current environment on how high egg prices have reached so far?
Sure. So I'll start there. Max, you can pick up. But the holiday season certainly is the peak of the volume demand as we approach Thanksgiving, Christmas, and then the carryover on into Easter. Those are peak demand periods. And anytime that you have a decrease in bird numbers during peak demand, certainly prices have to react. And if you look at the slower parts of our year, which generally are the summer months, it certainly was not very slow this year just simply because of that lower bird number. And average hen number for October should be in that 322-325 million. And as of October 1, the number came out at 312 million. And since then, there's probably been about six million birds that's been affected by AI. So definitely there's a strain occurring because of overall hen numbers. Max?
Yeah, I think it's supply-related, as we all know. As Sherman said, it's kind of repeating the same or similar pattern as it did in 2022. I mean, when it first came on in 2022, the industry kind of expected it because of what had happened in Europe, and we saw some pretty substantial bird losses, and it started in February through June, and then it kind of died down, and that was kind of what was expected again. What was unexpected was, I think in September, October, it started breaking again, and that sort of coincided as it has with this year with the build-up towards this Thanksgiving time period, and so because of that, we've seen Urner Barry prices, well, in California, over $5 and in other markets close to $5.
The far west market, the western flyway out there, Pacific Flyway, for whatever reason, I think a lot of it is the dairy cattle. And then, but the population of birds has been hit really hard there. And it's caused quite a strain on that cage-free market.
I guess I know you mentioned in October in this high-demand period, you want about 320-325 million egg-laying hens. Why is that the appropriate number? Then could you maybe speak to what that number was before we saw HPAI?
Sure. So that is the five-year average numbers that I'm speaking of. So not that it's the magic number, but it's the five-year average. And if you go back pre-AI, those high-end numbers approach 340 million. So anytime you're talking about the 305, 310, there's just a big strain on supply, especially whenever your demand can increase 20%-30% during a short period.
Historically, egg consumption has tracked sort of population growth. And so you'd expect a 1% or better growth. And so you could say, well, if we were averaging, call it 325 or a little higher for the five-year average, we've had a lot of population growth. We've had a lot of immigration or people coming to our country. So you would expect it to be higher. And then we get that question quite a bit is, well, if there's good demand, why is consumption going down? Consumption's going down because of availability. There's not availability of eggs. And so it's kind of capped the consumption in the last several years. But demand's been good. And we expect that to continue. It's hard to say exactly what that right market number is. But I think it's safe to say it should be above that five-year average.
Okay. I appreciate that. I guess on that and just thinking about the number of egg-laying hens we should be at, if we don't see HPAI from here, how long do you think it would take the industry to get back to that appropriate level of layers?
You know, we were all surprised back in 2015, 2016. It lasted three months. And I think the general expectation was that it could take a year, year and a half to get back to numbers. And six months later, we was there. So there's lots of things that can be done to increase or shorten those cycles. And so it can happen faster than you would think. But once again, this spread that's still happening in the dairy herd is concerning on this fading into the sunset or continuing to be an outbreak.
And there's just a lot of noise in the hen numbers now because what happens when you have a supply restriction like we've had with the HPAI. Growers get creative. And so you've got people extending flocks longer than they might potentially, in some cases, even doing a second molt. And so those birds, at some point, all that has to kind of work itself out and rolls out. I mean, it's interesting to me when you look at like LEAP Market Analytics. They're still projecting about a 320. I think I looked at the numbers this morning. They're right at just below in November, 320. And they go just over 320 in next year and in 2025. So that would suggest that people are trying to peak their production right now because it's normally the high time.
But there'll be some fall off, and particularly with the losses we've had with HPAI. So it looks like we'll see a market in most of 2025 where hen numbers, again, are going to be pretty significantly below that five-year average.
Okay, and in terms of kind of thinking about the supply kind of indicators and stuff, could you just maybe remind me how long does it take to get a bird back to egg-laying status? And I don't think they reach peak productivity then either. I think it's a little bit of time before they reach peak productivity. But if you could just remind us of those kind of supply indicators, that'd be.
Sure, so from the day of hatch, first thing a chick does is go to a pullet house, and it will spend 16 to 18 weeks in that pullet house, and then it's moved to a layer house, and at that point, it's generally between 25 and 30 weeks when we see that peak, and then the other thing that we're really watching is the egg size. Eggs start as smalls, mediums, and then progress to large, extra large, and eventually a few jumbos mixed in, so it usually takes somewhere past 30 weeks of age for us to get an ideal case weight. We get the right yield from that case of eggs that's produced, so it's anywhere from 25 to 35 weeks, depending on the size egg you're targeting.
And certainly, if you go back a step from that and you talk about expansion of a flock through breeders, you have to go through that exact same process before you get eggs to send to the hatchery to start the commercial side. So you can build a case for a year if you're really expanding the flock through breeders. And then, of course, you have to have additional hatch space if you're going to do something more than you did last year as a ramp-up. And hatch space is extremely tight and has been since this outbreak began.
So, creating M&A kind of possibilities, breeders have sort of been hit and can't stomach the financial burden of rebuilding and surviving, etc.?
There's definitely a financial burden that comes with an outbreak. There is an indemnity program that takes some of the sting out of that. But by no means would it be to compensate for lost income. It's just more or less to keep you whole on the expenses and the loss of the bird. So it's definitely a strain. I can't say that we've seen anyone in desperate bankruptcy-type situations on the back end of this. But the egg markets have been pretty strong. As soon as they get eggs back in, it helps keep people in business.
If you guys have a 20-share, what is the number two player?
Number two is Rose Acre. I think we're 65% larger than them.
They're family-owned as well.
They are.
I guess on that same trend, and I know you spoke to that LEAP Market Analytics number earlier about 320, not reaching 320 until the end of 2025, and so hearing that, it sounds like the industry from the past kind of had the ability to expand, but do you think that producers are a little bit hesitant to recorrect their expansion or expand just given the difficulties you saw with HPAI? You saw it in 2022, didn't see it for a whole lot of 2023, and if people started rebuilding back and then now are getting hit again, is that kind of the reason why it's 320 all the way out to November, or is it more of supply constraints on the actual industry?
A couple of things there. Fixed costs don't go away. So you have to get birds back. You can't just pick and choose. I'm going to make a safer period, and now I'm going to restock. There's an immediate need to get filled back up as quick as you can. But the other piece of the equation is demand. And back in 2015, 2016, we did see some strain on demand based on pricing and people finding alternatives, especially industrial for the ingredient mix. But if you fast forward to now and look at what other items might be more cost competitive, there really aren't any. Everything is elevated right now. And we believe that based on those tailwinds that I started with, there's good demand. And we hope it'll pull through this entire period.
We could just kind of shift back to your scale a little bit here. Just want to put a point around this. You sell more eggs than you can produce just because you have just such strong distribution capabilities. But you've been limiting the number of outside eggs you've been trying to purchase over the last several years. Can you speak to this dynamic a little bit?
Sure. We have worked hard on being less dependent upon purchases and was in a really good spot. 94-95% of the eggs we sold, we produced. And then we had the two HPAI events that put us back purchasing more than we wanted to. We went down to probably 88-86% of our eggs sold were produced. But we believe we'll be back in that 90-plus category here very soon. Both of those farms are by far the majority repopulated. And so we think we'll be back in that more secure space of 90-plus, hopefully close to 95% produced versus sales.
Great. Thank you for that. Maybe if we could just shift over to the kind of specialty egg side of the business. And normally, when you think of conventional eggs versus specialty eggs, you would think of a price premium for specialty. I think it's different in today's environment, just given the supply-demand dynamics. Are you able to kind of speak to that on what specialty is versus conventional in a normal market and what it is kind of?
We disclose a good bit around that, particularly the net average selling prices of each. We are one segment, so we don't give a full cost breakdown of each. To speak to that, where your main differences are in specialty production is the housing costs are quite a bit different. A lot of that production has been added in recent years. The cost of building houses today from even three years ago and certainly 10 years ago are significantly higher. That drives your cost up. In some of your specialty, like nutrient enhanced and certainly organic, you're feeding a different feed formulation that can be quite a bit more expensive. You have a lot more costs.
In more normalized markets, what we saw historically pre-AI, pre-21, for a long time, our specialty egg revenue, net average selling price was between $1.85-$1.90. You could pretty much write that down. It's never going to change. Then the conventional price was lower than that, and it changed with the market. When we had the AI event and supply got limited, a couple of things happened. I mean, one, conventional prices started really going up because of the limited market. We sell to our customers based on that market for the most part. So all of a sudden, for almost all of our FY 2023, you had conventional prices that were higher than specialty prices on a net average selling price because specialty is based on a contracted price. Conventional is based on market price. It's pretty much remained.
We have had a few periods since then where it's gone the other way, but we're back in that boat. In our first quarter that we reported, it was pretty close. I think our - I don't recall the numbers exactly, but I think it was our average selling price for all eggs was like 242 or so, and our specialty was 241, so we were almost at the same, almost at the same price, so we do expect to get a premium for the specialty eggs normally. We need that. I think any producer would because to be sustainable because it costs more to produce them, but when you get these limited supply market conditions, obviously, your margins are going to be better on conventional when your price is higher, so that's pretty much it.
Okay. Do you see a little bit of consumer demand switching over to specialty?
Yeah. I mean, anytime the more normal patterns are the broader that difference. More demand you're going to have on specialty because the consumer, you see, I'm sorry, more on conventional because now they're looking at that cheaper egg as it closes. And you've got conventional and specialty essentially selling for the same price. Most consumers would say, "Okay, well, let me have a specialty because now they're the same price and it's a bargain." So demand does move on that based on that price gap or spread.
Okay. Great. And kind of speaking a little bit more back to your scale, I know, I'm sorry, I'm jumping a little bit here and there, but you have a strong footprint Southeast United States. Can you talk about any impacts, if any, you saw from Hurricanes Helene and Milton?
Well, certainly to our customer base, it was extremely disruptive. We know there's a lot of lives affected by it. Our hearts and prayers go out to them. But our operations were blessed not to have any significant damage to our company on assets. There were some contract farms that were affected that won't be material to our production in that part of the world. But certainly, there was a lot of people displaced. And whenever they leave home, lose power, and they come back, certainly most things in their refrigerator is not good anymore. They've got to be replaced.
So we saw some extremely strong demand surges as people restocked their refrigerators. And certainly, there were some grocery stores affected by power outages that had to do the exact same thing on a much bigger scale. Definitely, it was a trying period and some long nights there.
Maybe if we could just in general for eggs, can you talk about the export market just to and how significant this channel is for kind of the protein and your operations?
Can I take that one?
Yeah, go ahead.
I mean, in general, exports typically run a lot of it. It's based on price and availability here and abroad, but in the 2%-5%. That's kind of what you expect. This year, as you might expect, with price being up, the last numbers I saw had the total export of all eggs been at about 2.28%. And that's split between shell eggs at about 1% of that and liquid at about 1.28%. So we're sort of on the low end of the norm for exports. I think most of that would be price difference. So it's important to our market, but it's not a huge, huge driver.
Maybe if we could. [inaudible]
Yeah. I mean, contracted or sold by agreement, but it's typically at a fixed price. And it might have cost drivers in it like changes in feed costs or major costs. And the way the market works, I mean, when I think I didn't finish my answer from before on the specialty, when I said for a long time we were at about $1.85-$1.90. Well, during that time, Chairman talked about feed prices earlier. There was a time when there was a huge supply of eggs and feed costs were going up. But it's still, even then, difficult to pass those prices on to your customers because there's so many people out there with eggs in an oversupplied market, particularly as we had approached that 300, well, actually went over 340 million hens for a while that we weren't passing all those costs.
When all that changed, when the market dynamics changed and the supply got challenged, not only did our costs went up, but we were able to start passing costs through. So we immediately kind of went from that $0.85 to $0.90 to really all the way up to about $2.40, high $2.40s. Some of that was on contract pricing. We were selling some eggs based on a market price at that time. But we kind of guessed and were pretty close that that number started settling in and around that $2.30 range on the specialty. And give or take, I think that's where we kind of would be more normalized. We're seeing a little higher than that now again because we are selling some specialty eggs based on a market price. So it's pushed that number up in the first quarter with $2.41.
Conventional is also high?
It's mostly spot. We generally say about two-thirds market base, about a third cost driven.
We have about 15 minutes left, so please feel free to, if you have questions, ask away. I'm just going to keep going, but again, please feel free. Just maybe shifting over to kind of thinking about your capital allocation strategy. You do have a decent amount of cash on the balance sheet. How should investors think about how you're going to balance growth investments or potential shareholder returns?
Our capital allocation strategy is, of course, we pay dividends. We've paid $1.59 per share on a five-year average for $832 million since 2000. We're always pleased to pay dividends. We have our maintenance CapEx. Then, of course, the growth that I think you're leading into. Those three buckets I mentioned, organic, inorganic, and then our specialty value add. We put a lot of emphasis in planning forward on that. You don't plan today and reap the benefits of that planning a week or 30 days from now. It's over a year at best before you really can see the fruit of your planning. We have to plan long-term, and we can make some short-term turns here and there, but we really do a lot of long-term planning.
And the organic bucket certainly has been a huge one for us, preparing for cage-free. As we entered this timeline, we knew that we had to be just slightly ahead of the curve for us to have the volume with that long planning timeline that I mentioned. And certainly, inorganic, the mergers and acquisitions has been huge for us to pick up some very strategic fits like Fassio cage-free in a cage-free deficit area. And then ISE to allow us access to the markets in the Northeast that we could not be competitive within before. We believe there's some big growth opportunities up there. So we think wise use of our capital is continue to grow our company. We believe it will give the best long-term shareholder return us doing that. So that continues to be our priority.
Great. Changes in the commercial relationship with your customers. I know you add capacity really fast, but this one seems a little different. Everybody going to cage-free, you talked about the potential demand. What are your comments? Are there any customers looking for a different type of relationship with their suppliers given your market share and type of growth?
The toughest part for customers over the last two years has just been getting supplies. So certainly, I'm sure there's probably some strategic long-term things in the pipeline. But right now, with these fluctuating end numbers, making sure supply is there, especially as you approach a very critical part of the year, the holiday season, where you want eggs on the shelf, that's certainly taken priority.
We believe Cal-Maine has a lot of advantages because of our scale. One is that supply. I mean, we lost two significant facilities, but we were able to take care of our customers. Now, we've made a big commitment to purchase a lot of eggs. You looked at our first quarter, you see that. Then often get the question, "Well, why don't you purchase eggs at one price and sell those purchased eggs at a different price, which is lower?" I mean, it doesn't seem very smart, but it's really part of our commitment to our customer and the desire to build long-term business. We hope, and we have seen some of this. I mean, there are some customers who might typically even bid their business annually.
I think some of them have seen maybe that's not the smartest thing to do, particularly in this particular kind of market. But we're hoping to differentiate ourselves in our commitment to our customer. We already talked about what we produce versus what we buy. Big part of that is in times like these, if you're having to buy eggs, you're going to short some customers. We're working hard even with the losses to take care of the customers. We hope the customers see that long-term, and that adds value to the relationship. I guess the answer to that might be a few years down the road, but we certainly count on that as part of what we do.
Thank you. Maybe if we could just shift back, I know, over to kind of capital allocation, and you've given us a lot, but I just want to dive into maybe more specifically your M&A strategy. You guys have been really prudent buyers. Have gotten great deals that seem accretive. Can you talk about how you're able to land these type of deals? And then what do you look for in the future? What markets or opportunities would you look to grow your core or maybe get into specialty, anything to that effect?
So typically, we've grown the most in the lower cycles. We have a true belief that the shareholder has the opportunity to win at both ends of the cycle. If it's the upper cycle, of course, we're earning cash and we're paying dividends. And on the lower cycle, it's generally been when we have been able to have stronger M&A. So the things that we really look for that we want to make sure is sound in our model over the years, we've become more confident in trusting geography matters. The operational compatibility in today's world production type, whether it's caged or cage-free, certainly matters.
What improvement potential lies at that operation that we can come in and be more efficient, use the scale that Max talked about to make further improvements that the end consumer ultimately gets the benefit of customers that come with it. The synergy with our other locations, we're extremely pleased with the distribution network that we have. It spans from coast to coast, east, west, north, south. That distribution is really huge, especially if you think about product innovation and rolling out new products, getting it to 60,000 retail locations is a really big deal, and we take a lot of pride in what type of accretive distribution we can get, and then input cost, we certainly measure that and condition of assets. Those are the key drivers, and we'll start talking about M&A.
Great. I appreciate that. We got a little over five minutes left. I'm just going to see if there's any other questions from the investors here.
I guess just continuing on the M&A question, because you had a big cycle in 2022, now you have another big cycle here in 2024, doesn't that sort of make it less likely that anyone's going to feel the need to sell at the bottom of the cycle because their balance sheets are in better shape?
Typically, but we had two very significant acquisitions, the Fassio and the ISE, and then Dexter. We're extremely proud of that one. That one's a little different twist than normal, but those happened in that cycle that you're referencing. So it's not unheard of for it to happen. But typically, when companies are making money, they're a little less likely to sell. But also, they probably think maybe things are pretty good now, and now would be a good time. So I think it can happen in both situations.
Other drivers of that too are there is our industry. It's pretty fragmented, a lot of family businesses, and the generational turnover is a real thing. I mean, that was, I'd say, probably the primary driver in the Fassio sale. I mean, great company, been in business well over 100 years. They'd already made the investment for the most part to go to cage-free, but it was really who wants to run the business for the long term. So I think that you'll be faced with that, and that's something that'll give us opportunity. And then this additional investment that's required for cage-free and other specialty, it's one thing to make all that money. Maybe after some lean years, Cal-Maine being a public company, we're accumulating and paying dividends and trying to grow. Family buyers may have other reasons, other things they want to do with the money.
And if they particularly don't have a lot of generations behind them to take, they've got to decide, "Do we place the bet?" Because if you go build those facilities, you need 20 years to get your investment returns. So we think that'll be a continued driver and give opportunity for growth going forward as well.
I know you mentioned, I guess, Rose Acre Farms as the number two player. Is there anybody like that or similar size or, I guess, even half their size, someone with 5% share that you guys think would be on the table over the next couple of years?
So there are a number of people. The ones that show up in the top 60 make up the majority of the birds. But we heard American Egg Board speaking that there's still over 400 scalable farms out there. So it's still highly fragmented. Top five in our industry falls somewhere in the 45% range. If you look at broilers, it's more like the 65% range. So still highly fragmented. And due to the factors Max talked about, generational turnover, investment required for them to continue and build a future, there's still lots of things at play there.
But big ones as well? I'm curious whether.
Sure. There's plenty of other big ones besides Rose Acre. Daybreak is a very sizable company. Hillandale and their Versova is a group that's quite large as well.
Well, I guess just with the few minutes remaining, any parting thoughts for investors?
No. I guess from a personal perspective, a lot of talk has come about our recent stock price. Extremely pleased with that. I have at least 15 years that I need to still continue to work. So I really hope this is just the beginning. I think our cash position is very favorable at the moment. And I think something that shareholders really focus on is growth in the future. And I think we're well positioned and proud to be a part of it and represent an absolutely tremendous team.
I just add to that that we do have options. I mean, we think there's going to be growth opportunities. We evaluate that cash position quarter to quarter. We're always thinking long term, but because of conditions, if things change, I mean, we would change on that. But right now, we still think there's going to be good opportunity to grow. So we've got the scale. We've got the ability that we've proven that we can do it in the past and think we can continue to build on this model. Cal-Maine, one of its strengths, I think, is that Sherman said earlier, "We got a playbook for the whole market." And so right now, things are great, but we think we can continue to build this company.
Great. Well, appreciate your time today, Sherman.
Thank you.
Thank you all for being here.
Thank you.